Suffrage robbery

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As electoral robbery a controversial will Hamburger constitutional amendment referred to by the on 28 February 1906 Hamburg Parliament was decided and introduced the another tax census in electoral law.

prehistory

After the Social Democrats were able to win 13 seats in the Hamburg Parliament in 1904, the Hamburg Senate proposed a revision of the electoral law on May 15, 1905 in order to prevent social democracy from gaining further strength . Senate Syndic Bruno Louis Schaefer worked out the suffrage bill for the Senate. He was elected to the Senate in 1907, also in gratitude for this work. On December 24, 1905, the bill was published in the hope that few would take notice of it because of the Christmas holiday.

Red Wednesday

The SPD had already drawn attention to the planned change in the electoral law in countless meetings throughout the previous year. When the debate on the electoral bill took place in the Hamburg citizenship on January 17, 1906, the SPD called for a protest rally in parallel. The result was the first major political strike in Hamburg, with subsequent riots . More than 30,000 people responded to the SPD's call and left their work early to demonstrate at various events against the theft of the electoral rights. The majority of the participants then gathered against the will of the SPD in front of the Hamburg city hall , where there were larger rallies. Looting and rioting by a small number of people in Hamburg's old town followed later that evening. These events were referred to as Red Wednesday by Richard J. Evans .

decision

On February 28, 1906, the citizens passed the electoral bill with 120 votes in favor against 35 against. The Hamburg Senate also approved the suffrage bill on March 5, although the two mayors Johann Heinrich Burchard and Johann Georg Mönckeberg voted against it.

Changes to the electoral law

The right to vote for citizenship had been designed as follows since 1896: the citizenship had 160 members, 80 of whom were elected by all male and adult citizens (from the age of 24) who, for the last five years before an election, paid tax at least 1200 marks per year in income had. Another 40 MPs were elected by the citizens who owned heritable property in the city. The last 40 were elected by the so-called notables , citizens with honorary positions, such as commercial judges.

The electoral law has now been changed in such a way that the first group has been further divided. Of the 80 members, 48 ​​were elected by citizens who had an annual income of over 2500 marks, and 24 members were elected by citizens who had an annual income of between 2500 and 1200 marks. The missing 8 MPs were reserved for citizens who lived in the rural area.

Thus 128 seats of the citizenship were reserved for high-income voters. For example, constitutional amendments that required a two-thirds majority could not be blocked by social democrats.

Effects

The suffrage bill led to much controversy and bitterness in the city and among the citizens. Of the 35 members who voted against the proposal, 13 were Social Democrats; 22 of the opponents belonged to other factions. Of these 22, 13 formed the United Liberals Group . Of the rest, some, such as the former right-wing leader Albert Wolffson , resigned from their factions.

literature

  • Heinrich Erdmann: The >> electoral robbery << of 1906 as a breach of tradition . In: State Center for Political Education Hamburg (Hrsg.): Hamburg in the first quarter of the 20th century: the time of the politician Otto Stolten. Seven treatises. Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-929728-53-2
  • Richard Evans: Red Wednesday . In: State Center for Political Education Hamburg (Hrsg.): Hamburg in the first quarter of the 20th century: the time of the politician Otto Stolten. Seven treatises. Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-929728-53-2