Free State of Prussia


The Free State of Prussia was one of the constituent states of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1947. It was the successor to the Kingdom of Prussia after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I and the overthrow of the German monarchies in the revolution of 1918–1919. Even though most of Germany's post-war territorial losses in Europe had come from its territory, Prussia continued to be the dominant state in Germany during the Weimar Republic as it had been during the Empire. It was home to the federal capital Berlin and had roughly three-fifths of Germany's territory and population. Prussia changed from the authoritarian state it had been and became a parliamentary democracy under its 1920 constitution. During the Weimar period it was governed almost entirely by pro-democratic parties and was more politically stable than the Republic itself. With only brief interruptions, the Social Democratic Party provided the minister president. Its ministers of the Interior, also from the SPD, pushed republican reform of the administration and police, with the result that Prussia was considered a bulwark of democracy within the Weimar Republic.
As a result of the Prussian coup d'état instigated by German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932, the Free State was subordinated to the national government and deprived of its independence. After the Nazi Party seized power in 1933, a Prussian government under Hermann Göring continued to function formally until 1945. After the end of the Second World War, Prussia was legally abolished on 25 February 1947 by decree of the Allied Control Council.

Establishment (1918–1920)

Revolution of 1918–1919

At the end of October 1918, after it had become clear that Germany faced defeat in World War I, sailors of the High Seas Fleet mutinied at Kiel and sparked the German revolution. They set up a revolutionary workers' and soldiers' council and in early November began spreading the revolt across Germany. Councils similar to the one in Kiel took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed.
The revolution reached Berlin on Saturday, 9 November. The Revolutionary Stewards and Spartacus League – groups that favoured a soviet-style council republic – called a general strike with the backing of the moderate Majority Social Democratic Party. Workers and soldiers established councils and occupied important buildings such as the police headquarters. At midday, Max von Baden, the last chancellor of the German Empire and last minister president of the Kingdom of Prussia, prematurely announced the abdication of Wilhelm II as Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia. He then handed the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the MSPD. In the afternoon, Philipp Scheidemann, also of the MSPD, proclaimed a republic from the Reichstag building. On the following day, Ebert formed a provisional government called the Council of the People's Deputies. It was made up of three representatives each from the MSPD and the Independent Social Democratic Party, a more leftist and anti-war group that had broken away from the originally united SPD in 1917.
Ebert charged Paul Hirsch, the MSPD's party leader in the Prussian House of Representatives, with maintaining peace and order in Prussia. The last minister of the interior of the Kingdom of Prussia, Bill Drews, legitimized the transfer of de facto governmental power to Hirsch.
On 12 November 1918, representatives from the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Greater Berlin, including Paul Hirsch, Otto Braun and Adolph Hoffmann declared the previous government of Prussia deposed and claimed the management of state affairs for themselves. On the same day, they issued instructions that all departments of the state continue their work as usual. A manifesto, "To the Prussian People", stated that their goal was to transform "the old, fundamentally reactionary Prussia... into a fully democratic component of the unified People's Republic."

Revolutionary cabinet

The majority of the Prussian State Ministry wanted to resign on 8 November, but after Emperor Wilhelm's abdication was declared the next day, he could no longer accept their resignations. The Prussian cabinet therefore remained in office, as did the state secretaries in the national government.File:Paul Hirsch um 1920.jpg|left|thumb|224x224px|Paul Hirsch, Prussian leader of the Majority SPD
On 13 November the new government confiscated the royal property and placed it under the Ministry of Finance. The following day, the MSPD and USPD formed the Prussian revolutionary cabinet along the lines of the MSPD-USPD coalition at the national level. It included Paul Hirsch, Eugen Ernst and Otto Braun of the MSPD and Heinrich Ströbel, Adolph Hoffmann and Kurt Rosenfeld of the USPD. Almost all government departments were under ministers from both parties. Hirsch and Ströbel became joint chairmen of the cabinet. Unaffiliated ministers or ministers belonging to different political camps were also included, such as the minister of War, initially Heinrich Schëuch, then from January 1919 Walther Reinhardt. The narrower, decisive political cabinet, however, included only politicians from the two workers' parties. Since the leadership qualities of the two chairmen were comparatively weak, it was mainly Otto Braun and Adolph Hoffmann who set the tone in the provisional government.

Political change and its limits

On 15 November the Prussian House of Lords was abolished and the House of Representatives dissolved. The replacement of political elites, however, remained limited during the early years. In many cases the former royal district administrators continued to hold office as if there had been no revolution. Complaints against them by the workers' councils were either dismissed or ignored by Interior Minister Wolfgang Heine. When conservative district administrators themselves requested to be dismissed, they were asked to stay on in order to maintain peace and order.
On 23 December the government issued an administrative order for the election of a constitutional assembly. Universal, free and secret suffrage for both women and men replaced the old Prussian three-class franchise. At the municipal level, however, it took eight months before the existing governmental bodies were replaced by democratically legitimized ones. Deliberations concerning a fundamental reform of property relations in the countryside, in particular the breaking up of large landholdings, did not bear fruit. The manor districts that were the political power base of the large landowners remained in place.
Minister of Culture Adolph Hoffmann abolished religious instruction as a first step in a push towards the separation of church and state. The move triggered considerable unrest in Catholic areas of Prussia and revived memories of Bismarck's 1870s Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church. At the end of December 1919, MSPD Minister Konrad Haenisch rescinded Hoffmann's decree. In a letter to Felix von Hartmann, the cardinal of Cologne, Minister President Hirsch assured him that Hoffmann's provisions for ending clerical supervision of schools had been illegal because they had not been voted on in the cabinet. More strongly than any other government measures, Hoffmann's socialist cultural policies turned large segments of the population against the revolution.
In late December 1918, bloody fighting broke out on the streets of Berlin between units of the German army called in by Friedrich Ebert and members of the People's Navy Division, who were resisting a reduction in the unit's size and demanding back pay. The USPD, in protest against the MSPD's use of military force, withdrew from the government in both Prussia and at the national level. When Hirsch dismissed Emil Eichhorn as Berlin's police chief because he had ostensibly supported the People's Navy Division, it triggered the failed Spartacist uprising of 5–12 January 1919, an attempt to turn the direction of the revolution towards the founding a council republic. An estimated 150 to 200 lives were lost in the uprising.

Separatist tendencies and the threat of dissolution

Prussia's continued existence as a state was by no means assured in the aftermath of the revolution. In the Rhine Province, the advisory council of the Catholic Centre Party, fearing a dictatorship of the proletariat, on 4 December 1918 called for the formation of a Rhineland-Westphalian republic independent of Prussia. In the Province of Hanover, 600,000 people signed an appeal for territorial autonomy. In Silesia too there were efforts to form an independent state. In the eastern provinces, a revolt broke out at Christmas 1918 with the aim of restoring a Polish state. The movement soon encompassed the entire Province of Posen and eventually took on the character of a guerrilla war.
Even for many supporters of the Republic, Prussian dominance seemed a dangerous burden. Hugo Preuss, author of the draft version of the Weimar Constitution, originally envisaged breaking Prussia into smaller states. Given Prussian dominance in the former empire, there was sympathy for the idea. Otto Landsberg of the Council of the People's Deputies commented, "Prussia occupied its position with the sword, and that sword is broken. If Germany is to live, Prussia in its present form must die."
The new socialist government of Prussia was opposed any changes in the state's composition. On 23 January 1919, participants at an emergency meeting of the central council and the provisional government spoke out against dissolution. With the Centre Party abstaining, the State Assembly adopted a resolution against a possible breakup. Friedrich Ebert was one of the few members of the Council of the People's Deputies who supported the idea. Most, however, saw it as the first step toward the secession of the Rhineland from Germany.
The mood in Prussia was more uncertain. In December 1919, the State Assembly passed a resolution by 210 votes to 32 that stated: "As the largest of the German states, Prussia views its first duty to be an attempt to see whether the creation of a unified German nation can now be achieved."