Saxon State Parliament (Weimar Republic)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main portal of the Saxon State House in Dresden , seat of the Saxon State Parliament in the Weimar Republic

The Landtag of the Free State of Saxony was the state parliament of Saxony at the time of the Weimar Republic . It was constituted on December 7, 1920 on the basis of the new constitution passed on October 26, 1920 and was officially dissolved on January 30, 1934 after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Its predecessors were the Saxon People's Chamber , which was elected on February 2, 1919 after the November Revolution, and before that the Saxon State Parliament of the Kingdom of Saxony .

Constitutional foundations

According to Article 4 of the constitution, the state parliament had 96 members. He was elected in equal and secret proportional representation by the citizens of the German Empire who lived in Saxony and who had reached the age of twenty. The state parliament had the right to dissolve itself . In addition, it could also be dissolved through a referendum , or at the request of the government through a referendum . The Prime Minister and the individual ministers were responsible to the state parliament. Since Saxony, like all states of the German Empire, was subject to the Weimar Constitution , the Landtag had to hand over numerous competences to the Reichstag and the Reich government. The most important areas of responsibility continued to include financial and budget policy, domestic policy and police issues, school and education policy, parts of transport and infrastructure policy, as well as civil servant and personnel policy.

Landtag executive

President of the Saxon State Parliament 1920–1934
Surname Political party Term of office
Julius Fräßdorf SPD 1920-1922
Max Winkler SPD 1922-1926
Albert Schwarz SPD 1926-1929
Kurt Weckel SPD 1929-1932
August Eckardt DNVP 1932-1933
Walter Doenicke NSDAP 1933-1934

The Landtag executive consisted of the President, his two deputies and the secretaries. As a rule, the largest parliamentary group provided the president of the state parliament. The President of the Landtag was responsible for the continuation of the Landtag's business between the meetings, the supervision of the administration of the Landtag and the enforcement of house rules. The head of administration was the Landtag director.

Meeting place

The Saxon Landtag met like the People's Chamber and the First and Second Chamber of the Landtag in the Kingdom of Saxony in the Estates building in Dresden . The state parliament administration, the parliamentary group and business premises, the library, the archive, dining rooms and other functional rooms were also located here. The plenum met in the hall of the former Second Chamber. For this purpose, two more bench seats were built in to accommodate the increased number of MPs. There was no microphone system. The debates were recorded in shorthand and then printed. The plenary session of the state parliament met in public. Visitors and the press were able to observe the work of the state parliament from the visitor stands, provided they had received admission tickets from one of the parliamentary groups. Expressions of opinion from the stands were forbidden, but were the rule and occasionally led to tumult and the evacuation of the stands.

history

First electoral term 1920–1922

After the People's Chamber unanimously adopted the new constitution on October 26, 1920 and dissolved two days later, the elections for the first Saxon state parliament took place on November 14, 1920. Neither the bourgeois parties DDP , DVP and DNVP nor the Social Democrats, split at the time into the MSPD and USPD , were able to achieve their own majority. Therefore Wilhelm Buck (MSPD) formed a minority government made up of the MSPD and the USPD. Julius Fräßdorf , who had also been President of the People's Chamber, became the first President of the Landtag . In terms of content, the precarious supply situation in Saxony, but also educational reform as well as transport and infrastructure projects, were at the center of parliamentary work. One of the most momentous decisions of the first Landtag was to make Labor Day on May 1st and the day of the November Revolution 1918 on November 9th as public holidays in Saxony. After violent disputes, the state parliament dissolved in the dispute over the holiday issue on September 14, 1922.

Second electoral term 1922–1926

The second state elections on November 5, 1922 again did not produce a clear result for either camp. Since Buck refused to enter into a coalition with the KPD , he ruled a minority government supported only by the reunified SPD parliamentary group. Buck resigned on January 30, 1923, following a motion of no confidence in Interior Minister Richard Lipinski . Erich Zeigner became the new Prime Minister . The year 1923 was marked by the economic crisis, hyperinflation and political extremism from the right and left. Zeigner was particularly accused in the state parliament of promoting the development of the proletarian hundreds . After Zeigner accepted members of the KPD into the government on October 10, the Reich government in Berlin under Chancellor Gustav Stresemann reacted with the Reich execution against Saxony. Zeigner was overthrown. As a result, the SPD politician Alfred Fellisch was unable to form a stable government. After his resignation there was a grand coalition which was supported by the parliamentary groups of the DDP, the DVP and the majority of the SPD parliamentary group, which broke up over it in the Saxony dispute. The social democrat Max Heldt was elected Prime Minister. The parliamentary work continued to be overshadowed by sometimes violent clashes, including in the state parliament building itself.

Third electoral term 1926–1929

After the state elections in 1926, the government coalition led by Max Heldt was able to continue to govern because the Old Social Democratic Party of Saxony agreed to cooperate. The following years were initially characterized by relative stability, even if a flood disaster in 1927 posed enormous problems for the state parliament and government. The 1926 election was canceled on March 22, 1929, as the new electoral law had been declared unconstitutional by the State Court of the Reich .

Fourth electoral term 1929–1930

The election to the fourth state parliament did not result in a majority for a government supported by democratic parties. The NSDAP moved into the state parliament for the first time with five members and was able to prevent the formation of a government. The state parliament elected the lawyer Wilhelm Bünger as Prime Minister. In February 1930, however, Bünger had to accept a vote of no confidence by the state parliament. The new Prime Minister was Walther Schieck, President of the State Audit Office . The election was only possible because the members of the NSDAP parliamentary group submitted white papers and abstained from voting. As early as May 1930, Schieck had to bow to a vote of no confidence, but remained in office until March 1933. The economic crisis , which hit Saxony hardest of all states in the empire, weighed heavily on the work of the state parliament until 1933.

Fifth electoral term 1930–1933

The fifth electoral term was marked by the increasing clash between the extreme forces from the right (NSDAP) and left (KPD). A legitimate government could no longer be established. A referendum to dissolve the state parliament failed with 38 percent voter turnout at the required quorum of 50 percent. Of the valid votes cast, 96.1 percent were “yes” and 3.9 percent were “no”. The last regular session of the state parliament took place on February 21, 1933.

The seizure of power in Saxony

After the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, the MPs in Saxony, first of the KPD and then the SPD, were persecuted and sometimes physically abused. On February 28, 1933, the state government was deposed. On March 9, troops of the SA and SS attacked the state parliament building. A government under Manfred von Killinger was set up. With the provisional law for the synchronization of the states of March 31, 1933, the state parliament was dissolved like all other state parliaments. The new Landtag was composed according to the results of the last Reichstag election . By decree of April 4, 1933, the NSDAP was assigned an absolute majority of mandates. The KPD members had already been excluded from the opening session of the sixth state parliament, the SPD members stayed away from the session. On May 23, 1933, the last six Social Democratic MPs in the Saxon state parliament voted against the Enabling Act . The last session of the state parliament took place on August 22, 1933, on January 30, 1934 the institution was dissolved.

Well-known members of the Saxon state parliament

The Saxon State Parliament consisted of a total of 18 women, including Julie Salinger and Lene Glatzer .

Other members were, for example, the communists Rudolf Renner , Walter Ulbricht and Herbert Wehner or the two DVP mayors of the cities of Dresden Bernhard Blüher and Chemnitz Johannes Huebschmann .

See also

swell

literature

  • Uwe Israel , Josef Matzerath : History of the Saxon state parliaments. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2019, ISBN 978-3-799-58465-4
  • Josef Matzerath : Aspects of Saxon State Parliament History. Variants of modernity (1868–1952). Saxon State Parliament, 2011.
  • Josef Matzerath, Andreas Denk: The three Dresden parliaments. The Saxon state parliaments and their buildings: indicators for the development from the class to the pluralized society. Munich 2000. ISBN 978-3-932353-44-4 .
  • Janosch Pastewka: coalitions instead of class struggle . The Saxon State Parliament in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2018, ISBN 978-3-799-58462-3 .
  • Mike Schmeitzner , Andreas Wagner : Of power and powerlessness. Saxon Prime Minister in the Age of Extremes 1912–1952. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2006, ISBN 3-934544-75-4 .
  • Andreas Wagner: "Seizure of power" in Saxony. NSDAP and state administration 1930–1935. Cologne 2004. ISBN 978-3-412-14404-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Saxon State Center for Political Education : Saxon State Parliament
  2. ^ Constitution of the Free State of Saxony of November 1, 1920, Article 3.
  3. ^ Constitution of the Free State of Saxony of November 1, 1920, Article 27.
  4. ↑ Rules of Procedure of the Landtag, § 14
  5. ^ Otmar Jung: Direct Democracy - Experiences and Perspectives. 2008 (PDF file; 152 kB) p. 1.
  6. ↑ Janosch Pastewka: "A harrowing sight". The attack on the Saxon state parliament on March 9, 1933 . In: Landtagskurier , issue 5/2015, pp. 22–23. ( Online ).