Committee of Seventeen
The Siebzehnerausschuss consisting of "Seventeen men of public trust" was one on March 10, 1848 by the Bundestag of the German Federal inserted committee after the start of the March Revolution should draw up a draft constitution in the states of the German Confederation to the existing Federal Constitution to to adapt to the new political conditions. The committee met between April 3 and May 8, 1848 for a total of 25 meetings. The seventeen draft was adopted on April 26th.
Members of the Committee of Seventeen
The number of seventeen votes resulted from the number of seats in the inner council of the Federal Assembly, in which the eleven largest German individual states had one permanent representative and the smaller states together had six. In fact, the Committee of Seventeen consisted of more than 17 shop stewards. By resolution of April 5, the committee allowed the states that were united in a curiate vote to send their own representatives. However, these additional delegates did not have their own voting rights. In view of the political situation, the states chose mainly prominent, moderate, liberal opposition politicians as their representatives in the Committee of Seventeen.
The draft constitution was presented by the Committee of Seventeen on April 26, 1848 and officially accepted by the Bundestag on May 8, 1848. It should serve as the basis of the German National Assembly to be adopted constitution serve. At the instigation of the MPs of the Left, in particular Robert Blums and Franz Jacob Wigards , and against the will of the chairman of the thirty-member constitutional committee of the National Assembly, Friedrich Daniel Bassermann , the National Assembly determined that the draft of the Seventeen Committee should not be used as a guide for work on the constitution may serve. Nevertheless, there are strong parallels between the draft of the Committee of Seventeen and the Imperial Constitution of 1849.
The constitutional historian Ernst Rudolf Huber ruled that the imperial constitution and all later German constitutions are deeply committed to this “basic concept of the 1748 draft”. The draft united the monarchical, the federal, the parliamentary-representative and the rule of law principle "in a way that was unprecedented at the time".
literature
- Johann Gustav Droysen : Files and records on the history of the Frankfurt National Assembly. Edited by Rudolf Huebner. German historical sources of the 19th century, published by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , Volume 14. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1967 (reprint of the 1924 edition). There, in particular, Section II: The Constitutional Debates of the Seventeen Confidants, pp. 45-108
- Wolfram Siemann : The German Revolution of 1848/49. New historical library. Volume 266.Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11266-X .
Web links
- Draft of the German Basic Law. University of Frankfurt
- Protocols of the negotiations of various revolutionary bodies, u. a. of the Committee of Seventeen (PDF; 51.9 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 2: The struggle for unity and freedom 1830 to 1850 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1960, p. 769.