Chamber of Commerce and Industry Prague
The Trade and Commerce Chamber Prague ( Czech : Živnostenská komora v Praze ) was in Austria-Hungary , the Trade and Commerce Chamber in Prague .
Emergence
With the law on the establishment of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of March 18, 1850, chambers of commerce and industry were established in the Austrian Empire , including the Prague Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They had the duties of chambers of commerce .
In addition to the chamber in Prague, the chambers in Reichenberg , Eger , Pilsen and Budweis were established for Bohemia . In Moravia these were the chambers in Brno and Olomouc and in Galicia and Lodomeria the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Opava .
With the law of June 29, 1868 concerning the organization of the chambers of commerce and trade, the organization of the chambers was basically confirmed and the tasks redefined.
tasks
The chambers should advise the wishes and proposals of the economy and present them to the ministries and authorities independently. They prepared statements on government bills as they related to commercial or commercial interests. The government could also ask the chambers to comment on economic issues.
The chambers kept the electoral registers of those entitled to vote to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the trademark and model archives and the business registrations. They collected the data for the trade statistics. The chambers participated in the examination and appointment of the commodity and bill brokers, the exchange councilors and the commercial court assessors. The chambers could be named as arbitration tribunals in commercial contracts.
Each chamber had to submit a comprehensive report to the Ministry of Commerce every year, in which the economic situation in the chamber district was described. The chambers provided trade statistics every five years.
The Museum of Applied Arts in Prague was founded in 1885 by the Prague Chamber of Commerce and Industry as a museum of arts and crafts.
organization
The Chambers of Commerce and Industry were subordinate to the Ministry of Commerce and had to implement its instructions. They were divided internally into a trade and a trade section (mining also belonged to the trade).
The chambers consisted of 16 to 48 actual members. The exact number of members was determined by the Ministry of Commerce depending on the size of the chamber district. The Chamber in Prague had 48 seats. In addition, the chamber was able to co-opt other members (without voting rights) as "correspondent members".
The election of the members was made by direct election by the traders and traders or the board members of corporations in the chamber district. The term of office was six years. Half of the Chamber was elected every three years on a revolving basis. There was a census right to vote : wholesalers and industrial companies were only eligible to vote if they paid income taxes of 100 guilders , other companies had lower limits. The choice was made in individual groups. These were determined by the ministry according to the number of voters in locations and trade or business classes.
In the first chamber election on October 17, 1850, 7 Jews were also elected to the chamber, including Maximilian Dormitzer , Leopold von Lämel and Moses Porges von Portheim .
The chamber elected a president who represented the chamber externally. It was financed through a contribution from companies in the chamber district. The Chamber prepared an annual budget and submitted it to the Ministry for approval. The sum was divided by the income tax revenue in the tax district and the resulting surcharge on the income tax was collected from the companies.
They gained particular importance after the electoral reform of 1873, after which the chambers elected some of the members of the Reichsrat . Until 1906 representatives of the Prague Chamber were represented in the Reichsrat. 15 of the 236 members of the Bohemian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Prague: 4, Budweis: 2, Reichenberg: 4, Eger: 3, Pilsen: 2) were also elected to the Bohemian Landtag .
The language question
The chambers were free to choose the language of negotiation themselves. According to the language distribution in the chamber district, Reichenberg and Eger chose the German language from 1884 and Prague, Pilsen and Budweis the Czech language.
In the 1890 census, the following language distributions were found in the chamber districts:
| Czech | German | Other | total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prague | 1,694,754 | 111,583 | 466 | 1,806,803 |
| Pilsen | 578,524 | 194.716 | 128 | 773.368 |
| Ceske Budejovice | 517.359 | 139,757 | 104 | 657.220 |
| Reichenberg | 801.955 | 1,030,585 | 148 | 1,832,688 |
| Eger | 51,596 | 682.370 | 20th | 733.986 |
By 1884 there was a German majority among the chamber members in all 5 Bohemian chambers. This was due to the selection of the electoral groups by the Ministry of Commerce and the fact that the larger taxpayers were predominantly German.
In Czechoslovakia
After the First World War Austria-Hungary disintegrated and Bohemia and Moravia became independent as Czechoslovakia . The chambers remained. However, the business language used was uniformly Czech, and the name of the chambers was now živnostenská komora. By Decree No. 32 of January 20, 1919 of the Ministry of Commerce, the chamber elections were suspended and the chambers were now organized as administrative committees, which were filled after the general election results. In Prague, where there was already a Czech majority in the Chamber, these changes were not very serious. Most of the appointed members were already elected members. Of the 48 members, 12 were Germans.
The Chamber in Prague played a special role in this transformation process. Since the central authorities in Vienna were now abroad, new ones had to be set up in Prague. On behalf of the National Committee , Chamber President František Malynský set up the provisional headquarters of Czech trade policy.
The tasks of the chambers were similar to those before the war: They were an advisory body, kept trade mark and trade registers, issued certificates and kept statistics. They participated in the election of commercial judges and were arbitration tribunals. Instead of trade and commerce, they were now divided into three sections: trade, commerce and industry.
In 1936/27 the number of members was increased to 49. The composition was now:
| Czechs | German | total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry | 8th | 7th | 15th |
| trade | 18th | 5 | 23 |
| Business | 11 | 0 | 11 |
| total | 37 | 12 | 49 |
From 1920 the Chamber in Prague hosted the Prague Fair.
On April 20, 1922 the chambers of the country, including the Prague Chamber, formed an umbrella organization, the československých obchodních a živnostenských.
In 1938 the Prague Chamber covered a chamber district of 13,220 km² with 2,457,276 inhabitants and 104,499 member companies (99,729 of them Czech and 3,281 German). This made it by far the largest Bohemian chamber.
According to the Munich Agreement
As a result of the Munich Agreement , Czechoslovakia was broken up in 1938. The predominantly German-speaking areas, the Sudetenland , became part of the German Empire, the predominantly Czech-speaking areas formed the rest of Czechoslovakia. Naturally, this also had an impact on the chamber organization. The chambers in Reichenberg, Eger and Troppau came to Germany and were renamed chambers of industry and commerce . In the following years they shared the history of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce: conformity , replacement of the self-administration of the economy by the “ leader principle ” and in 1942 integration into the Sudetenland regional chamber of commerce .
The chamber in Königgrätz was dissolved. The chambers in the rest of Czechoslovakia suffered considerable losses in their chamber districts. Prague lost 1,635 chamber members.
With the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia and the formation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, the chambers were placed in the service of the war economy and, like the chambers that had already been handed over to Germany, lost their self-government.
After the Second World War
Due to the war situation, the chambers came to a standstill in the course of 1944. The expulsion of the Germans at the beginning of 1945 led to the loss of the staff and most of the member companies of the Sudeten German IHKs. Nevertheless, after the end of the war, the reconstruction of the chambers in Czechoslovakia began . An instruction from the Ministry of Inland Trade Ref. 3/1945 of May 18, 1945 regulated the resumption of business operations in the Prague Chamber. The aim of the policy was to restore the status before the Munich Agreement. In May the government appointed Dr. Vojtěch Kuthan as government representative for the Prague Chamber. On December 23, Ivana Petra was appointed President of the Prague Chamber.
In particular, the communist Komunistická strana Československa (KSČ) was critical of the idea of economic self-government by the chambers. However, it has not yet been able to enforce an abolition. After the February revolution in early 1948, the communists had achieved sole rule. The presidents of the chamber expressed their loyalty to the new regime, but could not prevent the end of the chambers. With Government Decree No. 306 of December 28, 1948, the chambers were repealed and their tasks were assigned to the district offices.
Personalities
Chamber presidents
- Johann Baptist Riedl (1850-1857)
- Franz Bstroß (1857-1859)
- Andreas Haase Edeler von Wranau (1859–1862)
- Maximilian Dormitzerv (1862–1874)
- Richard Ritter von Dotzauer (1874-1884)
- František Malynský (1917)
- Václav Němec (1919–1925)
- Dr. Jan Třebický (1933)
- Dr. Vojtěch Kuthan (1945, government representative)
- Ivana Petra (1945)
Elected to the Reichsrat by the Chamber
The chamber elects two members to the Reichsrat:
| Surname | Electoral term | annotation |
|---|---|---|
| Maximilian Dormitzer | V. LP (1873–1879) | |
| Adolf Schwab | V. LP (1873–1879) | |
| Maximilian Dormitzer | VI. LP (1879–1885) | Renunciation of mandate announced at the meeting on November 30, 1880 |
| Eduard Portheim | VI. LP (1879–1885) | sworn in on November 30, 1880 |
| Adolf Schwab | VI. LP (1879–1885) | |
| Wenceslaus Salášek | VII. LP (1885-1891) | Died in 1890 |
| Ignác Skokánek | VII. LP (1885-1891) | sworn in on December 16, 1890 as successor to Wenceslaus Salášek |
| Josef Fořt | VIII. LP (1891-1897) | sworn in on October 10, 1893 as the successor to Wenceslaus Němec, renunciation of mandate announced at the meeting on March 10, 1896 |
| Václav Němec | VIII. LP (1891-1897) | Renunciation of mandate announced at the meeting on January 18, 1892 |
| Václav Sehnal | VIII. LP (1891-1897) | sworn in on February 22, 1894 as successor to Josef Wohanka |
| Josef Wohanka | VIII. LP (1891-1897) | Renunciation of mandate announced at the meeting on February 22, 1894, sworn in again on April 15, 1896 as the successor to Josef Fořt |
| Lovro Borčić | VIII. LP (1891-1897) | |
| Josef Brdlik | IX. LP (1897–1901) | |
| Rudolf Kitschelt | IX. LP (1897–1901) | elected for Max Mauthner on October 18, 1899 |
| Giuseppe Basewi | X. LP (1901-1907) | Resignation from office in March 1905 |
| Josef Brdlik | X. LP (1901-1907) | |
| Bohumil Ryšánek | X. LP (1901-1907) | sworn in for Vaclav Sehnal on February 15, 1905 |
| Václav Sehnal | X. LP (1901-1907) | died on January 17, 1905 |
Elected by the Chamber in the Bohemian Landtag
The Chamber elected to the Bohemian Landtag:
| year | MP | MP | MP | MP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1861 | Andreas Haase Edeler von Wranau (after his resignation, the Chamber elected Richard Ritter von Dotzauer on December 6, 1862 ) | Tempsty | Franz Xaver brooch | Schary |
| 1870 | Richard Ritter von Dotzauer | Anton Richter | Maximilian Dormitzer | Josef Lippmann Knight of Lissingen |
| 1872 | Richard Ritter von Dotzauer | Anton Richter | Maximilian Dormitzer | Josef Lippmann Knight of Lissingen |
| 1878 | Otto Forchheimer | Josef Sobotka | Ferdinand Urban | Friedrich Freiherr von Riese-Stallburg |
| 1883 | Otto Forchheimer | Josef Sobotka | Alexander Richter | Viktor Riedl |
| 1895 | Josef Víšek | Johann Vorlíček | Josef Krejčík | Josef Wohanka |
| 1901 | Josef Jirousek | Wenceslaus Karela | Josef Krejčík | Karl Tichý |
literature
- Bohumír Brom: History obchodních a živnostenských komor na území českých zemí, 2001
- Christoph Boyer: National opponents or partners ?: Studies on the relations between Czechs and Germans in the economy of CSR (1918–1938); Volume 42 of sources and representations for contemporary history, 1999, ISBN 9783486595864 , pp. 183-188, online
- Law on the establishment of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of March 18, 1850, online
- Annex to the law with the list of initially established chambers (also includes the Italian chambers), online
- Law of June 29, 1868 on the organization of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Reichsgesetzblatt, p. 249 ff., Online
- Edmund Schebek: Richard, Ritter von Dotzauer: Supplemented by an autobiography Dotzauer, 1895, online
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martina Niedhammer: Just a "Money Emancipation" ?: Loyalties and lifeworlds of the Prague Jewish upper middle class 1800–1867, Volume 2 of Religious Cultures in Modern Europe, 2013, ISBN 9783525310205 , pp. 62 ff., Online
- ^ Reichsraths-Wahlordnung, Reichsgesetzblatt, pp. 165 ff., Online
- ^ Jörg Konrad Hoensch: History of Bohemia. From the Slavic conquest to the present . Verlag Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-41694-2 , p. 352.
- ↑ Jaroslav Kucera: Minority in the nation state: The language question in Czech-German relations 1918-1938, Volume 43 of sources and representations on contemporary history, 1999, ISBN 9783486596007 , p. 243, online
- ^ Ordinance on the introduction of the organization of the commercial economy in the Sudeten German areas of October 29, 1938; Ordinance sheet on the Sudeten German territories 1938, S-147-148
- ↑ Protocol of the Landtag 1870
- ↑ Edmund Schebek: Richard Ritter von Dotzauer, p 107
- ↑ Protocol of the Landtag 1872
- ↑ Protocol of the Landtag 1878
- ↑ Protocol of the Landtag 1883
- ↑ Protocol of the Landtag 1895
- ^ Protocol of the State Parliament 1901