<i>Frankfurt am Meer</i>: The “Illiberal” Liberalism of the German Confederation and Its Aspirations over the Habsburg Adriatic in 1848

Abstract In 1848, Habsburg Trieste became the target of German nationalists gathered in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt parliament, born out revolutions has been widely depicted as a liberal experience. Yet its nationalist stances, which included creation unitary state through absorption vast multiethnic regions monarchy, whose Austrian crownlands were part Confederation, bear witness to illiberal nature parenthesis 1848–1849. Notwithstanding assimilatory tendencies Italian activists supported inclusion port an enlarged Germany, hoping break away from rule, they portrayed oppressive. This article argues that contradictory support for Confederation highlights paradoxes at basis movements their onset, while also pointing difficulty nation-states would soon dealing with other ethnic groups within borders. On contrary, it was monarchy that, centuries-long tradition accommodating different ethnicities into fold, represented what present-day observers comes closer political liberalism than so-called national parties opposed rule.