Coal Industry Act

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Basic data
Title: Law on the Regulation of the Coal Industry
Short title: Coal Industry Act (not official)
Type: Imperial Law
Scope: German Empire
Issued on the basis of: §§ 2, 4 G of March 23, 1919
Legal matter: Commercial administrative law , antitrust law
Issued on: March 23, 1919
( RGBl. P. 342)
Entry into force on: March 28, 1919
Last change by: Art. 2 G of April 21, 1933
(RGBl. I pp. 203, 204)
Effective date of the
last change: 		April 22, 1933
(Art. 3 sentence 2 G of March 24, 1933 )
Expiry: after 1945
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law on the regulation of the carbon economy (short Kohlenwirtschaft law sometimes falsely as law on the socialization of the coal industry and the coal industry called) is a law from the early phase of the Weimar Republic . It represents the attempt to "socialize" the coal industry as a key industry , ie to subject it to state control for the benefit of the common good as a common economy .

history

Emergence

The Coal Industry Act came into being under pressure from the workers' movement after the November Revolution of 1918, that is, at the time of the transition from monarchy to republic shortly after the end of the First World War.

In December 1918, the central organ of the workers' councils, the newly constituted Reichsrätekongress , decided in principle to socialize key industries (especially coal and potash mining). As a result, the Council of People's Representatives, controlled by the workers' councils, set up an expert commission, the Commission for the Preparation of the Socialization of Industry (short: Socialization Commission ), to prepare for implementation . By mid-February 1919, this commission prepared various reports, recommendations and draft laws.

The proposals of the Socialization Commission were put into law in March 1919, after the first meeting of the Weimar National Assembly , under the first new government, the Scheidemann cabinet with the Minister of Economics, Rudolf Wissell . In addition to the superordinate socialization law , two laws for the mining industry, namely coal and potash salt mining, were passed as the first application .

Since the formation of the organs provided for by the law (see below) was delayed, the next government, the Bauer cabinet , added implementing provisions to the law in September of the same year 1919.

Changes

In the form of September 1919, the Coal Industry Act remained in force for the entire duration of the Weimar Republic until the beginning of the Third Reich in 1933.

After they came to power , the National Socialists intended to adapt the Coal Industry Act in order to better integrate coal as a strategically important raw material - also with a view to an imminent war - in the overall economic strategy of the Nazi regime . In 1933, a first draft for a new version of the law was being drawn up under the leadership of Erich Winnacker , the Reich Economics Minister's special representative for coal issues. However, this draft was not implemented due to disagreement between Winnacker and the new Reich Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, as well as among the individual syndicates (see below). Instead, only a few minor changes (reorganization of the hard coal and lignite syndicates) were decided in 1933.

A second attempt at a fundamental revision in 1936/37 and 1940/41 by Winnacker's successor Heinrich Schlattmann also failed due to the resistance of the syndicates. Subsequently, the extension of the area of ​​validity of the law or other coal industry regulations remained due to the expansion of the Reich territory:

The principles that had been created were retained with minor changes in the Third Reich (including the formation of further compulsory communities such as the Reichsvereinigung coal and BRABAG ) and even beyond the end of World War II and were only implemented in the context of the unbundling of the German coal and steel industry by the Allies (especially the USA).

Content

Central steering

The Coal Industry Act stipulated that the German coal industry should be centrally organized under the supervision of the German Reich in the person of the Reich Economics Minister .

For this purpose, according to §5, the prices, price reductions, delivery conditions, the regional distribution of sales markets, wages and other working conditions were specified by the minister on the basis of the recommendation of the Reich Coal Council. According to Section 3 of the Act, this council should constitute a self-governing body for the coal industry; it was composed of a mixture of representatives from industry and employees as well as from various branches of the coal industry and customers.

The companies in the coal industry remained privately owned, but had to form “associations” ( syndicates , cartels ) in accordance with Section 2 of the law (see below). The coal syndicates were again united in the Reich Coal Association, which, as a pure industrial association, faced the Reich Coal Council.

Syndicates

In application of Section 1 of the Act, according to Section 3 of the implementing provisions, seven syndicates for hard coal , three syndicates for lignite , a regional syndicate for Bavarian brown, hard and pitch coal and a national syndicate for gas coke were formed:

coal district Mountain area (s) Syndicate, seat comment
Hard coal Lower Rhine Westphalia Rheinisch-Westfälisches Kohlen-Syndikat (RWKS), Essen
Aachen Aachen Coal Syndicate , Kohlscheid Integrated into the RWKS in 1934
Saar area ? not subject to the KWG because of the separation from the German Reich from 1920; integrated into RWKS after reunification in 1935
Upper Silesia

including:

  • Ostrau-Karwiner district
 Upper Silesian Hard Coal Syndicate , Gleiwitz
Lower Silesia Lower Silesian Hard Coal Syndicate , Waldenburg
Saxony Saxon Coal Syndicate , Zwickau
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony coal syndicate , Hanover largely under the control of Preussag
Brown coal Rhineland

including:

Rhenish lignite syndicate , Cologne originated from the Rhenish lignite briquette sales association (" Union ")
Central Germany

including:

Central German Brown Coal Syndicate , Leipzig emerged from the sales association of the Saxon brown coal works and the sales association of the Thuringian brown coal works
East Elbe

including:

East Elbe Brown Coal Syndicate , Berlin
Bituminous coal
lignite
pitch coal 		Bavaria
(on the right bank of the Rhine, without the Palatinate ) 		Coal syndicate for Bavaria on the right bank of the Rhine , Munich
Gas coke German Empire Economic Association of German Gas Works, Gaskokssyndikat AG , Berlin created in 1924 from a merger of Gaskokssyndikat AG in Cologne with the Economic Association of German Gasworks in Berlin (founded in 1904)

literature

  • Rudolf Isay : The law on the regulation of the coal industry [of March 23, 1919] together with d. implementing regulations issued for this purpose . In: Collection of German Laws . tape 45 , no. VIII . Bensheimer, Mannheim / Berlin / Leipzig 1920, DNB  579954110 .
  • Tula Simons: The construction of the coal industry according to the coal industry law of March 23, 1919 (=  Bonn juridical treatises . Volume 20 ). L. Röhrscheid, 1931, DNB  36274761X .
  • Rudolf Tschirbs: Tariff Policy in Ruhr Mining (=  publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin . Volume 64 ). Walter de Gruyter, 1986, ISBN 3-11-010281-1 .
  • Peter Wulf: The disputes about the socialization of coal in Germany 1920/1921 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . 25th year issue 1. Oldenbourg, January 1977, p. 46–98 ( ifz-muenchen.de [PDF; 2.3 MB ]).
  • Gerhard Brehme: The so-called socialization legislation of the Weimar Republic . Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1960, DNB  450608573 .
  • Manfred Nussbaum, Helga Nussbaum, Lotte Zumpe: Economy and the state in Germany during the Weimar Republic . Ed .: Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Institute for Economic History (=  Economy and State in Germany . Volume 3 ). Topos, 1978, ISBN 3-289-00153-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Socialization Act of March 23, 1919 ( RGBl. P. 341).
  2. ↑ a b Reichsgesetzblatt 1919, p. 342, online at the Austrian National Library
  3. ^ Sigrid Vestring: The majority social democracy and the emergence of the Imperial Constitution of Weimar, 1918/1919 (=  workers 'movement and workers' culture . Volume 18 ). LIT-Verlag, Münster 1987, ISBN 3-88660-355-5 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ^ German stories: German revolution - spring riots. German stories (Cine Plus Leipzig, Federal Agency for Civic Education), accessed on March 12, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Law on the Regulation of the Potash Industry (Potash Industry Act) of April 24, 1919 ( RGBl. P. 413).
  6. ↑ Implementing provisions of the law on the regulation of the coal industry of March 23, 1919 of August 21, 1919 (RGBl. P. 1449).
  7. ^ Anton Golecki, Reich Chancellery (ed.): Das Kabinett Bauer (=  files of the Reich Chancellery: Weimar Republic . Volume 10 ). Oldenbourg, 1980, ISBN 3-7646-1750-0 ( online at the Federal Archives ).
  8. ↑ a b c Dieter Ziegler: Against the ‹‹ fatal planned economy ››. National Socialist reorganization plans for the coal industry 1933 to 1937 . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Jürgen Kocka, Dieter Ziegler, Gerald D. Feldman (eds.): Economy in the Age of Extremes: Contributions to the corporate history of Germany and Austria; in memory of Gerald D. Feldman (=  series of publications for the journal for corporate history ). tape 20 . CH Beck, 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60156-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. ↑ Law on changes to the coal industry regulations of April 21, 1933 (RGBl. I p. 203).
  10. ↑ Kim Christian Priemel: The power of the syndicates: the failure of the Reich coal commissioner 1940/41 and the German coal industry . In: Contributions to the history of National Socialism . tape 22 , 2006.
  11. ^ Ordinance on the introduction of regulations in the field of the coal industry in Austria of October 17, 1938 (RGBl. I p. 1439).
  12. ^ Ordinance on the introduction of regulations on the regulation of the coal industry in the Sudeten German areas of January 31, 1939 (RGBl. I p. 132).
  13. ↑ Ordinance on the introduction of regulations on the regulation of the coal industry in the incorporated eastern areas of February 12, 1940 (RGBl. I p. 364).
  14. ^ Ruhrkohle: More than Marshall money . In: DER SPIEGEL . No. 37/1951 , September 12, 1951 ( full text in SPIEGEL's online archive ).
  15. ↑ Gerald Spindler: Law and corporate group: Interdependencies of legal and corporate development in Germany and the USA between 1870 and 1933 (=  contributions to the legal history of the 20th century . Volume 9 ). Mohr Siebeck, 1993, ISBN 3-16-146123-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  16. ↑ Based on the “March 1919” model . In: The time . No.  50 , December 11, 1952 ( full text in the ZEIT online archive ).
  17. ↑ Wendelin Hecht: Organizational forms of the German raw material industries. The coal . Ed .: Adalbert Deckert (=  Living Books ). 1st edition. Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, Munich / Kempten 1924, DNB  570300827 .
  18. ^ Diane Dammers: The formation of cartels in the Rhenish lignite industry (1871-1914) . Diploma thesis in economic and social history. Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, Cologne 2003.
  19. ↑ Christine Enderlein: Central German Brown Coal Syndicate Leipzig 1898 - 1947 . Finding aid No. 20648. Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig ( online overview ). Online overview ( Memento from June 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Remarks

  1. ↑ Risk of confusion with the law on the socialization of the coal industry in North Rhine-Westphalia of August 6, 1948, which was not approved by the Control Commission .