The Democrats: Gustav von Struve: Motion in the German Pre-Parliament (March 31, 1848)

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4. Abolition of all prerogatives, whatever names these might carry, especially of the nobility, the privileges of wealth, a break with preferential legal venues, and their replacement with a general German civic law.

5. Abolition of the patronizing treatment of local governments and its replacement by a local government law based on local self-administration.

6. The closing of all monasteries and monastic institutions.

7. Abolition of the tie which previously existed between church and state and church and school, and its replacement with:
a) the principles of equal entitlement for all creeds, [the principles] of undiminished freedom of belief and conscience, of the free right of association, of self-administration for local governments and particularly their right to choose freely their clergy, teachers, and mayors.
b) improvement of the teaching profession and more evenly distributed pastors' salaries;
c) abolition of school fees and fees for pastors [for baptism, marriages].

8. Abolition of censorship, licenses, and sureties, and the replacement of these compulsory institutions by the principle of freedom of the press to the widest extent.

9. Abolition of secret and written inquisition courts and their replacement by public and oral jury courts.

10. Abolition of the hundreds of restrictions of personal freedoms of Germans from diverse stations and equal guarantees for them by a special law (habeas corpus act in the broadest sense of the word), which will also establish a law of associations and assembly in particular.

11. Elimination of the suffering of the working classes and the middle class, promotion of trade, the business profession, and agriculture. To this end, copious means are provided by the once enormous civil lists,* appanages, unearned and excessive salaries and pensions, diverse donations and currently idle possessions of several corporate bodies, as well as domains of the land.



* Civil list: taxpayer's money used to support the household of the head of state – trans.