Zone Advisory Board

Meeting of the Zone Advisory Council on June 11, 1947 in Hamburg. In the front right, the Deputy Military Governor Sir Brian Robertson .

The Zonal Advisory Council (Engl. Zonal Advisory Council, ZAC ) was an order of the British military government formed an advisory German corporation in the field of British occupation zone . It was founded on February 15, 1946 and formally existed until the Bundestag and Bundesrat were constituted in the autumn of 1949. Although it had no legislative or executive powers of its own, the Zone Advisory Council drew up numerous recommendations on various policy areas and served alongside the State Council of the American Occupation Area and 1947 The Economic Council of the United Economic Area formed an important milestone in the reconstruction of parliamentary structures in Germany after the Second World War.

overview

The establishment of the Zone Advisory Council was carried out by Order No. 12 of the British Control Commission of February 15, 1946. It stated:

“A council consisting of German political, administrative and specialist representatives will be formed - hereinafter referred to as the zone advisory council - to support the control commission in its tasks. The Zone Advisory Board will be an advisory body with no executive powers. The council will meet at least once a month, and more frequently if circumstances require, and will have its seat in Hamburg. "

The zone advisory board met for the first time on March 6, 1946 in Hamburg and initially consisted of representatives of the appointed state and provincial governments, parties, trade unions and cooperatives, as well as the heads of the zone offices established by the military government for various subject areas. After the reorganization of the federal states and the first state elections, the zone advisory board was reorganized in June 1947 and consisted from that point on of 37 party representatives who were elected by the state parliaments in accordance with the respective election results in Hamburg, Lower Saxony , North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein .

Up until the establishment of the Parliamentary Council in the summer of 1948, the Zone Advisory Council met for a total of 22 plenary sessions; in addition, it set up various committees, e.g. B. for law and constitution, economy, nutrition, social policy, transport, welfare (later divided into prisoner of war and refugee committee), cultural policy as well as building and housing. Initially, the chairmanship of the Advisory Board changed every quarter, later the term of office was extended to six months. The chairmen were among others the SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher and the later Federal Ministers Robert Lehr (CDU) and Franz Blücher (FDP). The work of the council was supported by a permanent secretariat headed by Secretary General Gerhard Weisser .

The advisory board and its committees developed numerous statements, reports and recommendations, among other things, on the reorganization of the federal states, on currency and land reform , on the reconstruction of the destroyed cities and on the integration of displaced persons and war returnees . In particular, the legal and constitutional preparatory work of the zone advisory council later entered the deliberations of the parliamentary council on the future constitution of the Federal Republic.

Members of the first zone advisory council (1946/47)

Political party representatives

SPD:

• Kurt Schumacher (deputy: Karl Meitmann )
• Fritz Henßler ( Robert Görlinger )

CDU:

• Konrad Adenauer ( Wilhelm Naegel )
• Paul Otto ( Friedrich Holzapfel )

KPD:

• Max Reimann ( Heinz Schramm )
• Erich Hoffmann ( Kurt Müller )

FDP:

• Franz Blücher ( Gustav Altenhain )
• Wilhelm Heile

NLP / DP :

• Heinrich Hellwege ( Wolfgang Bode )

Representatives of the administrations

• Rudolf Amelunxen ( Upper President of the Province of Westphalia )
• Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf (Upper President of the Province of Hanover )
• Robert Lehr (Upper President North Rhine- Province)
• Theodor Steltzer (Upper President of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein )
• Rudolf Petersen (Mayor of Hamburg)

as well as alternating representatives of the "small countries": Theodor Tantzen / Oldenburg, Hubert Schlebusch / Braunschweig, Wilhelm Kaisen / Bremen and Heinrich Drake / Lippe-Detmold.

Representatives of the subject areas ("zone offices")

• Viktor Agartz (trade and industry)
• Ernst Andrée (refugees)
• Rudolf Degkwitz (senior) (healthcare)
• Adolf Grimme (education)
• Hubert Groth (Public Safety)
• Heinrich Lingemann (Legal Affairs)
• Hans Schlange-Schöningen (Food and Agriculture)
• Karl Schneider (post, telegraphy, telephone)
• Felix Schwering (Transport)
• Franz Spliedt (work assignment)

Trade union representatives

• Hans Böckler
• Albin Karl

Representatives of consumer cooperatives

• Henry Everling
• Peter Schlack

Members of the second zone advisory council (1947/48)

SPD

1. Fritz Henßler (Deputy: Werner Jacobi )
2. Karl Albrecht ( Willi Steinhörster )
3. Hans Böhm ( Walter Schmidt )
4. Richard Borowski ( Heinrich Löffler )
5. Ernst Gnoss ( Alfred Dobbert )
6. Robert Görlinger ( Willi Eichler )
7. Heinrich Höcker ( Emil Groß )
8. Albin Karl ( Robert Kugelberg )
9. Lisa Korspeter ( Elinor Hubert )
10. Anni Krahnstöver ( Elly Linden )
11. Herbert Kriedemann ( Franz Hewusch )
12. Karl Meitmann ( Erich Klabunde )
13. Walter Menzel ( Hubert Biernat )
14. Friederike Nadig ( Luise Albertz )

CDU

1. Konrad Adenauer (Deputy: Artur Sträter )
2. Willi Heitkamp ( Viktoria Steinbiß )
3. Friedrich Holzapfel ( Bruno Six )
4. Robert Lehr ( Linus Kather )
5. Franz Luster-Haggeney ( Karl Müller )
6. Paul Otto ( Wilhelm Naegel )
7. Paul Pagel ( Willi Koch )
8. Rudolf Petersen ( Gerd Bucerius )
9. Carl Schröter ( Friedrich Wilhelm Lübke )
10. Hermann Siemer ( Günther Gereke )
11. Heinrich Strunk ( Karl Höcker )
12. Helene Weber ( Hermann Ehren )

KPD

1. Max Reimann (Deputy: Gustav Gundelach )
2. Ewald Kaiser ( Rosel White )
3. Kurt Müller ( Erich Jungmann )
4. Hugo Paul ( Willi Bürger )

FDP

1. Franz Blücher (Deputy: Gustav Altenhain )
2. Hugo Knoop ( Johannes Siemann )
3. Hermann Schäfer ( Ernst Wienecke )

center

1. Ferdinand Haake ( Bruno Heimannsberg )
2. Helene Wessel ( Helmut Bertram )

DP

1. Heinrich Hellwege ( Wilhelm Heile )
2. Margot Kalinke ( Horst Leßmann )

literature

• Annelies Dorendorf: The Zone Advisory Board of the British Occupied Zone. A look back at his work . By resolution of the zone council ed. and introduced by Gerhard Weisser , Göttingen 1953.
• Gabriele Stüber: Zone Advisory Board. Protocols and Annexes 1946–1948 , 2 volumes. (Sources on the history of parliamentarism and political parties, series 4, volume 9), Düsseldorf 1993ff. ISBN 3-7700-5173-4 .
• Ralph Uhlig: Confidential reports of the British Liaison Staff to the Zone Advisory Board of the British Zone of Occupation in Hamburg (1946 - 1948). Democratization from a British perspective , Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-631-45784-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ HQ 06208 / Sec. P. Zon / Pi (46) 12, cited in Dorendorf p. 24.
2. ↑ Ordinance No. 80 of the British Military Government of June 10, 1947, cf. Dorendorf p. 38.
3. ↑ Dorendorf pp. 28, 39.
4. ↑ Dorendorf p. 39.
5. ↑ Also published as The Zone Advisory Board on Constitutional Policy , Hamburg 1948.
6. ↑ Dorendorf p. 141.
7. ↑ Bremen belonged to the British zone in 1945/46 and was only added to the American zone in 1947.