 This earliest democratically elected parliament in Germany first met on March 17, 1793 in the Deutschhaus.On the next day, the Convention declared Mainz and all of the territory between Landau and Bingen to be an independent state based on the principles of liberty and egality, and the Convention's president Andreas Joseph Hofmann proclaimed the Rhenish-German Free State ("Rheinisch-Deutscher Freistaat") from the balcony of the Deutschhaus.After this period had ended with the French capitulation after the Siege of Mainz on July 23, 1793, the building was used by Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen until the territory was ceded to France again in the Treaty of Campo Formio, and the Deutschhaus became the administrative seat of the French département Mont-Tonnerre.