One of the metaphors for the Revolution of 1848 propagated by the historian A. J. P. Taylor was that it was "a turning point that failed to turn." Although many subsequent historians of 1848 have rejected or significantly qualified Taylor's memorable quip, the issue of what did not happen in 1848 is one of the dominant motifs within the historiography of the revolutions. Friedrich Wilhelm IV's refusal of the Paulskirche assembly's crown is an example of this trend. For a number of post-1945 historians the Prussian King's refusal was one paving stone in Germany's Sonderweg (special path) leading to National Socialism. While historians' analyses of Friedrich Wilhelm IV's actions are a little less critical than they were in the immediate postwar years, they do focus on a constellation of factors that made the Paulskirche offer a dead letter.
One of the central reasons for the refusal was the personality and beliefs of the Hohenzollern monarch himself. Much like his contemporary Nicholas I, Friedrich Wilhelm IV was a believer in traditional monarchy and a neofeudal political order. While older historians such as the Bielefelders or Theodore Hamerow castigated this as an unrealistic fantasy on the part of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the monarch was tapping into the political culture of the Prussian/German right with his emphasis upon being a Christian monarch and upholder of order. The Romanticism of Friedrich Wilhelm IV was in keeping with larger trends in Central European political culture and not an outlier.
Thus it becomes clear that both the circumstances and the very concept of the Paulskirche offer were at odds with Friedrich Wilhelm IV's own Weltanschauung. The King had been forced by circumstances to validate and salute the corpses of the March Berlin barricade fighters, an act that caused a degree of disgust in private. The Paulskirche offer was a continuation of this trend of forcing the monarch to obey. In Friedrich Wilhelm IV's romantic imagination, the sovereign and his subjects were supposed to exist in a semi-coeval symbiosis. The Paulskirche offer upended this dynamic and implied that the crown came from a segment of the people and could be given to whomever. This democratization of monarchy was at odds with those segments of the German right that saw Bonapartism as the nemesis of the nation.In a letter to his sister Charlotte, Friedrich Wilhelm IV let it be known how little he thought of the Paulskirche's offer:
You have read my reply to the man-donkey-dog-pig-and-cat delegation from Frankfurt. It means in simple German: “Sirs! You have not any right at all to offer me anything whatsoever. Ask, yes, you may ask, but give – No – for in order to give, you would first of all have to be in possession of something that can be given, and this is not the case!”
Friedrich Wilhelm IV's dismissal that he would not accept a crown "from the gutter" was emblematic of how little value he and his circle placed on crowns that were given to monarchs by their social inferiors.
The Paulskirche also had the distinct disadvantage of having very little power to back up its offer. Although it had taken upon itself the mantle of being the representative of the German nation, the National Assembly was prone to internal sniping and squabbles that denuded its prestige and political clout. Nor did the Paulskirche have much in the way of armies or other instruments of power that made it something to be reckoned with in 1848/49. The Revolutions had succeeded in March partly because of the weaknesses of the various German states' military forces as well as the long-build up of the liberal German political sphere. The latter factor meant that enough German intellectuals and ideologues existed to claim victory in the aftermath of March, but it also engendered what turned out to be a fatal overconfidence within the Paulskirche assembly. Some of the assembly's liberals thought the events in March were a validation of their political stance and a sign of their inevitable victory. Yet the internal factionalism and general incoherence of the Paulskirche assembly was not lost among a number of observers who recognized the inherent weakness of the body. This was noted by the conservative circles around Friedrich Wilhelm IV such as Joseph von Radowitz, the Gerlach brothers as well as their young protege Otto von Bismarck.
The weakness of the Paulskirche and the revolution in general was also noted abroad. Friedrich Wilhelm IV's letter to his sister was almost certainly meant to be read by her husband Emperor Nicholas I who was no friend of politics that smacked of the French Revolution. Additionally, Habsburg Austria had regained a degree of stability after the fall of Metternich and the Austrians did not look fondly on a Hohenzollern-led Germany. The possibility of a joint Austro-Russian intervention in Central Europe was a real possibility had Friedrich Wilhelm IV accepted the Paulskirche offer. The conservative camarilla around the King also appreciated this and von Radowitz's attempt to negotiate a Austro-Prussian division of Germany went nowhere. The camarilla may have been ideologically ill-inclined to accept a crown from a representative body, but there was also a strong realist ground for rejecting it too as it potentially embroiled Prussia in a war with two great powers.
Ironically, for all the scorn heaped on Friedrich Wilhelm IV in the aftermath of both 1848 and 1945, both Bismarck and Friedrich Wilhelm IV's brother Wilhelm I unified Germany using a remarkably similar neofeudal platform. Both men were decidedly more realist in their thinking than Friedrich Wilhelm IV but they did push for a German crown to be offered by the legitimate princes of Germany and not upstart parliamentarians. Bismarck's various social insurance schemes also fit in with Friedrich Wilhelm IV's notions of making a patrimonial state congruent with modernity. Where Bismarck departed from Friedrich Wilhelm IV was that the Prussian Chancellor did recognize the importance of parliamentary systems and constitutions to uphold a conservative order. Bismarck was never fully successful in subordinating these institutions to German executive, but it showed that he did appreciate the lessons of the Paulskirche experiment.
Sources
Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Dowe, Dieter. Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.
Sperber, Jonathan. Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.