The drawing up of the Constitution thus proclaimed in principle gave rise to heated conflicts.

There was, as yet, no proletariat proper in Prussia, and for that matter hardly any in the rest of Germany.

The handicraft system of production, and even the mediaeval guild system, slightly modified, prevailed throughout the country.

The middle class proper was small and unimportant, and hence Liberalism, the theoretical expression of that class, only found articulate utterance through men of the professions.
The new Prussian territories in the west were largely tinctured with progressive ideas originating in the French Revolution, while the east was dominated by reactionary feudal landowners, the notorious Junker class--a class special to East Prussian territories, including the eastern portion of the Mark of Brandenburg--whom the moderate Conservative Minister Stein himself characterized as "heartless, wooden, half-educated people, only good to turn into corporals or calculating-machines." This class then, as ever since, opposed an increase of popular control and the progress of free institutions with might and main.

Friction arose between the Government and Liberal gymnastic societies and students' clubs.