For some time the ecclesiastic Friedrich Georg Pape [de] was president of the club and editor of the Mainzer Nationalzeitung (English: Mainz National Newspaper).

By order of the French National Convention, elections in the French-occupied territories west of the Rhine were held on 24 February 1793.

The convention declared the represented territory (which extended to Bingen in the west and to Landau in the south) to be free and democratic, and disclaimed any ties to the empire.

The convention's president, Andreas Joseph Hofmann, proclaimed the Rhenish-German Free State (German: Rheinisch-Deutscher Freistaat) from the balcony of the Deutschhaus.

On 21 March 1793, it was decided to seek the accession of the Free State to France[3][page needed] and delegates (among them Georg Forster and Adam Lux) were sent to Paris.