Carniolan state parliament
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The Krainer Landtag ( Slovenian Kranjski deželni zbor ) was the Landtag of the crown land of Carniola in the empire of Austria and Austria-Hungary .
history
In the course of the March Revolution of 1848, the last assembly of the old state estates took place on April 6, 1848. As in other crown lands, a new, provisional Landtag was elected in June 1848 in agreement with the resolutions that emerged from the April meetings of the Central Committee of Estates in Vienna. For this purpose, 50 members were elected in Carniola. However, this provisional state parliament only met once, with only 10 of the 45 MPs present representing the gentlemen's and knights' banks. In addition, two representatives of the clergy were present: the Ljubljana prince-bishop and the provost von Neustadtl. All other members of parliament were non-class landowners, representatives of the peasant and bourgeoisie, as well as representatives of the mining industry and the Lyceum in Ljubljana.
With the imperial patent of February 26, 1861, the Krainer Landtag was reactivated. The right to vote was tied to municipal electoral law and the electoral census. In 1910, Krain modernized its municipal electoral law, which, however, left the first two thirds of the seats on the municipal council to the taxpaying men, women and corporations and the third third to all (whether taxpaying or not) voters (women and men); the new municipal suffrage was thus an unequal plural suffrage. The women were excluded from the state elections.
Parties
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In the 1860s two parties formed in Krain. These were the Slovene party, which positioned itself as “national” and the German party, which however rejected the national label and pinned national awareness and loyalty to the constitution. In addition to the citizens of German descent, the German party also included all those Slovenes who did not want to follow the national orientation of the Slovenian party. A part of the Slovenian intelligentsia followed a path that saw the cultural development of the Slovenes only possible with the help of the German language and culture. Over time, however, the supporters of the constitutional party also adopted the German national consciousness. Supporters of the Slovenian party included both conservative and liberal representatives, but the national party was always referred to as “clerical” and “ultramontane” by the representatives of the constitutional party.
The German party initially dominated the state parliament. With the state elections in 1867, however, the Slovene party won a majority in the state parliament for the first time, with all members of the rural communities, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as some members of the cities and markets being members of the Slovene party until 1877. In the state elections in 1877, however, the Slovenian party suffered a heavy defeat, as the German party won not only the mandates of the large estates but also the mandates of the Chamber of Commerce and, with the exception of the constituency of Krainburg, all the mandates of the cities and markets. There was also a mandate from the rural community of Gottschee. The German party owed its election victory to the behavior of the civil servants who followed the instructions of the liberal government of Auersperg II.
As early as 1883, however, the German party again lost its majority and subsequently only appointed the representatives of the large estates and the rural community of Gottschee. Within the national party, however, there was a culture war between the Young Slovenian faction and the old Slovenian-Catholic coalition in the 1870s. However, this struggle ended in 1876 with the resumption of "unity". Nevertheless, a Catholic-Conservative and a Liberal wing remained within the national party.
In the 1890s, however, the Slovenian camp also split up in Carniola. After the founding of the Catholic National Party (Katoliška naroda stranka, KNS) in 1892, liberal representatives of the Slovenes founded the National Party (Narodno napredna stranka, NNS) in 1894. The Catholic National Party won its voters mainly from the rural communities, while the National Party, in turn, gathered representatives from cities and markets. As a result, from 1895 the Catholic National Party had a relative majority of the MPs, from 1908 the Catholic National Party, which had renamed itself the Slovenska ljudska stranka (SLS) in 1905, even had an absolute majority.
Parties | 1861 | 1867 (1) | 1867 (2) | 1870 | 1871 | 1877 | 1883 | 1889 | 1895 | 1901 | 1908 (1) | 1908 (2) | 1913 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Slovenian National Party | 25th | 23 | 16 | 25th | |||||||||
Catholic National Party / Slovenian People's Party | 16 | 27 | 28 | ||||||||||
National Progressive Party | 9 | 12 | 11 | ||||||||||
German party | 11 | 13 | 20th | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | ||||||
independent | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
total | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 50 | 50 |
Landtag mandates
The state regulations and state election regulations published with the February patent initially set the number of state parliament members in Carniola at 37 people. Of these, the large landowners elected 10 representatives, 8 representatives from the cities and markets, 2 from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and 16 from the rural communities. In addition, there was the virile voice of the Ljubljana prince-bishop. The number of members of the state parliament remained unchanged until 1908. Only with the electoral reform of 1908 was the number of members of the state parliament increased through the introduction of a general curia with 11 members. In addition, the city of Laibach ( Ljubljana ) received two additional mandates, with which the state parliament comprised 50 members from September 1908; the Landtag, elected at the beginning of 1908, was supplemented by the new 13 members in September 1908 immediately after the electoral reform.
literature
- Andrej Rahten: The Krainer Landtag. In: Adam Wandruszka , Peter Urbanitsch (ed.): The Habsburg Monarchy 1848–1918. Volume 7: Helmut Rumpler , Peter Urbanitsch (eds.): Constitution and parliamentarism. Volume 2: The regional representative bodies. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7001-2871-1 , pp. 1739–1768.