Freienwalder arbitration award
The Freienwalder arbitration award of September 11, 1850 repealed the constitution of Mecklenburg-Schwerin . This reinstated the former constitution of 1755 and ended the separation of the two Mecklenburgs.
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz formed a union with a knighthood and a landscape that resembled a bicameral system . The revolution in Mecklenburg (1848) led to a constitutional state parliament, which provided for a liberal constitution with census voting rights. The compromise Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II of Schwerin accepted the constitution in August 1849 and put it into effect on October 10th. But the highly conservative Grand Duke of Strelitz rejected the constitution and said that it had not come into being in accordance with the constitution because the old-class assembly did not approve. From the point of view of the state parliament and the Schwerin Grand Duke, however, the union was dissolved.
The arbitration board was a regional court that met under the guarantee of the German Confederation . It met with one member each from Hanover, one from Prussia and one chairman from Saxony in Freienwalde (today in the east of the state of Brandenburg). The plaintiffs were the knighthood of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which was represented in the old state parliament, and the government of Mecklenburg-Strelitz . As a means of power, the German Confederation had the option of federal execution , as was practiced against Kurhessen in 1850 and Schleswig-Holstein in 1848-1851.
The result repealed the liberal constitution on September 14, 1850 and, as a result, declared the state parliament elected on February 27, 1850 and its planned new election to be invalid. The liberal Mecklenburg State Minister Ludwig von Lützow resigned from his office under protest as the father of the new constitution. The arbitration award restored the state constitution of 1755, which had been established by the Land constitutional estate comparison and which remained in both Mecklenburg until 1918. An old state parliament was convened on this basis. In the political assessment, Mecklenburg remained the most backward area in Germany. The liberal and democratic movement, whose heads (e.g. Moritz Wiggers ) were suppressed soon afterwards, was thus beaten back for a long time.
Ernst Rudolf Huber called the Freienwalder arbitration award the “most important constitutional judgment” in 19th century Germany:
“It is one of the peculiarities of the German constitutional development of this epoch that Article 56 of the Vienna Final Act, which was intended to protect the more recent state constitutions against sovereign arbitrariness, had its main application in this arbitration, which in the two Mecklenburg Grand Duchies for a full 68 Years, namely until the revolution of 1918, prevented the transition of the old constitutional relationships into the constitutional system. "
literature
- Hermann Brandt: The state constitution for the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin of October 10, 1849 in the light of the Mecklenburg constitutional efforts of the 19th century . In: Michael Heinrichs, Klaus Lüders [editor]; Foundation Mecklenburg u. a. (Ed.): Modernization and Freedom. Contributions to the history of democracy in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Stock-und-Stein, Schwerin 1995, ISBN 3-910179-56-8 , p. 497-522 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume II: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1960, p. 223.