Hugo Preuss

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Hugo Preuss

Hugo Preuss (born October 28, 1860 in Berlin ; † October 9, 1925 there ) was a German constitutional law teacher and politician . He was a co-founder of the German Democratic Party (DDP) and drafted the Weimar Constitution on behalf of Friedrich Ebert .

Life

Preuss was born into a Jewish merchant family in 1860. From 1879 he studied law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In 1883 he passed his first state examination at the Berlin Court of Justice . In the same year his doctorate him from the Law Faculty of the Georg-August-University of Goettingen with an unpublished thesis on Eviktionsregreß of in possessorio inferior buyer in Roman law to Dr. iur. The clerkship he broke off to become scientists. 1889 habilitated himself as constitutional law at the University of Berlin and worked as he could without being baptized there not be a professor, as a lecturer for Public Law . In 1891 he joined the Society of Friends (a Berlin Jewish association). It was not until 1906 that he received his first professorship at the newly founded Handelshochschule Berlin ; In 1918 he became its rector .

As a student of Otto von Gierke , Preuss was like him a supporter of organic state theory and the theory of cooperatives . With regard to the idea of self-government , his model was the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein .

politics

First cabinet meeting of the Scheidemann cabinet on February 13, 1919 in Weimar.

In 1895 Preuss became a member of the Berlin City Council for the Liberal Association . From 1910 to 1918 he was an honorary councilor of the Berlin magistrate for the Progressive People's Party , within which he belonged to the left wing. In 1918 he was a co-founder of the left-wing liberal DDP . From 1919 to 1925 he was a member of the Prussian state assembly and the Prussian state parliament .

After the November Revolution, Prussia, considered to be left-wing liberal , was appointed State Secretary in the Reich Office of the Interior on November 15, 1918 , and was commissioned to draft a constitution for the Reich. In addition to Preuss , the Council of People's Representatives had also considered Max Weber for this office and this task , which later - obviously because of Weber's negative attitude towards the revolution - was omitted. Preuss was influenced by Robert Redslob's theory of parliamentarism . In the draft constitution presented by him on February 3, 1919, however, Preuss had "wanted to refrain from a part of the constitution comprising fundamental rights" around the turn of the year 1918/1919. At Friedrich Ebert's special request, he then added a short section of fundamental rights to the draft. In the Weimar National Assembly, Friedrich Naumann took up Ebert's suggestion and wrote a “sweeping” section of basic rights himself. In the meantime, the Law and Business Association had deliberately drawn up a comprehensive section of basic rights based on the Paulskirche constitution , some of which found its way into the Weimar constitution.

Criticism came mainly from the conservative side, for whom the draft was too similar to the Paulskirche constitution; On this side of the political spectrum, one would have preferred a reference to the Prussian constitution of 1848/50 . The critics feared, besides the natural law orientation towards fundamental rights that are above positive law, in particular a centralization as a result of a renewal of the federalist structure previously dominated by Prussia and the abolition of reservation rights . Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution made it possible for Hitler to suspend fundamental and human rights in 1933 . The Scheidemann government was deeply divided on whether to accept the Versailles Treaty (signed June 28, 1919) and dissolved on June 20, 1919. Interior Minister Hugo Preuss, who was one of the critics of the Versailles Treaty, resigned. His departure from the government "led to the absurd situation that Preuss' signature is not to be found under the constitution, which was largely based on his ideas, because it was only passed after his resignation" - on July 31, 1919 .

In the Scheidemann cabinet , Preuss was the first Reich Interior Minister of the Weimar Republic from February to June 1919 . He coined the term authoritarian state in 1916 . Preuss died shortly before his 65th birthday.

Preuss was a member of the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold . The Nazi propaganda used his Judaism as an opportunity to discredit the Weimar Republic and its constitution as “un-German”.

Honors

tomb

Works

Reorganization of the Reich territory into 14 Free States, suggestion by Hugo Preuss (1919) (see prehistory of the reorganization of the federal territory )
  • Collected Writings . On behalf of the Hugo-Preuß-Gesellschaft eV 5 vol., Ed. by Detlef Lehnert u. a., Tübingen 2007–2015, Vol. 1: Politics and Society in the Empire , 2007; Vol. 2: Public Law and Legal Philosophy in the Empire , 2009; Vol. 3: Draft Constitution, Constitutional Commentaries, Constitutional Theory , 2015; Vol. 4: Politics and Constitution in the Weimar Republic , 2008; Vol. 5: Local Science and Local Policy , 2012.
  • Franz Lieber, a citizen of two worlds . Habel, Berlin 1886 ( digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf ).
  • Parish, State, Empire , 1889.
  • Municipal law in Prussia , 1902.
  • The development of the German urban system . Vol. 1: Development history of the German city constitution , 1906.
  • City and State , 1909.
  • On the Prussian administrative reform , 1910.
  • The German people and politics , 1915.
  • Germany's republican constitution , 1921.
  • From a state of authority to a people's state , 1921.
  • About the Weimar Constitution , 1924.
  • State, law and freedom. From forty years of German politics and history , Tübingen 1926 (collected essays by Hugo Preuss, edited by Theodor Heuss ).
  • Constitutional developments in Germany and Western Europe , ed. by Hedwig Hintze , Berlin 1927.
  • Empire and countries. Fragments of a Commentary on the Constitution of the German Empire , ed. by Gerhard Anschütz , Berlin 1928.

literature

  • Michael Dreyer : Hugo Preuss (1860-1925). Biography of a Democrat . Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2018 (= Weimar Writings on the Republic , Vol. 4), ISBN 978-3-515-12168-2 .
  • Manfred Friedrich:  Preuss, Hugo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 708-710 ( digitized version ).
  • Günther Gillessen : Hugo Preuss. Studies on the history of ideas and the constitution of the Weimar Republic. First publication of the dissertation from 1955. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000 (= writings on the history of the constitution , vol. 60).
  • Siegfried Grassmann: Hugo Preuss and the German self-government . Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1965.
  • Hedwig Hintze : Hugo Preuss. A historical-political characteristic. In: Die Justiz 2 (1927), pp. 223-237.
  • Elmar Matthias Hucko: In memory of Hugo Preuss. In: NJW 1985, pp. 2309-2311.
  • Alfons Hueber : Hugo Preuss . In: Adalbert Erler , Ekkehard Kaufmann (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary for German legal history . Volume 3: List – Protonotar . Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1984, ISBN 3-503-00015-1 , Sp. 1924 ff.
  • Jürgen Kocka , Günter Stock (eds.): Hugo Preuß: Vordenker der Pluralismustheorie . Lectures and discussions on the 150th birthday of the "Father of the Weimar Imperial Constitution". Berlin: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, 2011, ISBN 978-3-939818-19-9 .
  • Detlef Lehnert (Ed.): Hugo Preuß 1860–1925. Genealogy of a modern Prussia . Cologne: Böhlau, 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20827-1 .
  • Detlef Lehnert: Constitutional democracy as a citizens' cooperative. Political thinking, public law and interpretations of history with Hugo Preuss. Contributions to democratic institutional teaching in Germany . Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998.
  • Jasper Mauersberg: Hugo Preuss' ideas and conception for the constitution of the German Republic in 1919 and its implementation in the constitution of Weimar . Frankfurt a. M. u. a .: Lang, 1991.

Web links

Wikisource: Hugo Preuß  - sources and full texts
Commons : Hugo Preuß  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ See Elmar Matthias Hucko: In memory of Hugo Preuss. In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1985, p. 2309 ff.
  2. ↑ Christian Hanke : 3.2. The democratic model: Hugo Preuss. In: Self-Administration and Socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. (= Publications of the Hamburg Working Group for Regional History . Volume 23). Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9547-5 , pp. 122–129.
  3. ^ Walter Jellinek : In particular: Development and expansion of the Weimar Imperial Constitution. In: Gerhard Anschütz / Richard Thoma (eds.): Handbuch des Deutschen Staatsrechts , Bd. I, Tübingen 1930, S. 128. Cf. Ewald Grothe : Der organic Föderalismus bei Hugo Preuß . In: Yearbook for Liberalism Research , Vol. 25 (2013), pp. 343–352.
  4. ↑ from left to right: Ulrich Rauscher , Head of Press of the Reich Government, Robert Schmidt , Nutrition, Eugen Schiffer , Finance, Philipp Scheidemann , Reich Chancellor, Otto Landsberg , Justice, Rudolf Wissell , Economics, Gustav Bauer , Labor, Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau , Foreign Affairs , Eduard David without portfolio, Hugo Preuss (standing), Interior, Johannes Giesberts , Post, Johannes Bell , Colonies, Georg Gothein , Schatz, Gustav Noske , Reichswehr.
  5. ↑ So z. B. Wilhelm von Sternburg in Deutsche Republiken , Munich: Bertelsmann 1999, p. 74.
  6. ↑ Dirk Kaesler : Max Weber. An introduction to life, work and impact , 3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 36.
  7. ↑ Ibid., P. 38 with reference to Wolfgang J. Mommsen : Max Weber and German Politics 1890–1920. 2nd Edition. Tübingen 1974, p. 324.
  8. ^ Scientific writings of the Institute for the Promotion of Public Affairs in Frankfurt a. M., Volume 7, The Police Intervention in Freedoms and Rights , arr. v. Horst Blomeyer-Bartenstein , Heribald Närger , Günter Olzog , Ingeborg Ruprecht under the direction of Erich Kaufmann . Wolfgang Metzner Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1951, p. V.
  9. ↑ Scientific writings ..., ibid.
  10. ↑ The Law and Business Association was founded in 1911 by Adelbert Düringer with other like-minded people: “The primary purpose of the association was to bring together different opinions on the further development of law and to adapt legal development and application of the law to the needs of advancing industrialization and modernization. In addition to constitutional law teachers such as Heinrich Triepel , Erich Kaufmann and Hugo Preuss, the members of the association also included the industrialists Carl Duisberg and Wilhelm von Siemens as well as the later ministers of the Weimar period Gustav Radbruch , Hans Luther , Eugen Schiffer and Rudolf Heinze . Düringer directed the fate of the association as first chairman until its dissolution in 1923. ”(quoted from the short biography of Düringer on the website of the regional information system of the state of Baden-Württemberg, LEO-BW).
  11. ↑ Preuss had proposed "to redistribute Germany internally. This would have resulted in the dissolution of the historically grown countries, including the largest: Prussia. However, this proposal could be on the conservative representatives in the National Assembly not prevail, but was ahead of its time because it was implemented in 1945 in the founding of the German states. "Source: The Weimar Constitution and her" father, "Hugo Preuss , on the website of the National Library of Israel - http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/personalsites/Israel-Germany/Israel-Deutschland/Weimarer-Republik/Pages/Weimarer-Verfassung.aspx - accessed on December 9, 2018.
  12. ↑ The Weimar Constitution and its "father", Hugo Preuss , on the website of the National Library of Israel - http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/personalsites/Israel-Germany/Israel- Germany / Weimarer-Republik / Pages / Weimarer-Verfassungs.aspx - accessed on December 9, 2018.
  13. ↑ Article Hugo Preuss. In: Walter Tetzlaff: 2000 short biographies of important German Jews of the 20th century. Askania, Lindhorst 1982, ISBN 3-921730-10-4 , p. 268.
  14. ↑ hu-berlin.de/hugo-preuss-gesellschaft ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.hu-berlin.de
  15. ^ Lars Herrmann: Streets White Deer. Retrieved December 18, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Honorary Graves PDF, Senate Department for Urban Development, accessed on April 6, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Preuss, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal scholar, father of the Weimar Constitution
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1925
Place of death Berlin