Be it resolved that the Constitutional Committee define and address the great questions incumbent upon it simply and directly, without engaging in doctrinal discussions.
Jacob Grimm
‘To the Constitutional Committee.
Frankf[urt] 7th June 1848
Prior & Petit. Committee
Wiederhol.
Briegleb’

Handwritten ‘Motion of Deputy Jacob Grimm’ with an additional remark by Moriz Adolph Briegleb of 7th June 1848 (Bundesarchiv, Signatur: DB 51/233)

The committee charged with drafting an imperial constitution first convened on 24th May 1848. Among its thirty members were Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785–1860), who had been a colleague of Jacob Grimm at the university in Göttingen. Tasked with preparing preliminary drafts of a German constitution, the Constitutional Committee was one of the most important of the National Assembly’s seventeen independent and ten temporary committees. Its sessions were not public.

This motion, tabled barely three weeks after the National Assembly’s constituent session, relates to the Constitutional Committee’s working methods and shows just how interested Jacob Grimm was in the efficient functioning of these new parliamentary bodies.

Moriz Adolph Briegleb (1809–1872) was the deputy representing both Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and sat on both the Constitutional Committee and – like Uhland – the Committee for the Priority of Petitions and Motions.