Grand coalition (1921–1925) Formation After the adoption of the Prussian constitution on 30 November 1920,
an election for the first regular Prussian Landtag was set for 20 February 1921. The
Majority Social Democrats (MSPD) finished first with 114 seats, followed by the Catholic
Centre Party with 81. Even though the
German Democratic Party (DDP) lost seats to the
German People's Party (DVP), the
Weimar coalition of the SPD, DDP, and Centre, with a combined total of 224 of the 428 seats, held on to the majority that it had had in the State Assembly, although by a much smaller margin. At the national level, the MSPD lost so many seats in the
1920 Reichstag election that it dropped out of the government, and a minority ministry of the Centre, DDP and DVP was built. Forming a new Prussian government did not prove to be easy. While the DDP and the Centre wanted to bring the DVP into the coalition, the MSPD rejected the proposal because of the DVP's unclear attitude towards the Republic. As a result,
Otto Braun did not run as a candidate for minister president. Instead,
Adam Stegerwald of the Centre Party was elected by the Landtag on 21 April with the votes of the bourgeois parties, including the
German National People's Party (DNVP). He formed a minority government consisting of the Centre, DDP and three independents. They had to seek support from the MSPD and DNVP on a case-by-case basis. Pressure on Prussian policy came primarily from external factors. In March 1921, Allied troops occupied
Düsseldorf and
Duisburg to put pressure on Germany to make its required
war reparations payments. The assassination of former vice-chancellor and minister of Finance
Matthias Erzberger on 26 August by members of the far-right
Organisation Consul shocked supporters of the Republic. In September 1921, the MSPD cleared the way for a coalition with the DVP at its party congress in
Görlitz. Otto Braun stated:What we are dealing with here is the conversion of our party from an acting to a governing party. This is very difficult for many because it takes us from a comfortable position to one that is sometimes very uncomfortable and full of responsibility. [...] The comrades who speak against the resolution do not have sufficient confidence in the power of our party's appeal. We must have the will to power. After the MSPD withdrew support from the Prussian government in October 1921, accusing the Ministry of State of leaning towards the DNVP, negotiations began to form a
grand coalition. On 5 November 1921, the MSPD and DVP joined the cabinet, and Stegerwald resigned. The opposition within the MSPD parliamentary group was considerable. Forty-six deputies voted for and 41 against the formation of a grand coalition. There were also significant reservations within the DVP. In the end, 197 of 339 deputies present voted for Braun as minister president. He chose his cabinet from members of the MSPD, Centre, DDP and DVP.
Carl Severing again became minister of the Interior. Prussia's grand coalition proved to be a stabilizing factor in the Weimar Republic and contributed to its ability to survive the crisis year of 1923. The DVP remained loyal to the coalition even though it was courted by the DNVP to form a "citizens' bloc". An effectively functioning
coalition committee successfully ensured that the different political interests were balanced, but despite the collegial cooperation, Braun and Severing dominated the government. The coalition lay claim to nothing less than a "Prussian democratic mission" for all of Germany. This was especially true after the murder of German Foreign Minister
Walther Rathenau (DDP) on 24 June 1922, once again by members of the Organisation Consul. On the basis of the
Law for the Protection of the Republic, which was strongly supported by the Prussian government, Interior Minister Severing banned the
Nazi Party in Prussia on 15 November 1922. Four months later, he also banned the
German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP), which he called a disguised offshoot of the NSDAP.
Crisis year 1923 Prussian territory was directly affected when troops from France and Belgium
occupied the Ruhr on 11 January 1923 after Germany defaulted on its war reparations payments. Immediately before the occupation, the Prussian Landtag, with the exception of the Communist Party, protested against the actions of the French and Belgians. The national government called on the population of the occupied territory, including the Prussian provinces of
Rhineland and
Westphalia, to engage in
passive resistance against the occupation, and officials were instructed not to obey the orders of the occupiers. It quickly became apparent, however, that the economic burden caused by the situation was unsupportable. The upward trend in inflation that had been evident since World War I exploded into the
Weimar Republic's hyperinflation. A Rhenish separatist movement, which had tried unsuccessfully to set up an independent Rhineland during the 1918 revolution, briefly revived as a result of the economic misery that came with the hyperinflation. A
Rhenish Republic was proclaimed in various cities in October in the hopes that separation from Prussia would hasten recovery, but the self-declared state survived less than a month. The major political crises of 1923, such as the
Beer Hall Putsch instigated by
Adolf Hitler in
Bavaria and the attempt at a communist revolution, the so-called "
German October" in central Germany, took place outside Prussia. German Chancellor
Gustav Stresemann of the DVP described the Prussia of the 1923 crisis period as the "bulwark of German republicans".
Cabinet of Wilhelm Marx A new
Landtag election was held on 7 December 1924. The SPD's seat count remained flat despite the fact that the MSPD and USPD had recombined since the previous election. The KPD added 13 seats, but the big winner was the DNVP with a gain of 34 seats.
High point of political stability Otto Braun was again elected minister president on 3 April 1925, with 216 of 430 votes in the Landtag. Like Marx, his base was SPD, Centre and DDP. Braun took over the majority of Marx's cabinet and looked to continuity in policy. He blamed the months-long government crisis on what he called the "German national communist bloc", by which he meant all the opposition parties from the DNVP and DVP to the KPD and various small parties, which included the Nazis. Braun said that "they are as incapable of building as they are unanimous in destroying." The new cabinet was a minority government, but it proved remarkably stable.
Settlement with the Hohenzollerns The question of financial settlements with Germany's former ruling dynasties was, in principle, a matter for the states. In Prussia, negotiations with the
Hohenzollerns failed in 1920 because the SPD rejected the proposal in the Landtag, and the former royal house objected to it in 1924. In 1925, the Ministry of Finance under
Hermann Höpker-Aschoff (DDP) submitted another draft proposal. It was extraordinarily favorable to the Hohenzollerns and led to fierce criticism from the SPD and DDP. The DDP then introduced a bill in the Reichstag that would authorize the states to find a solution without recourse to the courts. It was the starting point for a political process that led to the failed
referendum on princely expropriation at the national level in 1926. The Braun government subsequently intensified negotiations with the Hohenzollerns over the former royal house's assets. In the end, a compromise was reached that the SPD viewed very critically. The main Hohenzollern line received 250,000 acres of land and 15 million Reichsmarks. The Prussian state also received 250,000 acres, plus the royal palaces, works of art, the coronation regalia, the library of the former royal house, the archives and the theater. In the Landtag, KPD deputies reacted with anger and even violence. The vote went in favor of the agreement. It is noteworthy that not only did the Communists reject the bill, but also that the representatives of the governing SPD either voted against it or did not participate in the vote. Braun was only able to ensure that more SPD deputies did not vote against the bill by threatening to resign.
Tensions with the national government On 6 October 1926, as had been agreed with Braun some time earlier, Carl Severing resigned as minister of the Interior, leaving Braun the only political heavyweight in the cabinet. Severing was succeeded by
Albert Grzesinski (SPD). There were frequent tensions between the Christian-bourgeois national governments and the center-left government in Prussia. One practical issue was revenue sharing between the federal government and the states. Compensation for the financial harm caused by territorial losses under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles remained a central point of conflict between the national government and Prussia. The disputes over the use of flags on Constitution Day in 1927 fell into the realm of symbolic politics, which was important for the citizens' idea of the state. Braun announced a boycott of those hotels in Berlin that flew the old imperial black-white-red colors instead of the Republic's black-red-gold. When he asked the national government to join in the boycott call, Minister of the Interior
Walter von Keudell (DNVP) protested against Prussia's "insolence". The conflict was exacerbated when Prussian Minister of Culture Becker restricted the rights of student self-government at Prussian universities because of the increasing influence of the
völkisch movement there. When nationally minded student bodies protested against the move, Keudell openly backed them. Not least because of his work in addressing these and other conflicts with Keudell, Braun became an important integration figure among Social Democrats.
Agricultural policy A relic of the feudal past in Prussia was the manorial district. Those living on them had no communal right of residence and were subject to the police power invested in the landlords. Using groundwork laid by Interior Minister Grzesinski, the Braun government abolished the districts in 1927. The change affected 12,000 manorial districts with a combined population of 1.5 million. Some remnants of the old conditions did, however, continue to exist east of the
Elbe River (
East Elbia). There were many agricultural workers who received part of their wages in kind, such as free housing, food or land use. As late as 1928, 83% of the income of an average farm worker in East Prussia consisted of such wages; the figure was somewhat lower in Silesia and Pomerania. Employers preferred this form of pay because it tied workers more closely to them and made it difficult to verify the accuracy of their wages. The situation was different in areas with a population made up predominantly of independent farmers. Even so, political misgivings in rural regions remained strong, as is shown by the emergence of rural protest parties such as the
Christian-National Peasants' and Farmers' Party (CNBL) in 1928. In
Schleswig-Holstein, which was characterized not by large landholdings but by small farmers, an agrarian protest movement developed toward the end of the 1920s with the
Rural People's Movement.
Educational policy The period of the grand coalition saw the beginning of a reform of the educational system that was initially pushed forward by the independent Minister of Education
Carl Heinrich Becker. One of its goals was to reduce the educational disparity between urban and rural areas. According to the Weimar Constitution, the training of elementary school teachers was to be aligned with that of the higher schools. How that was to be done was left a matter for the states. Some, such as
Thuringia and
Saxony, introduced teacher training at universities or technical universities. Others, including
Bavaria and
Württemberg, retained the old seminar method. In 1924, Prussia introduced a middle course using denominational pedagogic academies with a shorter training period than in a regular university course. The government worked to promote secondary educational opportunities for gifted blue- and white-collar workers. In 1928, there were 102 adult education centres with 13,000 students. To support those with limited means who were eager to learn, a broad majority in the Landtag voted in favour of introducing 20,000 Reichsmarks in educational grants in 1928. One year later, the sum had reached 100,000 Reichsmarks, although additional increases were slowed by fiscal considerations, including on the part of the SPD. The pupil-teacher ratio was reduced from 55 students per teacher in 1911 to 38 in 1928. Personnel costs, which placed a heavy burden on the state budget, led the SPD at times to limit educational expenditures in opposition to its stated goals.
Landtag election 1928 In May 1928, elections were held at both the
national and
state levels. In the Prussian state election, the SPD made gains while the Centre and DDP both lost seats. In spite of that, the coalition had a parliamentary majority, with 228 of 450 seats. The government remained the same, and Braun promised to continue his work. One of the government's projects was to be a municipal reorganization of the Ruhr region.
Religious politics As the election campaign of 1918/19 had shown, the memory of imperial Prussia's
Kulturkampf ('cultural conflict') against the Catholic Church was still alive, but due in large part to the strong position of the Centre Party in the Landtag and the government, the Catholic population had come to identify relatively strongly with the new Free State of Prussia. Its high point and symbol was the
Prussian Concordat with the
Vatican, signed on 14 June 1929 by Eugenio Pacelli (later
Pope Pius XII). The treaty superseded an 1821 agreement between the
Kingdom of Prussia and the Vatican and eliminated the last remnants of church legislation from the period. It regulated state contributions to the church and the arrangement of bishoprics, including reestablishing the bishoprics of
Aachen and Berlin. School issues were excluded, but they regulated the academic training of clergy. The forms of episcopal elections and similar issues were also clarified. There was opposition to the Concordat from various sides. The
Lutheran Church, supported by the DNVP and DVP, saw it as strengthening Catholicism.
Freethinkers in the SPD also rejected the agreement. While the Catholic population was successfully won over to the new Prussia, the issue was more difficult when it came to Protestants. With the revolution, the Protestants of the
Prussian Union of Churches lost the king of Prussia as their leader. He had officially been the head bishop (
summus episcopus) of the Union with far-reaching rights, extending even to the shaping of the liturgy. Emperor Wilhelm II had taken the task very seriously, and after the revolution, many Protestants lacked an important figure by which to orient themselves. A considerable percentage of church-going Protestants voted for the anti-democratic and nationalistic DNVP. It was no coincidence that the motto of the Protestant church congress of 1927 was "".
Antisemitic influences, especially among theological faculties, also grew in strength. An ecclesiastical treaty with the Protestant regional churches in Prussia did not come about until 1931. On the state's side, it was promoted by Adolf Grimme (SPD), who had become minister of Culture. A "political clause" that regulated the state's objections to the filling of high church positions, similar to the Concordat with the Catholic Church, met with resistance from the church.
Prussia and the crisis of the Republic Blood May 1929 Using sometimes drastic measures, the Prussian government tried to oppose the increasing radicalization from both the Left and the Right. In December 1928, following political clashes between Communists, National Socialists and Social Democrats in Berlin, the city's police chief
Karl Zörgiebel issued a ban on all open-air demonstrations and gatherings. The ban applied to 1 May 1929,
International Workers' Day. The KPD ignored the ban and called for a mass demonstration. Fighting broke out between the police and KPD supporters. Zörgiebel had ordered a crackdown and, with the SPD's approval, was determined to set an example. The fighting – which came to be known as "
Blood May" – cost 33 lives, nearly 200 people were hurt and more than 1,200 arrests were made. The Prussian government pressed for a ban of the KPD and all its subsidiary organizations. Carl Severing, who at the time was German Minister of the Interior, rejected the idea as unwise and impracticable. Prussia then banned the
Alliance of Red Front Fighters (), a paramilitary group affiliated with the KPD. On 4 October 1930, Stahlhelm leader
Franz Seldte sharply attacked the "
Marxist" Prussian government at the Front-Line Soldiers' Day in
Koblenz. He announced a plan to call a
referendum for the premature dissolution of the Prussian Landtag. The Stahlhelm's move was supported by the DVP, DNVP and NSDAP, and 5.96 million Prussians signed the initiative to put the referendum on the ballot, slightly more than the necessary 20% of eligible voters. Under pressure from
Joseph Stalin and the
Comintern, which at the time considered the fight against the "social-fascist" SPD more important than resistance to the extreme Right, the KPD also supported the referendum. Especially because many Communist voters did not follow the party's lead, the referendum on 9 August 1931 failed due to low voter turnout. The tally showed 9.8 million votes in favor, which was 93.9% of those who had voted but only 37.1% of eligible voters. 13.4 million votes, or more than 50% of eligible voters, were needed.
Landtag election 1932 Elections in Prussia and several other states were scheduled to be held after the
German presidential election of 1932 in which Hindenburg, supported by the
German State Party (formerly the DDP), the Centre and the SPD, prevailed over Hitler and
Ernst Thälmann (KPD). Since Prussia's coalition parties had to assume that the democratic camp would fare badly in view of Germany's increasing political radicalization, the Landtag's rules of procedure were changed at the instigation of Ernst Heilmann, chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. A preliminary form of a
constructive vote of no confidence was introduced to prevent the minister president from being voted out of office by a purely negative majority – one without sufficient votes to elect a prospective successor. From then on, an absolute majority was required for the election of the minister president.
1932 Prussian coup d'état () , the German chancellor who initiated the
Prussian coup d'état The cabinet of German Chancellor
Franz von Papen exerted pressure behind the scenes to quickly elect a new minister president based on cooperation between the NSDAP and the Centre. Coalition negotiations took place, but the Centre was unwilling to elect a National Socialist minister president. On 11 June 1932, the Papen government warned that it would appoint a
Reich commissioner for Prussia if the situation was not resolved. The threat was made real after 18 people died on 17 July in violent clashes between supporters of the KPD, NSDAP and members of the police in
Altona, which was then a part of Prussia. Three days after the
Altona Bloody Sunday, President Hindenburg used his emergency powers under
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to relieve the members of the Prussian State Ministry of their posts and appoint Papen Reich commissioner for Prussia.
Franz Bracht of the Centre Party was named his deputy and replaced Carl Severing as minister of the Interior. A state of emergency was declared in Berlin and the
Province of Brandenburg. The police were placed under the command of General
Gerd von Rundstedt, and high-ranking leaders of the police were arrested. Papen and Bracht immediately began removing leading civil servants and other executives who were close to the parties of the Braun government and replacing them with conservative officials. There was no active resistance, such as a general strike called by the SPD and trade unions. In order to avoid provoking a civil war, the SPD's executive board had decided on 16 July not to oppose Papen with the resources available to it. In the words of Weimar historian
Heinrich August Winkler: The dismissal of Braun's caretaker government ended an unusual chapter in the history of Prussia. After 1918, the most reliable supporter of the Republic among all the German states was the one that emerged from the Hohenzollern domains. The old Prussia had not disappeared, but the political scene was controlled by the three Weimar coalition parties until the spring of 1932. Immediately after the , the great cleansing began. On the day of the
Prussian coup d'état, the caretaker government filed suit with the
Reich Constitutional Court in
Leipzig.
Hermann Heller represented the SPD parliamentary group and
Carl Schmitt the German government. On 25 October 1932, the court determined that the removal of the Prussian government had been illegal. The caretaker government was given the right to represent Prussia before the state's Landtag, the State Council, the
Reichsrat and the other states. The judges also ruled that a "temporary" appointment of Reich commissioners was constitutional. As a result, Prussia effectively had two governments: the Braun government, which had no access to the administrative apparatus, and the Reich commissioner's office, which controlled the government resources that wielded power. After the
de facto dismissal of the Braun government,
Joseph Goebbels summed up the situation in his diary: "The Reds have been eliminated. Their organizations offer no resistance. [...] The Reds have had their great hour. They will never come again." == National Socialist era (1933–1945) ==