Central Administration Department
The central administrative department for the occupied territories (French. Département d'Administration Central temporaire ) first Central Board called, was one during the wars of liberation decorated in 1813 Organization of the Allies for the management of by Napoleon conquered territories. It essentially existed until mid-1814.
Origin and tasks
The Reich Freiherr vom und zum Stein suggested a central administrative authority to the Russian Tsar Alexander I as an occupation authority, a procurement office for money, weapons and soldiers. The main intention behind this was to create a basis for answering the German question . The governments of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire did not follow this concept as much as Stein hoped. The tasks of the central administrative council agreed on March 19, 1813 in Breslau remained largely of an administrative nature, although the collegial structure of the authority also left room for more extensive planning. However, the implementation of Stein's far-reaching ideas with regard to the preparation of a re-establishment of a German Empire failed because of the - unexpectedly - French successes in spring 1813 up to the Armistice of Pläswitz on June 4, 1813. The parts of Saxony already occupied in March , Hamburg and Lübeck as well as the duchies of Mecklenburg , whose princes were the first to fall away from the Confederation of the Rhine and join the allies, were recaptured by French troops. Only after the fighting resumed were the Lausitz and parts of Saxony taken again; After the victorious Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , the central occupation authority was redesigned by representatives of Austria , Russia, Prussia, Great Britain and Sweden in the Leipzig Convention of October 21, 1813 . Now a more bureaucratic institution was chosen and placed under the sole management of Stein as the central administration department. He was now bound by instructions through a diplomatic council made up of envoys from the allies.
Freiherr vom Stein had a small but effective organization, which at times managed to make itself largely independent of the influence of the Allied headquarters . However, it was based in the Allies' headquarters, first in Frankfurt am Main and finally in Paris . Stein's closest collaborator was Johann Albrecht Friedrich von Eichhorn . Agency agents arranged for cash, materials and equipment to be obtained for the troops.
Stein tried to extend the Prussian reforms to the conquered areas. Stein's hopes that the occupied territories would become the basis for the realization of the German imperial idea failed at the outset. After the rapid successes of the Allies, the area of the administered areas, which had grown steadily (one month after Leipzig, the Allies had advanced to the Rhine), was quickly reduced again by the Allies' restoration policy . The states of Hanover , Electoral Hesse , Braunschweig and Oldenburg , abolished by Napoleon, were restored under their ancestral rulers, and the cities of Hamburg , Frankfurt am Main , Lübeck and Bremen regained their sovereignty .
Nevertheless, Stein tried to promote his goal of making the central administrative authority a basis for a nation state through publicists such as Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern , Ernst Moritz Arndt or Max von Schenkendorf . Among other things, Wilhelm von Humboldt presented the draft of a future imperial constitution, which showed similarities with the later German Confederation . Such plans failed not least because of Metternich's resistance .
Subdivision of the occupied territory in 1813
Art. V of the Wroclaw Convention of March 19, 1813 already provided for a division of the area of activity of the Central Administrative Council into five major districts:
- Saxony “and the duchies” - this probably means the Ernestine areas , not the House of Anhalt
- Kingdom of Westphalia without the former Hanoverian and Prussian territories
- the "duchies" of Berg, Westphalia and Nassau
- the Département Lippe
- the Bouches d'Elbe and Mecklenburg department.
This was agreed before the collapse of the Rhine Confederation. The situation had changed completely six months later. Because of the quick return of the princes who had been deposed at the time of Napoleon, there was little left of Westphalen that could have belonged to Stein's jurisdiction. The largest remaining territories were the Kingdom of Saxony - without "the duchies" - and the non-Prussian parts of the Grand Duchy of Berg. A general government was formed for each of these two. The remaining areas, on the other hand, were combined in a general government between the Weser and the Rhine, which was administered in personal union by the governor residing in Munster of the now old Prussian areas together with the compensation countries from 1802/03. A new Generalgouvernement in Frankfurt was added.
Administration in Saxony
Stein's hope to control the larger states of the Rhine Confederation also failed, since they broke away from Napoleon in time and transferred to the Allied camp. In essence, the area of responsibility of the authority was initially limited to the Kingdom of Saxony, whose King Friedrich August I was arrested for his support for Napoleon. In terms of political reforms, the Central Administrative Council was definitely important for Saxony. In place of a large number of different authorities in the individual parts of the country, a new central organization, which the Saxon state was later able to build on, was established. There were also approaches to military and tax reform. However, the interim administration was unable to bring about really far-reaching changes, especially since in Saxony, for example, only the composition of the top management changed. After all, a statistical office was set up in Saxony for the first time in order to obtain reliable data for planning.
Administration of the Napoleonic territories
In the course of the war, the Napoleonic art states, Kingdom of Westphalia , Grand Duchy of Berg and Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, and later the areas on the left bank of the Rhine, which had previously been incorporated into French territory, were added. According to the Leipzig Convention of October 21, 1813, the parts of the country that had previously belonged to the allies (Prussia, Sweden, England-Hanover, Austria [Würzburg] and Russia [Jever]) were immediately transferred to the former sovereigns. As a result, almost nothing of the Kingdom of Westphalia belonged to the Stein central administration.
Initially, four general governments were established in the occupied territories. These were the Generalgouvernement of Saxony for the Kingdom of Saxony and the Generalgouvernement of Frankfurt for the area of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt. Then there was the Generalgouvernement between Weser and Rhine under Ludwig von Vincke , based in Münster, and the Generalgouvernement Berg , based in Düsseldorf , initially under Justus Gruner .
With the advance on the left bank of the Rhine from the New Year of 1814, the allies agreed at a conference in Basel that a further six administrative districts for the area between the Rhine and Maas were agreed:
- first the Generalgouvernement Mittelrhein was formed with its seat in Trier , later its capital was Koblenz . It initially comprised the French departments of Donnersberg , Saar as well as Rhine and Moselle . Gruner moved from Düsseldorf to Trier;
- the Generalgouvernement Niederrhein with seat in Aachen comprised the departments of the Roer , the Ourthe and the Untere Maas under Johann August Sack ;
- a Generalgouvernement Oberrhein in Colmar was set up for the two Alsatian departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin ;
- to the west joined a Belgian general government with seat in Brussels for the departments Dyle , Jemappes and Sambre-et-Meuse ;
- a Lorraine general government in Nancy for the departments of Meurthe , Meuse , Moselle and Forêts ;
- and also a Generalgouvernement Free County with seat in Vesoul and responsible for the departments Doubs , Jura , Haute-Saône and Vosges .
In the French areas on the left bank of the Rhine and the formerly Napoleonic states - as far as the German vernacular was sufficient - the arrondissements were renamed district administrations and Maires became mayors. There were, however, important legal differences. During the Rhineland Civil Code further considered, were in Westphalia , the general land rights or other rights of pre-revolutionary reintroduced.
In particular, the new governors tried to recruit troops for the war against Napoleon. For the newly established Bergische Brigade under General von Jechner , Gruner issued on November 29, 1813 the "Call to German youths and men between the Rhine, Wupper and Sieg to fight for Germany's freedom." Although some recruits reported, the new authority left the drafting of new ones Troops are not just voluntary. As in Prussia, the Bergische Landsturmedikt of December 25, 1813, made all men between 16 and 60 years of age compulsory military service .
During the advance through France proper , the Steins authorities also temporarily controlled these areas. After the 1st Paris Peace of May 1814 and the restoration of the French border in 1791, the governorates for the Lower and Middle Rhine were united under Sack and placed directly under the Prussian administration. Together with the Berg Governorate, these later formed the basis for what would later become the Prussian Rhine Province, just as the area controlled by Vincke created the basis for the Westphalia Province .
In June 1814, Stein began the organizational handling of the central administrative authority in Frankfurt.
Web links
literature
- Thomas Nipperdey : German History 1800–1866. Citizen world and strong state. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44038-X , p. 88 ff.
- Walther Hubatsch: The Stein-Hardenberg reforms. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1989, ISBN 3-534-05357-5 , pp. 197 ff.
- Wilhelm Ribhegge: Prussia in the West. Struggle for parliamentarism in Rhineland and Westphalia. Münster 2008 (special edition for the state center for political education in North Rhine-Westphalia), p. 46 ff.
- Otto Büsch, Monika Neugebauer-Wölk (eds.): Prussia and the revolutionary challenge since 1789 , de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991, p. 348 .