North German Constitution
The North German Constitution, officially the Constitution of the North German Confederation was the constitution of the North German Confederation, which existed as a state from 1 July 1867 to 31 December 1870. The Constitution of the German Empire of 1871 was closely based on it.
The Constitution bore a strong imprint of the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who wanted a loosely organized confederation in which sovereignty rested with the individual states as a whole. The upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, as the body representing the states, was thus the Confederation's sovereign. Its members were chosen by the states' governments. The members of the lower house of parliament, the Reichstag, were elected by universal manhood suffrage. The Reichstag participated on an equal footing with the Bundesrat in legislation for the Confederation.
The chancellor, who presided over the Bundesrat, was appointed by the king of Prussia and was responsible only to him. The king was head of state and was responsible for executing federal laws passed by the parliament but had no veto right. He was commander-in-chief of the federal army and navy and could declare war and make peace.
The Constitution did not provide for federal courts. Disputes between states were to be resolved by the Bundesrat. The individual states retained their statehood, constitutions, successions to the throne and electoral rights, although they lost their sovereignty to the Confederation.
The North German Constitution remained in force until the short-lived Constitution of the German Confederation, which was based largely on its predecessor, went into effect on 1 January 1871.
Historical background
After the failure of the German revolutions of 1848–49, the government of Prussia was convinced that the German people would continue to pursue their "redemption from fragmentation and powerlessness" regardless of the continued existence of the individual states and the aristocracies that still ruled in them. The Prussian government made itself an advocate of the unification movement in order to preserve the Prussian, anti-democratic state and social order.Prussia's victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, which ended on 22 July 1866 with the Treaty of Prague, dissolved the German Confederation and allowed Prussia to annex many of the smaller German states to form the North German Confederation through the Treaty of 18 August 1866. On 10 June 1866, four days before the start of the war, the Prussian government had presented the other German states with the outlines of a new federal constitution containing ten articles that formulated its key principles. An assembly of the representatives of the individual states, the Federal Council, was to be responsible for legislation along with a national assembly elected according to equal, secret and universal manhood suffrage. The national assembly was initially to act as a constituent assembly to which the governments of the North German states were to submit a draft constitution for final approval.
Preliminary drafts
Maximilian Duncker, a liberal member of the Prussian House of Representatives, produced a draft constitution at the request of Prussian minister president Otto von Bismarck in September 1866. He considered the proposal too cumbersome and centralistic, and as a result it was used as a counter-model and not as the prototype for the Constitution as it developed.After Bismarck made several revisions and corrections, Lothar Bucher, an aide to Bismarck, produced a draft with 65 articles on 8 December 1866, which he revised again on 9 December. The draft went to the Prussian cabinet for approval. For the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 13 December, a newly edited draft with 69 articles was prepared with many of Bismarck's amendments, which were removed during the course of the meeting. On 15 December 1866, the cabinet's draft was forwarded to the governments of the North German states. On 12 February 1867, the constituent Reichstag was elected; it convened for its first session on 24 February 1867. The state governments adopted Bismarck's final amendments and submitted them to the constituent Reichstag on 4 March 1867. The Reichstag then made significant changes to the founding governments' draft.
Content
Bundesrat and chancellor
Under the final form of the Constitution, the constituent states sent representatives to a Bundesrat, which participated in legislation on an equal footing with the Reichstag. Prussia was entitled to 17 out of 43 votes, which secured it a hegemonic position. No constitutional amendment could be passed against Prussia's will, since it required a two-thirds majority to change the Constitution. The allocation of votes by state was laid out in Article 6. <The individual states were required to vote collectively, and the vote could be cast only as decided by the government of the state. The Bundesrat participated in legislation on an equal footing with the Reichstag. No law could enter into force without the consent of the Bundesrat. Both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag thus had the implicit right of veto by voting against a proposal.
The Bundesrat did not have the right to issue general administrative regulations on federal laws or to determine the organisation of the administrative authorities. It was nevertheless able to exercise general control over the federal administration. Each individual state was authorised to make proposals for the exercise of federal supervision, to represent them and to have them discussed in plenary session. The orders and decrees concerning the federal administration were not issued by the Bundesrat but by the king of Prussia.
The Constitution did not explicitly say who was the holder of overall state power. Bismarck wanted to create a federal state that resembled a confederation of states. The state sovereign was to be the individual states united in the Bundesrat as a whole, not a personal sovereign.
The federal chancellor, who was appointed by the king of Prussia, presided over the Bundesrat and directed its business. All of the king's orders and decrees had to be countersigned by the chancellor so that he assumed responsibility for them.
Reichstag
The Reichstag was the democratic body of the North German Confederation, and it participated on an equal footing with the Bundesrat in the Confederation's legislation. It was not a full parliament, since it was dependent on other state bodies and had no comprehensive rights of control over the government. The Reichstag also did not have the right of self-assembly. Only the king of Prussia was authorised to convene, open, adjourn and close the Reichstag. The Bundesrat could dissolve the Reichstag by mutual agreement with the king.The Reichstag had no general authority to approve international treaties, a limitation that was imposed to allow secret diplomacy. The king alone was responsible for concluding all international treaties, but they required the approval of both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag if their content was subject to federal legislation.
The Reichstag could neither elect nor remove the government. Bismarck wanted to avoid a government because he feared that it would become accountable to the Reichstag. He also disliked the model of the collegial Prussian Council of Ministers because it did not give the leading minister clear political responsibility.
Election to the Reichstag was by universal, equal, direct and secret manhood suffrage. The North German Constitution was indirectly based on the Frankfurt Imperial Election Act of 12 April 1849 in which the principles were implemented. Bismarck considered it simple and useful to dispense with the interposition of electors and the three-tier electoral system he was familiar with. For foreign policy reasons, Bismarck adopted the universal manhood suffrage of the Frankfurt Constitution in his outlines for the new federal constitution. He hoped that Austria and Russia would not draw the attention of their populations to the suffrage withheld from them and would therefore pass over the emergence of a new power in Europe in silence.
The prosecution of members of parliament required the prior consent of the Reichstag. Members of the Reichstag could not be appointed as heads of the highest federal authorities. Per diems were banned with the intention of keeping members of the propertyless classes out of the Reichstag. Except when the subject was either foreign or military policy, the debates of the Reichstag were open to the public.. Members of the Reichstag could not be prosecuted under civil or criminal law for their statements in the Reichstag, nor could journalists who reported on them.
For a federal bill to be passed, there had to be concurring resolutions from both the Reichstag and the Bundesrat, either of which could block the other. In order to end impasses, it was permissible for the Bundesrat, in agreement with the king of Prussia and the countersigning federal chancellor, to dissolve the Reichstag.
King of Prussia
The king of Prussia was the head of state of the North German Confederation. As holder of the federal presidency, he had the governmental powers of submitting proposals to the Reichstag and of enacting and executing federal laws. He was commander-in-chief of the federal army and navy and was responsible for declaring war and concluding peace in the name of the Confederation. Because of royal rights and the restrictions on the rights of the Reichstag, the North German Confederation was established a semi-constitutional monarchy.As head of state, the king was able to conclude alliances and other foreign policy treaties. Foreign policy power was also concentrated in the hands of the king because neither the approval of the Reichstag nor the countersignature of the chancellor was required for acts of command and military organisation. The most important governmental power of the king was to appoint the federal chancellor. He also had the right to supervise the execution of federal laws by the administration of the individual states and the federal administration. He did not issue orders and individual regulations in the name of Prussia but for the North German Confederation.
The king of Prussia had no veto right in the legislature, but he could assert his hegemonic claim in the Bundesrat through the seventeen votes Prussia had there. The Prussian votes were instructed by the minister president of Prussia, who was also chancellor and chairman of the Bundesrat. Prussia had a blocking minority for constitutional amendments, in military and naval affairs and in customs and excise duties and the associated administrative regulations and administrative authorities.