Prussian State Council
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The Prussian State Council ( German: ''Preußischer Staatsrat'') was the second chamber of the bicameral legislature of the
Free State of Prussia The Free State of Prussia (, ) was one of the States of the Weimar Republic, constituent states of Weimar Republic, Germany from 1918 to 1947. The successor to the Kingdom of Prussia after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, it cont ...
between 1921 and 1933; the first chamber was the Prussian Landtag (). The members of the State Council were elected by the provincial parliaments and gave the provinces of Prussia a voice in the legislative process. The Council had an indirect right to introduce legislation, could object to bills passed by the Reichstag and had to approve expenditures that exceeded the budget.


Historical background

Until 1848 the State Council in the
Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (, ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. It played a signif ...
was an important institution within the Prussian executive, but its importance dwindled with the development of constitutionalism. The Council produced expert opinions and made recommendations. Decision-making power, however, rested solely with the king and cabinet. With the push towards a constitution and the associated demand for separation of powers, the continued existence of the State Council came into question. The Prussian constitution of 1850 therefore did not provide for one. A revival was attempted with the decree of 12 January 1852 that re-established the Council, but it found no proper place for itself in a state with a constitution. A second attempt to revive it in 1884, along with the transfer of the chairmanship to Crown Prince Frederick William, led to no significant results. The Council ultimately faded away.


Free State of Prussia in the Weimar Republic


Constitutional form

The Prussian Constitution of 1920, implemented after the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy, established a State Council in Section IV, Article 31 as a body for the participation of the provinces in the legislative process. It provided the Free State with a federal element, although Prussia otherwise remained a unitary state whose
provinces A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...
were not constituent states. The State Council was composed of members delegated by the provincial parliaments. Any male citizen over the age of 25 could be elected. The number of representatives from a province depended on its population; each province generally sent at least 3 representatives (with the exception of the Hohenzollern Lands, which had only one). Otherwise, each province had one vote for every 500,000 inhabitants; a remainder of at least 250,000 inhabitants above that gave an additional vote. Like the ''Reichsrat'' – the body that represented the states' interests in the national parliament – the State Council had a right only to object to actions taken in the Prussian ''Landtag'', and its objections could be overridden by a two-thirds majority in the . All state expenditures that exceeded the budget required the approval of the State Council. It also had an indirect right of initiative: proposals went to the State Ministry (the Prussian minister president and his cabinet) and had to be passed on by it to the . The State Council had the right to express its opinion on all matters concerning the and thus on legislation. It also had a right to obtain information from the State Ministry. The State Council was convened by its president at the request of all the representatives of a province, of one-fifth of all members, or of the State Ministry.
Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of th ...
of the Centre Party, then mayor of
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
and after World War II the first chancellor of
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
, held the chairmanship of the State Council from its inception until the Nazi takeover in 1933.


Provincial representatives

About one month after the provincial parliamentary elections, the elections for the members of the Prussian State Council were held by the provincial parliaments. The results by election date and party were as follows: 1 AG: (Prussian Working Group): DNVP, DVP and other middle-class and conservative parties


Conflict between the State Council and the State Ministry

Konrad Adenauer, the president of the State Council, had significant reservations about the state government and its ministers. He thought that under Minister President Otto Braun of the Social Democrats (SPD), it was not treating the State Council with the importance that it deserved under the constitution. Braun and the rest of the government viewed the situation differently. He feared encroachment on his policy-making authority as minister president, and the other ministers, including those from Adenauer's Centre Party, were apprehensive of a possible dilution of democratic reforms by the conservative provinces east of the Elbe River. A rivalry thus developed between the two politicians and their respective state bodies which led the State Council to take a blockading stance towards the and its actions until the early 1930s. Adenauer took his case to the State Court for the German Reich in 1922. The court reached a settlement in 1923 after Adenauer had withdrawn a large part of his demands.


Political end in 1932 and Nazi transformation

The Prussian state elections of 24 April 1932, which gave the Nazi Party the most seats but not enough to form a viable coalition with any other parties, also largely deprived the State Council of its ability to function. Legislative and budgetary decisions could no longer be implemented. In the Prussian coup d'état of 20 July 1932, the national conservative Reich government of President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Franz von Papen issued an emergency decree to put executive power in Prussia into von Papen's hands as '' Reichskommissar''. The decree left Braun's cabinet in place as an all but meaningless caretaker government and the State Council with little room to act. In a move towards dissolving the , Reich President Hindenburg by emergency decree unlawfully stripped Braun of his remaining powers on 6 February 1933 and replaced him with von Papen. Adenauer remained in office. A meeting of the three-man body that was necessary to dissolve the took place shortly afterwards. It consisted of the president of the Hanns Kerrl of the Nazi Party, Prussian minister president von Papen and Adenauer as president of the Council of State''.'' Adenauer left the room before the vote, probably convinced that he had made it legally impossible to pass a resolution. Papen and Kerrl interpreted Adenauer's action as an abstention and decided to dissolve the . The legality of the procedure was highly questionable. In the Prussian election on 5 March 1933, held in parallel with the national Reichstag election, the Nazi Party achieved the necessary majority to pass a Prussian enabling act which gave the Reich chancellor full authority over the state. The State Council was thereby definitively deprived of its co-legislative and co-executive functions. Following the elections to the provincial parliaments held the same month, the Nazis secured a majority of seats in the State Council. On 26 April the body elected Robert Ley, the Party's Reich organization leader, to succeed Adenauer. The Prussian "Law on the State Council" of 8 July 1933 dissolved the State Council in its previous form. Simultaneously with the dissolution of the old State Council, a new institution of the same name was created. The State Council of Nazi Germany then consisted of those who were members by virtue of their office (the Prussian ministers and certain other holders of public office) and those awarded the title of state councilor () by Prussian minister president Hermann Göring.


Meeting place

The Prussian State Council met between 1921 and 1933 in the '' Herrenhaus'' on Leipziger Straße in Berlin. After World War II, the building housed part of the East German Academy of Sciences. Since 2000, the building, renovated and again with an assembly chamber, has served as the seat of the
German Bundesrat The German Bundesrat (, ) is a legislative body that represents the sixteen '' Länder'' (federated states) of Germany at the federal level (German: ''Bundesebene''). The Bundesrat meets at the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin. Its se ...
.


See also

* List of presidents of the State Council of Prussia *


References

{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Berlin Defunct upper houses Legislative buildings in Europe 1920 establishments in Germany 1933 disestablishments in Germany Politics of Free State of Prussia