the new state with the nationality conflicts of Austria. Only the part of Austria that was already federal territory was welcome, even if it included a large ethnic minority (the Czechs). The Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy would have had to be separate in terms of constitution, government and administration. The Austrian Emperor would have been the head of both parts, formed as separate states in a personal union only. Austria rejected demands for such a division of its imperial territory, as it viewed a personal union as insufficient to ensure integrity of the monarchy. In March 1849, the Austrian Emperor issued a new Austrian constitution which defined Austria as a centralist state. By then, the German National Assembly was already divided in 'Greater Germans' (often Catholics) and 'Lesser Germans'. The latter tendency became in March 1849 the majority. It voted for a German constitution that left open the accession of Austria, but elected the Prussian king to be German Emperor. It also made for the first time a then-failed attempts to expand borders of the Confederation through inclusion of the original nucleus of Prussian statehood (East Prussia), as well as through annexing into the Confederation the Prussian-ruled share of the dismembered Polish state, enjoying a degree of autonomy and consisting of Pomerelia (renamed West Prussia), the Lauenburg and Bütow Land, as well as the Greater Poland (renamed Grand Duchy of Posen). Attempts to annex the territories populated with Poles were based on an assessment that future successful Germanisation of these lands would be feasible, in contrast to the Hungarian lands. The planned annexations elicited an immediate armed response of the Poles in the form of the Greater Poland uprising (1848) and were as a result abandoned for the time being. In spite of their failure at the time, the assembly did succeed, however, in demoting the Grand Duchy to an ordinary Province of Posen. In an unexpected turn of events, the Prussian king refused, however, to accept in April the offered crown of the nascent German Empire (1848–1849), primarily due to his negative perception of the form of the planned empire as designed by the Frankfurt Constitution, thus causing abortion of the efforts to establish the state. Nevertheless, he followed in the immediate aftermath with further steps to unify Germany, but on his own absolutist terms, initially through a project that was later called the 'Erfurt Union'. Austria