In the history of the Polish parliament, it succeeded the general sejm and local sejmik on part of the territories of the Prussian partition.
[1] The King of Prussia gave the Grand Duchy the right to call a parliament in 1823, with specific decrees defining its competences in 1826.
[1] The parliament carried the traditions of the General Sejmik of Greater Poland, and insisted on using the Polish word sejm in its name.
The Grand Duchy's population was 65% Polish but with its exclusion of serfs and underrepresentation of landless rural commoners the electoral law was designed to favor the German inhabitants.
[5] The last petition issued by the Sejm in 1841 demanded equal rights for the Poles and stopping of the Germanization campaign.
[2][7] As most of the Sejm petitions were simply ignored by the King of Prussia, this contributed to dissent in the province, which eventually resulted in an uprising in 1848 in the midst of the revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
[6] In the aftermath of World War I, popular protests against the electoral law discriminating against Poles led to new elections in 1918, in which 521 deputies were elected in the Grand Duchy; that Sejm would support the integration of the Grand Duchy territories to the newly formed Second Polish Republic.
[11] Only Christian men subject to no other monarch but the king in personal union the grand duke and of at least 30 years of age were enfranchised to vote.
Its deputies had the right to file petitions and complaints to the King of Prussia, who could consent or reject (as was often the case) the Sejm proposals.