Holy Roman Empire - Chapter 79
Chapter 79: Chapter 79: The Darkest Parliament
Translator: 549690339
The Frankfurt Preparatory Committee, with all five members wearing very sour expressions, faced a vehement protest from the Austrian Delegation, founded on the premise that the Austrian Empire was an indivisible entity.
The representatives for the Frankfurt meeting were allotted based on population, theoretically electing one delegate from every fifty thousand people. If areas outside the German Region weren’t excluded, the meeting would be dominated by Austria.
During this period, Schleswig and Holstein, both sub-states, were still under
Danish control, and Austria still had control over portions of the Italian Area. In terms of population, Austria exceeded the total of the Lesser German
Region.
The protest was one thing since regions like Hungary truly didn’t belong to the German Region, and they were not afraid of a drawn-out dispute.
However, unexpectedly, the Austrian representatives shamelessly took the matter to the journalists and brazenly exposed the conference’s dark secrets.
Due to the Customs Union, Prussia, which had the most developed industry among the German Confederation, wielded the greatest influence among the capitalists, and indeed, this conference had a clear bias.
By now, everyone understood the Austrian Delegation was here to sabotage the event. Exclude Austrians from the meeting?
Could such an assembly even be considered a preparatory Parliament of Germany? The Austrians would likely leave with great pleasure, and the already questionably legitimate Parliament, once lacking Austria, would turn into a laughingstock.
“Gentlemen, we must take action. The recent public opinion is extremely unfavorable towards us. If this continues, our enemies’ schemes will succeed!” Merlin said sternly.
The media’s exposure of their sordid past didn’t alarm them; after all, are not all capitalists birds of a feather? Who doesn’t have a dark history?
What they were actually most worried about now was the trouble caused by the Austrian Delegation. As the foremost sub-state in the German Region, Austria often played the role of the leader.
Whether they liked it or not, Austria’s influence within the German Confederation was immense, and a Parliament lacking Austria’s participation would never be recognized by the public.
“Why don’t we just change the name, call it the Lesser German Parliament, and tell the Austrians to bugger off?!” a Prussian delegate proposed.
“Impossible! Winstor, you are dividing the great German Empire. If it’s just the Lesser German Parliament, then we will also withdraw!” a representative from Bavaria countered.
The main aim of this Parliament was to expand the political influence of the bourgeoisie. Unifying the German Region was actually secondary; the Frankfurt meeting wasn’t as significant as described in history books.
Otherwise, even the Kingdom of Prussia wouldn’t have recognized this meeting—it was too idealistic and unduly magnified the privileges of the capitalists, lacking any practical feasibility.
Capitalists’ interests aren’t the same either. Capitalists from different regions and industries often have divergent interests.
Establishing the Lesser German Empire aligned with the interests of the capitalists from the Northern Germany, as it allowed them to avoid competition from the Austrian capitalists.
But this was not the case for many capitalists in the South German Region, especially in the Kingdom of Bavaria, where the local economy was closely tied to Austria. A split would be catastrophic for them.
Because of the protest by the Austrian Delegation, the conference hadn’t even started, so there was no question of resolving issues through voting. If they also lost the support of representatives from the South Germanic areas, there was no point in holding the meeting at all.
The bourgeoisie naturally possess a tendency to compromise. After a week of disputes, they reached an agreement, allowing representatives from Bohemia and the Hungarian Region to attend, but with a limitation on their numbers.
An upper limit was directly set on the number of delegates from any sub-state, capping it at two hundred, and only representatives of Austria and Prussia had such numbers.
Without a doubt, what followed was another bout of wrangling over the status of Austria and Prussia. As the top sub-state of Germany, Austria was insistent on having an equal status.
Headed by Anderson, the Austrian Delegation, inherently intent on causing trouble, was certainly not about to give up.
They adamantly maintained that Austria must have the highest number of seats. Besides, in an era devoid of professional statistics, who could accurately count how many German people were actually in the Austrian Region?
The Prussians, who aimed for an equal status with Austria, naturally wouldn’t agree because this meeting was orchestrated by Prussian interest groups to sideline Austria.
The Prussia-Austria delegations engaged in a tug of war which quickly escalated, unfolding into regional conflicts between North and South Germany, dragging all delegates into the fray.
The dispute lasted until June, with the Austrian Delegation increasingly on the back foot. However, it was no matter—the now scandal-ridden Frankfurt meeting had already become a joke.
The Vienna Daily depicted the conference as a “bourgeois feast” and accompanied the article with an image of corpulent capitalists, carving up a cow with knives and forks.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung also published an article by Engels, launching a fierce attack on the Frankfurt meeting, labeling it a “grand assembly for the distribution of capitalist interests.”
The Munich Post went even further with a series of reports on the Frankfurt meeting, meticulously detailing every attending delegate. Unsurprisingly, it focused largely on their scandals.
It described the meeting as “the dirtiest Parliament in history,” a stigmatization that left no room for whitewashing — the participants were tainted through and through.
This included the scholars, civil servants, and members of society who were present—voter fraud was their most significant scandal.
For instance, one delegate was elected with thirty thousand votes in an area where less than a hundred people voted. Or another district’s election featured only one candidate, who, by default, won unanimously…
In summary, the election was a sham. From start to finish, the election spanned less than a week; in many places, there wasn’t even enough time to spread the word, how could the results be accepted?
Experts and scholars uniformly condemned the election from a technical standpoint. For example, a newspaper would announce an election in one place, and the voting would start the next day, leaving no time for proper preparation.
Countless surveys showed that ninety percent of Germans were unaware of the election, and ninety-nine percent had not participated.
By this stage, there was no need for Franz to intervene further, as delegates were besmirched from head to toe. Many could not withstand the public pressure and withdrew from the meeting of their own accord.
The assembly persisted until July. However, with the political landscape shifting amid internal and external crises, this spontaneously organized bourgeois conference crumbled to pieces..
