Landtag of Prussia

History

Kingdom of Prussia

In the course of the 1848 Revolution, King Frederick William IV of Prussia and his Minister President Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen had agreed to call for the general election of a national assembly in all Prussian provinces. The Prussian National Assembly however was dismissed by royal decree of 5 December 1848 and the King imposed the 1848 Constitution of Prussia. It contained a catalog of fundamental rights that included freedom of religion, speech and the press, and provided for a bicameral parliament consisting of a First Chamber (Erste Kammer, called House of Lords from 1855), as well as a Second Chamber (Zweite Kammer, from 1855 House of Representatives) whose members were elected by universal manhood suffrage according to the three-class franchise system that weighted votes based on amount of taxes paid. Both houses and the King of Prussia had the right to introduce bills, although the king remained the most powerful element in the government. The first Parliament, which met in 1849, modified the constitution in mostly minor ways. The resulting 1850 Constitution of Prussia, amended numerous times, remained Prussia's basic law until 1918.

Under the regency of Prince William I and his liberal prime minister Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern from 1858 (the "New Era"), the House of Representatives led by the newly established German Progress Party gradually developed into a serious political actor, culminating in a constitutional conflict in 1861: William I, who had just acceded to the Prussian throne, and his war minister Albrecht von Roon requested approval for an increment of the military budget, which the deputies refused. Roon urged the king to appoint Otto von Bismarck as Minister President. Bismarck acted on an alleged gap in the constitution (Lückentheorie) and openly sidestepped any power of the purse of the Prussian representatives, saying that "not by speeches and votes of the majority are the great questions of the time decided (...) but by iron and blood." The assembly raised a blistering protest and over the following years Bismarck's cabinet had to govern without a government budget passed by the legislature. In September 1866 the Minister President, at a peak of his power after the Battle of Königgrätz, reached the passage of the Indemnity Act (Indemnitätsgesetz) subsequently legalising his budget management. The balloting led to the split-off of the National Liberal Party which became a loyal supporter of Bismarck's policies.

Free State of Prussia

During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the new Prussian government of Majority Social Democrats (MSPD) and Independent Social Democrats (USPD) under Paul Hirsch had the bicameral legislature abolished. A constitutional convention (Preußische Landesversamlung) was elected on 26 January 1919, after the introduction of equal franchise for all men and women. After the failed Kapp Putsch of 1920, the assembly confirmed the first cabinet of Minister-president Otto Braun and finally adopted the new Prussian constitution on 30 November. The Preußischer Landtag was re-established as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia in 1921. The provinces were represented in the Prussian State Council, which succeeded the former Herrenhaus as a kind of upper house. The Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer served as its president until 1933.

A legislative period lasted for no longer than four years. The parliament could be dissolved early by joint resolution of the prime minister and the presidents of the Landtag and the State Council or by a plebiscite. In 1931 just such a referendum, intended to dissolve the Prussian Landtag, took place on the initiative of the "Stahlhelm" veterans' organization, with the support of the Nazi Party and the German Communist Party. The referendum failed. Landtag elections took place on 20 February 1921, 7 December 1924, 20 May 1928, 24 April 1932, and 5 March 1933. The last Prussian Landtag convened on 22 March 1933, and again on 18 May 1933 for the final time. A year after coming to power in Germany, the Nazi Party passed the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich," effective on 30 January 1934. Directed at replacing the German federal state with a unitary government, this law abolished the Prussian Landtag, along with all other state legislatures.