Chapter 79: The Blackest Congress

  Chapter 79 The Blackest Reichstag

Frankfurt Preparatory Committee,5 the faces of the members were very ugly, the Austrian delegation protested strongly on the grounds that the Austrian Empire is a whole.

Frankfurt conference delegates are based on the population for the distribution of parliamentary seats, theoretically elected from 50,000 people to a representative, if not kicked out the non-German regions, this conference is Austria’s exclusive.

At this time, the states of Schleswig and Holstein still belonged to Denmark, and Austria still controlled part of Italy, and in terms of population, Austria exceeded the sum of the Lesser German regions.

The protests were even, and they weren’t afraid to pull their punches when a series of regions such as Hungary really weren’t part of the German region anyway.

However, it did not occur to me that the Austrian representative actually stabbed the matter to the reporter in a very honorable manner, and also openly revealed the dark secrets of the meeting.

Because of the relationship of the Customs Union, Prussia, the most industrially developed of the German states, had the greatest influence among the capitalists, and this meeting did have an obvious tendency.

By now, it was clear to everyone that the Austrian delegation had come to smash the scene, and to keep the Austrians out of the conference?

Can this still be considered a German preparatory congress? It is estimated that the Austrians will be very happy to leave, there is not much legitimacy of the parliament, after missing a corner, it will become a laughing stock.

“Gentlemen, we must take action, the recent public opinion is very unfavorable to us, if it continues, the enemy’s plot will succeed!” Merlin said seriously

The media’s revelation of their black history didn’t cause them to be alarmed, the capitalists of the world are all the same, who doesn’t have a black history?

Now they are most worried about the Austrian delegation to do things, as the first big state in the German region, Austria often acts as the role of the leading big brother.

Whether they want it or not, Austria’s influence in the German states, is huge, without Austria’s participation in the parliament, it is impossible to get the popular recognition.

“Why don’t we just change the name and call it the Little German Diet and tell the Austrians to get lost!” A Prussian representative suggested

“Impossible! Weinstoll, you’re splitting the great German Empire, if it’s just the Little German Reichstag, then we’re out too!” The Bavarian delegate objected

The main purpose of having this Diet was to expand the political influence of the bourgeoisie, the unification of the German regions actually came second, and the Frankfurt Conference wasn’t as important as it was portrayed in the history books.

Otherwise, in the end, it would not have been so bad that even the Kingdom of Prussia did not recognize the conference; it was really that the Congress was too idealistic, expanding the rights and interests of the capitalists without limit, and without any semblance of feasibility.

The interests of capitalists are not the same, and they often vary from region to region and from industry to industry.

The establishment of a small German empire was in the interest of the capitalists of the North German region, who could avoid competition from the Austrian capitalists.

But it was not the same for many capitalists in the South German region, especially in the Kingdom of Bavaria, where the local economy was very closely linked to Austria, and it would be a catastrophe for them once it was cut off.

Because of the protest of the Austrian delegation, now the General Assembly has not yet begun, naturally there is no vote to solve the problem, if we lose the support of the representatives of the South German region, then this meeting does not need to be held.

……

The bourgeoisie is naturally compromising, and after a week of arguing, a compromise was reached, allowing the Bohemian and Hungarian regional delegates to attend the conference, but limiting their quota.

A direct cap was set on the number of state delegates, with no state delegate being allowed to exceed 200, and only the Austrian and Prussian delegates attending the conference had that many.

Undoubtedly, the next step was to pull the rug out from under them, the question of the status of Austria and Prussia, which, as the first German states, were bound to have an equivalent status.

How could the Austrian delegation, headed by Anderson, who had come to make things happen, give it up?

One bite, Austria must have the most representative seats. Anyway, the population of Austria is now the largest, and there is no professional statistics in this era, who knows exactly how many Germans there are in the Austrian region?

Want and Austria to get the same status of the Prussians, naturally, did not agree, to know that this meeting is the Prussian internal interest group planning, the purpose is to exclude Austria.

The Prussian-Austrian delegation opened a tug-of-war, which soon spread and became a territorial conflict between North and South Germany, in which all the delegates were involved.

This dispute held until June, when the Austrian delegation was gradually on the losing end. But it didn’t matter, by this time the scandalous Frankfurt Conference had become a joke.

The Vienna daily newspaper described the conference as a “capitalist’s feast”, with a picture of a group of fat capitalists slaughtering a cow with knives and forks.

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung also published an article by Engels, strongly criticizing the Frankfurt Conference, which was ridiculed as “a meeting of a group of capitalists for the distribution of benefits”.

The Munich Post even made a series of reports on the Frankfurt Conference, detailing all the members of parliament who participated in the conference. No doubt, the focus was on black history.

At the end of the report, it used the phrase “the dirtiest parliament in history” to describe the conference, and there was no way to whitewash it, as all the representatives attending the conference were black.

Including academics, civil servants, and public figures attending the meeting, election fraud is the biggest black history.

For example: a certain representative was elected with 30,000 votes, but less than one hundred people participated in the vote; another example is a certain district election, there is only one candidate, the default unanimous election ……

To summarize, it’s election fraud. This election took less than a week from the beginning to the end, and many places may not even have time to pass on the information, so how can the result be acceptable?

Pundits and scholars have organized themselves into groups to open fire and attack this election technically, e.g., the newspapers published one day where the election would be held, and the election started the next day, which was simply too late.

Numerous questionnaires showed that ninety percent of Germans did not know that there had been an election, and ninety-nine percent had not participated in it.

At this point, there was no need for Franz to continue his efforts, the delegates attending the conference were hacked from head to toe, and many could not stand the pressure of public opinion and voluntarily withdrew from the conference.

The Congress lasted until July, when the political situation changed and the bourgeoisie’s spontaneous organization collapsed under the weight of internal and external troubles.

(End of chapter)