Politician & Activist
In 1848, while suspended from his position at the university, he became a member of the Kurhessian Estates Assembly.[1] Two years later he was made President of the Diet. Bayrhoffer organized a meeting in Frankfurt between all democratic parties in the state to unite their cause.
"While the Majority in June was creating an Imperial Regent, these men had held a great meeting of their own party in Frankfort, brought together by Professor Bayrhoffer of Marburg, a dapper little man with a sharp nose and a thin voice, who hitherto had never known anything of the world outside of Hegel's Logic, and who now became, quite as exclusively, a votary of the theories of Robespierre. He preached unweariedly the union of all champions of the People for the realization of the supremacy of the People and for the destruction of the People's enemies. It was decided to unite the countless Democratic societies into one large well-organized Association under one common direction, to keep the people in as continual a state of restlessness as possible, and in all conceivable ways to prepare for one last great blow. It was expected that in a few weeks their success would be decisive and satisfactory."[2]
While Bayrhoffer was president, the assembly and its liberal democratic constitution, regarded the most advanced of its time, faced considerable opposition in what is now known as the Kurhessian Constitutional Conflict when the estates assembly refused to allow the head of Hesse-Kassel government, Daniel Hassenpflug, to levy taxes without a constitutionally required budget proposal from the state.[2] The result of which was a counter-revolutionary response via suspension of the constitution by Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I, the dissolution of the Diet, and an unsuccessful declaration of martial law. Upon declaration, 241 of 277 Kurhessian officers submitted dismissal applications because of their oath not only to the electorate but also to the constitution which the assembly upheld. This led to federal intervention on November 1, 1850, by the Federal Assembly in which 25,000 Bavarian and Austrian troops (coined the "strafbayern" or "punishment bavaria" by Kurhessen citizens) were sent to occupy Hesse to restore governmental order. The occupation continued until the summer of 1851.
In November 1851 Bayrhoffer requested five days of vacation from his office and never returned. This prompted the criminal court of Marbug to begin an investigation on the suspicion of high treason. In 1852 the Court of Kassel sentenced Bayrhoffer's impeachment without pay due to "unauthorized absence from legal domicile" and on August 22, 1853, the jury of Marburg sentenced Bayrhoffer to fifteen years imprisonment and loss of the national cockade for treason.