History of the right to vote in Germany
The history of the right to vote in Germany includes the first individual German states with representative constitutions in the 19th century. Until 1918, almost all member states of the German Reich had a representative body, which, however, usually did not come about after general and equal elections. General and the same were the elections at national level in 1848 and then again from 1867. Elected in the North German Confederation and in the German Empire in the single constituency with an absolute majority rule. If no candidate achieved an absolute majority in a constituency, there was a runoff election in that constituency between the two best-placed candidates.
The November Revolution of 1918 ushered in an era with modern suffrage, since then also for women, until the National Socialists abolished free elections in 1933. The elections were not free in the GDR either; Despite different parties on the ballot paper, the communist SED ultimately decided which candidates were on the unified list. In the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949 and in unified Germany since 1990, voting is based on proportional representation with a blocking clause for small parties and elements of majority voting (so-called personalized proportional representation ).
Beginnings and developments until 1866
The history of the electoral law begins with the first representative constitutions in German states shortly after 1800, i.e. constitutions with a representative body. The Federal Act saw 1,815 for each member state of the German Confederation a landständische Constitution before, but many states could be so long. In some there was a traditional constitution with a class representation.
Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hessen-Darmstadt were the first states with a representative constitution after 1815. As a rule, only rich men were allowed to vote, for example those who paid a certain tax rate. In addition, there were class elements such as knighthoods, large landowners or professional representatives who were allowed to send representatives to the parliaments. The circle of states with representative constitutions slowly expanded, especially after the revolutions in France in 1830 and 1848, which had a major impact on Germany.
The year 1848 with the March Revolution brought with it a liberal democratic impetus that not only led to new constitutions or electoral laws in many member states of the German Confederation. In April and May 1848 there were the first elections on an all-German level for the Frankfurt National Assembly . This assembly drafted an all-German constitution and an electoral law for general and equal elections. However, the most powerful German princes did not accept the constitution.
North German Confederation and Empire
The national movement and also Prussia repeatedly referred to the Frankfurt drafts in the 1860s when the German question began to move again. After the German War in 1866, Prussia and its North German allies founded the first German nation-state, the North German Confederation . Its Reichstag was elected according to universal and equal suffrage based on the Frankfurt model. The Reichstag and the Bundesrat , which consisted of representatives from the member states, jointly decided on laws. The North German electoral law of 1869 then continued to apply later in the German Empire (1871–1918).
Men over the age of 25 were allowed to vote, provided they were not excluded from voting due to incapacitation. Everyone voted with one vote for a direct candidate in the constituency where they lived. If none of the candidates received an absolute majority, a week or two later there was a runoff between the two candidates who received the most or the second most votes. The winner of the election then became the member of the Reichstag for that constituency. The election was supposed to be secret, but a variety of tricks enabled election organizers and representatives of parties to find out in part how someone had voted. Compared to most other countries in the world, however, one could speak of a progressive, democratic election.
In the German member states , however, unequal suffrage remained in force, for example the three-class suffrage in Prussia or a plural suffrage (in which some voters have several votes) in other individual states. The general and equal right to vote in the Reichstag had a great influence on the discussion in the individual states. However, the Reichstag and Bundesrat refused to prescribe the basic features of the right to vote in the constitution for the individual states.
Weimar Republic
The November Revolution of 1918 led by the Social Democrats gave Germany proportional representation and women's suffrage . Together with the principles of general, equal, direct and secret elections, the Weimar Constitution of 1919 also prescribed this to the member states . The new constitution also introduced referendums for the first time in Germany . Furthermore, the head of state was now directly elected, the Reich President . The voting age was lowered from 25 to 20 years.
The proportional representation for the Reichstag worked according to the automatic method , that is, one party received one Reichstag seat for every sixty thousand votes. Since there were certain rules for the utilization of the remaining votes at different levels, the system was relatively complicated, and there was a notable difference in the proportion of votes and the proportion of seats, especially with small parties. The automatic method meant that the size of the Reichstag depended on the turnout.
National Socialism
The Nazis prevented from 1933 increasingly free elections: the member state level was the imperial level into line , and abolished the office of the president de facto. Nevertheless, the Reichstag was also elected under National Socialism , in which only National Socialists sat since the other parties were banned in July 1933. The National Socialists also organized referendums. The purpose of elections and votes in the dictatorship was to mobilize and politicize the people and to demonstrate the people's alleged support for the dictatorship. Elections were no longer used to select parties and politicians.
Under National Socialism, women were again excluded from the right to stand as a candidate. In 1935 people who were classified as “racially Jewish” by the National Socialists lost their right to vote due to the Nuremberg Laws . The right to vote had lost its importance as a democratic means of power anyway, but the voting ban emphasized the exclusion of Jews from the national community.
German Democratic Republic
In the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany since 1945, the communists manipulated the first elections by giving the parties different starting opportunities. In addition, the leadership of the other parties was pressured to submit to the communists. Elections in the GDR for the People's Chamber (and similarly for the lower levels) looked like the National Front drew up a list of candidates. The voters could then only choose this single list. In theory, a voter was allowed to cross names off the list, but this was usually not counted in the counting and the mere use of the voting booth made a voter suspicious. As a result, he could face harassment from the state.
Officially, according to the electoral law of 1950, the seats were determined according to the proportion of votes, but in 1963 proportional representation was replaced by a vote of consent .
The first and only free election in the GDR took place on March 18, 1990. The 400 seats in the People's Chamber were allocated purely on the basis of proportional representation. The People's Chamber decided that the newly formed states of the GDR should join the Federal Republic of Germany. On October 14, 1990, the first free state elections in the new federal states took place.
Federal Republic of Germany
In the western zones , as in the east, regional and municipal elections were the first elections since the National Socialist dictatorship. A party was only allowed to form (until 1950) if it had received permission from the respective occupying power. In the first general election in 1949, the system of personalized proportional representation that had become typical already applied. At that time, however, the voter only had one vote, which counted both for a direct candidate in the constituency and for a state list of the party. A state list could only send representatives to the Bundestag if it received more than five percent of the votes in the respective state.
Alternatively, the state list also came into play if the party was able to win at least one direct mandate in the country (so-called basic mandate clause). Above all, direct mandates won by a party were counted towards the state list; This means that the division of the electoral area into constituencies was less important and the distribution of seats to some extent reflected the proportion of votes (the second vote, i.e. the state list vote). Because the direct mandates are offset against the result of the list election, it is a matter of proportional representation, not a mixed right of majority and proportional representation.
The second federal election in 1953 saw a significant change: the five percent hurdle and the basic mandate clause were now set nationwide. Since 1953, a party had to have won at least three direct seats in order to be represented in the Bundestag despite the five percent hurdle .
See also
literature
- Margaret Lavinia Anderson: Apprenticeship in Democracy. Elections and Political Culture in the German Empire . Steiner, Stuttgart 2009.
- Hubertus Buchstein : Public and secret voting. A study on the history of electoral law and the history of ideas . Baden-Baden 2000, ISBN 3-7890-6673-7 .
- Hedwig Richter : Modern Elections. A history of democracy in Prussia and the USA in the 19th century . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2017.
- Hedwig Richter , Kerstin Wolff : Women's suffrage. Democratization of Democracy in Germany and Europe . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2018.
Web links
- Wahlrecht.de
- State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg : The History of Suffrage - The Long Road to Suffrage , Consideration of the Period from 1848 to 1972
Individual evidence
- ↑ Law on the elections to the People's Chamber, to the state parliaments, district councils and municipal councils in the German Democratic Republic on October 15, 1950 (§ 1)
- ↑ Law on the elections to the People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic on November 16, 1958 (Section 44 (1))
- ↑ Decree of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic on the elections to the People's Chamber and the local people's representations of the German Democratic Republic of July 31, 1963 (Section 39 (1))
