Staff reduction ordinance

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Basic data
Title: Ordinance to reduce the Reich's personnel expenditure
Short title: Personnel reduction regulation
Abbreviation: PersAbbauVO (not official)
Type: Ordinance
Scope: German Empire
Issued on the basis of: § 1 ErmG of October 13, 1923
( RGBl. I p. 943)
Legal matter: Civil service law ,
public employment law
Issued on: October 27, 1923
( RGBl. I p. 999)
Entry into force on: predominantly October 31, 1923
Last change by: § 21 letter c) G of June 30, 1933
(RGBl. I p. 433, 437)
Effective date of the
last change: 		October 31, 1933
(Art. 3 sentence 2 G of March 24, 1933 )
Expiry: December 31, 1968
(Section 3 G of December 28, 1968,
Federal Law Gazette I p. 1451)
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The Ordinance to Reduce Personnel Expenditures of the Reich , short Personnel Downsizing Ordinance , of October 27, 1923 (RGBl. I p. 999) is a law that was decreed in the Weimar Republic and was only valid for a short period of time, which temporarily led to massive downsizing in the public service announced. 25% of all civil servants should be dismissed, including civil servants married women. All "expendable employees and workers" met this fate.

Starting position

The changes to the tax system in the wake of the Erzberger reform led to strong centralism as early as the Weimar Republic . This has been accompanied by a huge increase in administrative costs and an increase in the number of civil servants, workers and civil servants. In addition, the Reich had opened up tax sources at the expense of the states and municipalities, which in return forced the Reich to pay subsidies to the states to pay their state officials. From 1920 to 1922 the number of Reich civil servants rose from 83,000 to 127,000. The number of state officials or their rate of increase are not known.

Apart from the rising administrative costs, which could only be countered by means of tax increases or job cuts, the Stresemann I cabinet came under existential pressure in September and October 1923. The Bavarian crisis and the German October in particular have gone down in history in this context. It was evident that the events had only occurred with the support of various government and administrative agencies. The Reich government reacted to the attacks by declaring a state of emergency for the entire German Reich .

Just like the Hitler government ten years later , the Stresemann cabinet received from the incumbent Reich President the authorization to take solely determining measures which it considered necessary in the financial, economic and social fields. That is, the government could pass laws and ordinances without the consent of parliament . Neither a Reichstag committee nor the Reichsrat could exercise control or subsequently demand the repeal of the provisions passed. These enabling laws, enacted at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, all contradicted the constitution and represented a breach of the constitution.

On this basis the Stresemann government decreed on October 27, 1923 a. a. the ordinance to reduce the personnel expenditure of the Reich .

Content and provisions

Personnel reduction ordinance of October 27, 1923

The downsizing ordinance hit public sector employees particularly hard . Article 15 corresponded to a so-called mandatory provision , according to which all employees were to be dismissed by November 30, 1923. Those affected by this article received a severance payment according to the number of years of their service, but female employees only if, at the discretion of the competent authority, their economic support did not appear secure.

But the ordinance also affected civil servants for the first time . The law authorized the respective Reich government:

  • Transfer civil servants to other services with a downgrading of their income,
  • To put civil servants into temporary retirement
  • To put civil servants into permanent retirement,
  • To reduce salaries and pensions under certain conditions,
  • dismiss civil servants employed on an unscheduled or temporary basis,
  • dismiss female civil servants at any time at the end of the month if they were married or had an illegitimate child.

Article 7 provided for a hiring ban. According to Article 8, a total of 25% of official posts should be cut. The ordinance obliged the states and municipalities to issue identical regulations for their civil servants, workers and employees. Affected officials who had served more than ten years were entitled to a pension . Who was more busy than two years, ever received year of service as severance pay a full month's salary. Thus, for civil servants with less than two years of service, retirement was tantamount to dismissal.

The selection of officials was based on a large number of indefinite legal terms. It was explicitly stated in Article 3 that the selection must not be influenced by political, denominational or trade union membership. Conversely and plainly, this meant that any civil servant could be arbitrarily removed from his office, which was then practiced after each change of government even without giving reasons. Because in the selection of those affected, according to Article 2 of the Staff Reduction Ordinance, only “the value of their performance was decisive for the administration”, which only the superior could determine.

In principle, judges were excluded from the regulation . For the first time, leaving the civil service was set at the age of 65. The age limit for judges was 68.

Effects

In the Weimar Constitution, all civil servants were guaranteed the "freedom of their political views" and their "well-earned rights". The Staff Reduction Ordinance unconstitutionally and considerably restricted these rights. The legal validity of the regulation was highly controversial well beyond the end of the Weimar Republic, but the courts repeatedly affirmed it for a long time. The law also massively intervened in the competencies of the federal states. As a result, countries in turn responded to the regulation by ignoring, relaxing or tightening it.

Ad hoc , married women were easy victims who should be pushed out of working life everywhere. The Reich Labor Minister said of the dismissal of married female civil servants:

"The men's wages are sufficient, women's work robs a family man of bread and hope in life - and women who have an illegitimate child already receive maintenance payments from their father or the state."

The proportion of women affected was admittedly low. First, this so-called celibacy clause was not new. It already applied to female civil servants before 1919, was repealed by the Weimar Constitution and reintroduced in an unconstitutional manner by the downsizing ordinance. Second, for example, of the civil servant teachers in Prussia , at that time the largest area in the Weimar Republic, only 2.6% were female. Outside of academic teaching, women played an even less important role in the public service at this time. Noteworthy: the provisions of the downsizing ordinance for female civil servants remained in force for decades. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Labor Court only ruled on May 10, 1957 that the celibacy clause violated the constitution and was therefore void .

35,000 officials were directly affected by the downsizing measures. By the end of 1923, the number of Reich officials fell from 127,000 to 92,000. Since the means of retirement were mainly used, the number of civil servants employed fell, but not the personnel costs required for this. The ordinance was followed by 15 supplementary and amending laws until June 30, 1933. At the instigation of the SPD , a pension reduction was included in the staff reduction regulation, which was to be applied if the pension recipient received a further taxable income of more than 235 marks per month in addition to his pension payments . This cut was lifted in 1925; Pension cuts remained a threat to civil servants in the political discussion until the end of the Weimar Republic.

Even if this was not officially admitted, the downsizing ordinance offered special opportunities for political disciplining of civil servants. Specifically, the measures not only led to an unprecedented threat to the social security of civil servants, but also to an extensive de facto restriction of their political freedom. Although the provisions expressly stated that the selection of those concerned should not be influenced by political affiliation, it was practically impossible to prevent political abuse of this regulation. The civil servants' associations soon got the impression that numerous superiors were using the ordinance to remove politically undesirable civil servants from their posts. The political abuse became unmistakable when leading politicians of the left-wing parties, who were also senior municipal officials, were removed from their offices by city councilors of the bourgeois parties due to the downsizing ordinance.

The suspension of employment had already been relaxed by the next government, lifted for 1925, and the suspension of the suspension was extended by law by almost every subsequent government. This de facto removed the reason for the law. However, all other articles remained in force, suggesting that from the outset the regulation was not about savings, but about the selection of officials. From then on, with every change of government in the Reich ministries, state ministries and all subordinate administrations, dismissals and / or new appointments, in particular so-called party book officials , were connected. By the end of 1925, the total number of Reich officials had more than doubled to 237,844, but fluctuated considerably until the end of the Weimar Republic. At times the number of civil servants fell to 89,000. With this law, the civil service had lost all legal certainty. Because only the downsizing ordinance created the prerequisites for this pronounced hire and fire .

By 1928 at the latest, the situation became completely chaotic. While in some countries it was mostly conservative or right-wing extremist officials who had to leave, in other countries more left-wing officials were hit. The application of the downsizing ordinance for political purposes was particularly extreme in Prussia. At first it mainly affected Communists and National Socialists , after the Prussian strike of the Papen government , from July 20, 1932, many Social Democrats fared no different: some of the SPD officials concerned were dismissed or transferred and thus disciplined, while others left the party in the hope of being able to stay in office that way.

The mere possibility of dismissal provided a strong intimidation for the already insecure civil service throughout Weimar and thus had a disciplinary effect. A mockery that was often used behind closed doors by officials at the time summed up their situation:

" I swear allegiance to the constitution, while I'm afraid of dismissal; and if you make a new one, I swear allegiance again. "

Not all officials were monarchists or wanted the pre-revolutionary situation back, but what they all had in common was the fear of dismissal and the loss of status and privileges. For example, in parallel with the downsizing ordinance in October 1923, the previous quarterly advance salary payment for civil servants was initially "suspended" by the Reich Ministry of Finance , but in fact finally abolished. The civil servants found the switch to monthly payment as a particularly serious interference with their rights, which they had acquired over several epochs, and as a further sign of advancing proletarianization , especially since the previous form of remuneration was highly valued as an expression of the alimentary character of the salary. With the discontinuation of the quarterly payment, the permanent wage earners lost one of the most obvious distinguishing features of workers and employees.

Accordingly, the attitude of most civil servants to the parliamentary-democratic system was more than reserved. From today's perspective it is not surprising that the majority of the civil servants were anti-republican. Hans Mommsen stated: "Rather, the propaganda of the National Socialists for the restoration of the professional civil service met the wishes of the civil servants, because they hoped that state action would be freed from the confusing influences of political parties and interest groups and a return to factual decisions."

The later law to restore the professional civil service of the National Socialists was largely based on the staff reduction ordinance; some formulations have been taken literally. With various and significant changes, the Personnel Reduction Ordinance remained in force until December 31, 1968.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Files of the Reich Chancellery: Cabinet meeting of December 10, 1923 .
  2. ↑ Johannes Frerich, Martin Frey: From the pre-industrial times to the end of the Third Reich. Walter de Gruyter, 1996, p. 225 f.
  3. ↑ Harald Engler: The financing of the imperial capital: Investigations into the capital-related state expenditures of Prussia and the German Empire in Berlin from the Empire to the Third Reich (1871-1945). Walter de Gruyter, 2004, p. 167.
  4. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume VI: The Weimar Imperial Constitution. Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1981, p. 437 f.
  5. ↑ cf. VO
  6. ↑ cf. for all information listed in this paragraph: http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=dra&date=19230004&seite=00000999 and http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/ 0021 / ma1 / ma11p / kap1_2 / kap2_15 / para3_3.html
  7. ↑ § 60a of the Reichsbeamtengesetz as amended. of Art. I No. IV of the Staff Reduction Ordinance of October 27, 1923, RGBl. I, p. 999, 1000
  8. ↑ Johannes Frerich, Martin Frey: From the pre-industrial times to the end of the Third Reich. Walter de Gruyter, 1996, p. 225 f.
  9. ^ Gisela Helwig: Weimar Republic. In: Path to equality, information on political education (issue 254). Federal Agency for Civic Education, 1997.
  10. ↑ Rainer Fattmann: educated citizens on the defensive: the academic bureaucracy and the "Reich Federation of senior officials" in the Weimar Republic. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, p. 90.
  11. ↑ Harald Engler: The financing of the imperial capital: Investigations into the capital-related state expenditures of Prussia and the German Empire in Berlin from the Empire to the Third Reich (1871-1945). Walter de Gruyter, 2004, p. 167.
  12. ↑ ibid.
  13. ↑ Eugen Prager: The long way: Letters that did not reach you. In: Vorwärts, No. 48, July 4, 1931, p. 307.
  14. ^ Hermannjosef Schmahl: Disciplinary law and political activity of civil servants in the Weimar Republic. Duncker & Humblot, 1977, pp. 74-75.
  15. ↑ Harald Engler: The financing of the imperial capital: Investigations into the capital-related state expenditures of Prussia and the German Empire in Berlin from the Empire to the Third Reich (1871-1945). Walter de Gruyter, 2004, p. 167.
  16. ^ Klaus Sühl: SPD and public service in the Weimar Republic: The public servants in the SPD and their importance for social democratic politics 1918-1933. Springer-Verlag, 2013, p. 122.
  17. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Up and down - over 40 desks. 19/1973
  18. ↑ Rainer Fattmann: educated citizens on the defensive: the academic bureaucracy and the "Reich Federation of senior officials" in the Weimar Republic. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, p. 115.
  19. ↑ Hans Mommsen: Officials in the Third Reich. Walter de Gruyter, 1966, p. 14.
  20. ↑ cf. Mommsen p. 39 and both laws

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