President: The motion of Mr. Uhland has been rejected by 203 to 199 votes.

Communiqué of the results of the vote on Ludwig Uhland’s motion ‘for the periodic election by the parliament of an imperial head of state’. In: Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden National-Versammlung zu Frankfurt a.M., Vol. 7, No. 170, 14.2.1849, p. 5192

The defeat of Uhland’s motion, by a narrow margin, shows that the ‘dream of the spring of 1848’ with its vision of a freely elected parliament and an all-German National Assembly was doomed to remain just that – a dream. Less than a year after the March Revolution there could be no doubt that it had failed to achieve many of its original goals.