Erfurt Union Parliament

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Meeting in the People's House of the Union Parliament

The Erfurt Union Parliament was an organ that should deliberate on the Erfurt Union Constitution . It met from March 20 to April 29, 1850 in Erfurt , in the Augustinian Church . Originally the name was Reichstag , but before the meeting it was changed (in February 1850) to Parliament of the German Union .

The parliament consisted of two chambers: the members of the state house were appointed by the state governments and state parliaments, the members of the people's house were elected by the people. However, under the three-tier suffrage, only men who paid taxes were allowed to vote , and the electoral system also greatly favored the rich. The left therefore boycotted the elections.

In both houses the right wing liberals were the strongest force. They got the parliament to adopt the draft constitution for the Erfurt Union as a whole, en bloc . In doing so, they prevented the Conservatives from changing it even more in their minds. Since the Erfurt Union of German States initiated by Prussia did not materialize, parliament did not meet again after April.

Foundations and options

March / April 1850: States that had members elected to the Union Parliament (yellow), states of the four-king alliance from February 1850 (red)

On May 26, 1849, Prussia, Hanover and Saxony decided on the three kings alliance with the draft of the Erfurt Union Constitution and the draft of the Erfurt electoral law. On November 17, 1849, the Union's administrative council stipulated that the elections to the Volkshaus should take place on January 24, 1850. These were the primary elections by primary voters (the actual voters who chose the electors). The electors were due to vote on January 31st. The individual states were responsible for carrying out the election. Half of the state house was appointed by the state governments and half by the state parliaments.

Delays came about because of the bad weather and the negative political mood, because democrats and left-wing liberals rejected the electoral system as undemocratic. Men who were innocent and over 30 years old were allowed to vote. The same was true for candidates. Voters voted according to the three-tier suffrage , which greatly favored the rich.

After the election of most of the deputies, the Board of Directors convened Parliament on February 13, 1850 for March 20. The additional act on the draft constitution followed on February 26th. In it, the administrative council changed some names (the original Reichstag became the parliament of the German Union) and redefined the number of state house members, since Hanover and Saxony no longer wanted to belong to the union. The last sessions took place on April 29th, but the parliament formally existed until December 18th, 1850.

activity

Caricature of the Union Parliament, in front of whose doors the left is standing

Like the Frankfurt National Assembly , the Union Parliament began with church services (for the Protestants in the Barfüßerkirche, for the Catholics in the Wigbertikirche) on March 20, 1850. The parliament was formally opened in the ballroom of the government building. Joseph von Radowitz entered the ballroom at 11:30 am as the “first commissioner of the administrative council” and read an opening message. He also presented the constitutional documents with the request that the constitution be brought about by agreement with the governments.

In contrast to the Frankfurt model, the Union parliament did not set up any provisional central authority and did not pass any laws . Despite its name, it was not a parliament, but a mere constitutional assembly . So it could concentrate on the constitutional deliberations. The most important dividing line in the Union Parliament was the question of whether a member of parliament wanted a Union at all, and if so, whether the previous draft constitution should be adopted en bloc (as a whole). That was the line of the liberal-constitutional station party that prevailed. The extreme conservatives and Greater Germans rejected the Union entirely, the more moderate wanted to rewrite the draft constitution even more conservatively. The Prussian government also pushed for a revision.

MPs

Entry card for Heinrich von Gagern in the Volkshaus

According to the Additional Act, the House of States should have 120 members, in fact 91. Of these, forty seats were reserved for Prussia; Baden was the next largest group with ten members, the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Electorate of Hesse each with seven members. Four members each came from the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Duchy of Nassau. There were two seats each for Braunschweig, Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and Oldenburg (one of which remained vacant). Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Köthen, Bremen, Lippe-Detmold, Lübeck, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Reuss older line, Reuss younger line, Saxony-Altenburg, Saxony-Coburg and Gotha, Saxony-Meiningen, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, also Waldeck and Pyrmont together. Apart from the one from Oldenburg, Hanover and Saxony did not appoint their twelve MPs each.

The Volkshaus should have 261 members, in fact 223. The largest sending individual states were Prussia with 158 seats, Baden with 14 seats, the Grand Duchy of Hesse with nine and the Electorate of Hesse with eight seats.

Of the members of the Erfurt Union Parliament, 42 were later elected to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation or the Empire or to the Customs Parliament of 1868. Among them were Eduard Simson, who became President in the National Assembly, the Erfurt Volkshaus and the Reichstag, Otto von Bismarck, who later became Chancellor, and Georg Beseler , a prominent member of the Frankfurt Constitutional Committee . One, Max von Gagern, belonged to the manor house of the Austrian Imperial Council from 1881–1889.

The historian Karl Hegel , who was then working at the University of Rostock , was also a member of the Erfurt Union Parliament. During his time as a member of parliament, he wrote detailed letters to his fiancée, the Nuremberg patrician daughter Susanna Maria von Tucher, which gave lively and varied insights into social life in the vicinity of the Erfurt Union Parliament.

Working method and internal organization

The Augustinian Church was personally chosen as the conference venue by the Prussian king . Friedrich Wilhelm IV had to assure the reluctant parish that services could continue to be celebrated. The king also paid for the renovation of the building.

Eduard von Simson , President of the People's House. Before that he was President of the Frankfurt National Assembly and later of the Reichstag until 1874

The Administrative Council submitted draft rules of procedure to Parliament, as well as the draft constitution and the draft electoral law. Soon the draft was also formally put into effect. Age president was in the state house Friedrich Eichhorn and in the people house Leopold von Frankenberg . In its first session on March 20, 1850, the House of States elected Rudolf von Auerswald as provisional president. Auerswald was elected three times with large majorities. Vice-presidents were Christian Bernhardt von Watzdorf and Otto Graf zu Solms-Laubach (both liberal station party). The House of States met from March 20 to April 29, 1850, in a total of thirteen sessions.

The Volkshaus initially retained its senior president and on March 25th elected Eduard von Simson as president. Vice-presidents were Wilhelm Freiherr Schenck zu Schweinsberg and Heinrich Rüder (both BP). One of the secretaries was the young Conservative MP Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen . The Volkshaus met from March 20 to April 29 in a total of 22 sessions.

On March 23, the House of States set up a constitutional committee, with twenty deputies from the station party and five right-wingers. The chairman was Baron Alexander von Schleinitz from the station party. The constitutional committee of the Volkshaus of March 25 had eleven members from the station party and five each from Schlehdorn and Klemme, chaired by Ernst von Bodelschwingh.

Factions

Station party

The Erfurt train station, where the liberal train station party met

The three to four parliamentary groups in parliament were still relatively weak; there were the parliamentary groups mostly for the state house and for the people's house. The largest group were the right-wing or moderate liberals who had mostly belonged to the casino in the Frankfurt National Assembly. Already at the Gotha post-parliament at the end of June they accepted the Union policy. In Erfurt this station party met in the new station, where their member Gustav Graf von Keller had procured a conference room for them - he was a member of the management of the Thuringian Railway Company.

The moderate conservative Ernst von Bodelschwingh also belonged to the station party . Its program was signed by 91 People's House members and 27 House members. They had a narrow absolute majority in the Volkshaus, which they were able to strengthen with “savages” (non-attached MPs). The parliamentary committee in the Volkshaus consisted of Freiherr von Soiron, Nebelthau, Freiherr von Speßhardt, Hergenhahn, Ernst von Bodelschwingh, Count von Schwerin, Georg Freiherr von Vincke, Count Keller and Geßler. A prominent member was Heinrich von Gagern , the first President of the Frankfurt National Assembly and later Prime Minister of the Reich in 1848/1849.

Blackthorn

The Rheinische Hof in Erfurt in 1900, the previously Blackthorn was

The conservatives met in the Schlehdorn inn. A program of March 25th only approved the draft constitution under certain conditions: one had to take into account the governments as well as the events and findings that had occurred since May 1849. On March 30, 32 signatories were found. The representatives of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach , Stahl and Wantrup were later named as leaders of the Schlehdorn . The parliamentary group was finally founded on April 4 through a program by Stahl that became the executive committee. The blackthorn consisted only of Prussia, in the Volkshaus it made up about 60 percent of the deputies from Prussia.

Other groups

“Klemme” was the name of a group that met in a Mr. Klemm's restaurant (according to a report from April 7th). She was caught between the station party and Schlehdorn, because she rejected the en bloc acceptance of the draft constitution, but was more willing to come to an understanding than the conservatives. 32 MPs were clearly members of the terminal, although in some cases higher numbers were mentioned. The members of the board were Goltdammer, Urlichs and Falk.

A group most right-wing emerged in the State House, which met on April 8 in the Thuringian Court . They wanted to reject the draft altogether and prevent Prussia from merging into a union. These rights also included so-called "savages". They did not want to submit to a parliamentary group discipline like the Prussian ministers Graf von Brandenburg and Otto Freiherr von Manteuffel and Radowitz.

The clerical Catholics, the Ultramontanes , were counted as a separate group . As Greater Germans, they completely rejected a union without Austria. This group was absent in the State House; in the People's House it consisted of about ten members who had met at the end of March in the White Horse . August Reichensperger left them on April 6 for Schlehdorn. De facto, the group joined the right, not out of ideological ties, but solely because of the common rejection of the Union.

rating

State House in the Augustinian Church

According to Gunther Mai, the Erfurt Union Parliament was one of the most compliant of the 19th century, with liberals who went to the limit of self-denial. Democrats and conservatives "received more ridicule than serious appreciation as an embarrassing episode." It has received little attention in parliamentary history. In doing so, "[it] undoubtedly debated no less passionately and brilliantly than the Frankfurt National Assembly, but it worked faster and more routinely than this, led by experienced presidents and shaped by now result-oriented parliamentarians."

It was not because of parliament, so May, but because of Prussia that the union failed. Like the shame of Olomouc , the Union Parliament should be forgotten as quickly as possible. However, according to Jochen Lengemann, it would not be fair to regard the Union Parliament as just the appendage of the appendix of the Frankfurt National Assembly. It solidified good traditions of the Frankfurt time through people and procedures; on this stage the political stage was shared with the Prussian Conservatives for the first time; a political culture of speech of rare concentration was encouraged. The procedure of the constitutional agreement was tacitly copied for the North German Confederation in 1867 by Bismarck and the allied governments.

See also

literature

  • Gunther Mai (Ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. Böhlau, Cologne [u. a.] 2000, ISBN 3-412-02300-0 .
  • Jochen Lengemann : The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: Members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups (= publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia. Large series, Vol. 6). Urban & Fischer, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-437-31128-X
  • Stenographic report on the negotiations of the German Parliament in Erfurt , Erfurt 1850
  • Helmut Neuhaus (Hrsg.): Karl Hegel's letters to Susanna Maria von Tucher. From the engagement time of the Rostock history professor and the Nuremberg patrician daughter in 1849/50 . (= Supplements to the archive for cultural history, issue 87) Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-51128-9 , especially pp. 96–125, and pp. 198–211.

Web links

Commons : Erfurt Parliament  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: Members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 12 f.
  2. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 13.
  3. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 27.
  4. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 15.
  5. Gunther Mai: Erfurt Union and Erfurt Union Parliament . In: Gunther Mai (Ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. Böhlau, Cologne [u. a.] 2000, pp. 9–52, here p. 34.
  6. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 31, pp. 355-357.
  7. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, pp. 358–359.
  8. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 31, p. 367-369.
  9. Cf. on this Helmut Neuhaus (ed.): Karl Hegel's bride letters to Susanna Maria von Tucher. From the engagement time of the Rostock history professor and the Nuremberg patrician daughter in 1849/50 . (= Supplements to the archive for cultural history, issue 87) Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2018, especially pp. 96–125, and pp. 198–211.
  10. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 30.
  11. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, pp. 21/22, pp. 36-39.
  12. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, pp. 21/22, pp. 54-57.
  13. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 22.
  14. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 15.
  15. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, pp. 15/16.
  16. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 17/18, p. 20.
  17. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 17.
  18. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, pp. 17/18.
  19. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 19.
  20. Gunther Mai: Erfurt Union and Erfurt Union Parliament . In: Gunther Mai (Ed.): The Erfurt Union and the Erfurt Union Parliament 1850. Böhlau, Cologne [u. a.] 2000, pp. 9-52, here pp. 37/38.
  21. Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Erfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups . Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000, p. 27.