(light gray) within the
German Empire (1871–1918) in 1925, with the
Free State of Prussia as the largest
Federalism has a long tradition in German history. Until the early 19th century, the majority of the territory that later became Germany was part of the
Holy Roman Empire, which in 1796 was made up of more than 300 individual political entities subject to the
Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. The number of states was greatly reduced during the
Napoleonic Wars (1796–1814), and the Empire itself was abolished in 1806. The
Congress of Vienna, which restructured Europe after the wars, created the highly federalized 39-state
German Confederation in 1815. The Confederation was dissolved after the
Austro-Prussian War (1866) in which Prussia defeated the
Austrian Empire and effectively excluded it from taking part in the eventual
unification of Germany. Following the war, the states of northern and central Germany united under the leadership of the
Kingdom of Prussia to form the federal
North German Confederation. During the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the four southern German states of
Bavaria,
Württemberg,
Baden and
Hesse-Darmstadt joined the North German Confederation, which was rechristened the
German Empire with Prussia's victory. The Reichstag and Federal Council (
Bundesrat) gave the Prussian king the title of
German Emperor (as of 1 January 1871). With only relatively minor changes that did not affect its federalized nature, the
North German Constitution became the
imperial constitution. The new
German Empire included 25 states (three of them
free cities) plus the imperial territory of
Alsace–Lorraine, which had been won from France in the war. Within the empire, 65% of the territory and 62% of the population belonged to Prussia. The
Treaty of Versailles at the end of
World War I stripped the former German Empire of 12 to 13 percent of its land area and population, the majority of it from Prussia. Only Alsace–Lorraine, which had never attained full statehood, was wholly lost to Germany. The new
Weimar Republic remained federal in nature, with a total of 17 states. Seven small states in east-central Germany consolidated into
Thuringia in 1920,
Coburg chose to merge into Bavaria (also in 1920), and Prussia absorbed
Pyrmont and Waldeck (1921 and 1929). During the Weimar period, there were a number of unsuccessful proposals to make radical changes to Germany's state structure,
seven short-lived unrecognized states, four of them self-declared soviet republics during the
German revolution of 1918–1919, plus two separatist republics in the
Rhineland in 1923/24. After the
Nazi Party seized power in January 1933, the states were gradually abolished and reduced to provinces under the Nazi regime via the process, as the states administratively were largely superseded by the
Nazi Gau system. Three changes are of particular note: on 1 January 1934,
Mecklenburg-Schwerin was united with neighbouring
Mecklenburg-Strelitz; and, by the
Greater Hamburg Act () of 1937, the territory of the city-state was extended, while
Lübeck lost its independence and became part of the Prussian
province of Schleswig-Holstein.
West Germany, 1945–1990 (blue) and
East Germany (red) and
West Berlin (yellow) During the
Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, internal borders were redrawn by the Allied military governments. New states were established in all four zones of occupation:
Bremen,
Hesse,
Württemberg-Baden, and
Bavaria in the
American zone;
Hamburg,
Schleswig-Holstein,
Lower Saxony, and
North Rhine-Westphalia in the
British zone;
Rhineland-Palatinate,
Baden,
Württemberg-Hohenzollern and the
Saarland which later received a special status in the French zone;
Mecklenburg(-Vorpommern),
Brandenburg,
Saxony,
Saxony-Anhalt, and
Thuringia in the
Soviet zone. No single state comprised more than 30% of either population or territory; this was intended to prevent any one state from being as dominant within Germany as Prussia had been in the past. Initially, only seven of the pre-War states remained: Baden (in part), Bavaria (reduced in size), Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse (enlarged), Saxony, and Thuringia. The states with hyphenated names, such as Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony-Anhalt, owed their existence to the occupation powers and were created out of mergers of former Prussian provinces and smaller states. Former German territory that lay east of the
Oder-Neisse line fell under either Polish or Soviet administration but attempts were made at least symbolically not to abandon sovereignty well into the 1960s. The former
provinces of
Farther Pomerania,
East Prussia,
Silesia and
Posen-West Prussia fell under Polish administration with the Soviet Union taking the area around Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), pending a final peace conference with Germany which eventually never took place. More than 8 million Germans had been
expelled from these territories that had formed part of the German-speaking lands for centuries and which mostly did not have sizable Polish minorities before 1945. However, no attempts were made to establish new states in these territories, as they lay outside the jurisdiction of West Germany at that time. In 1948, the military governors of the three
Western Allies handed over the so-called
Frankfurt Documents to the minister-presidents in the Western occupation zones. Among other things, they recommended revising the boundaries of the West German states in a way that none of them should be too large or too small in comparison with the others. As the premiers did not come to an agreement on this question, the
Parliamentary Council was supposed to address this issue. Its provisions are reflected in Article 29 of the
Basic Law. There was a binding provision for a new delimitation of the federal territory: the Federal Territory must be revised (paragraph 1). Moreover, in territories or parts of territories whose affiliation with a had changed after 8 May 1945 without a referendum, people were allowed to petition for a revision of the current status within a year after the promulgation of the Basic Law (paragraph 2). If at least one tenth of those entitled to vote in Bundestag elections were in favour of a revision, the federal government had to include the proposal into its legislation. Then a referendum was required in each territory or part of a territory whose affiliation was to be changed (paragraph 3). The proposal should not take effect if within any of the affected territories a majority rejected the change. In this case, the bill had to be introduced again and after passing had to be confirmed by referendum in the Federal Republic as a whole (paragraph 4). The reorganization should be completed within three years after the Basic Law had come into force (paragraph 6). Article 29 states that "the division of the federal territory into Länder may be revised to ensure that each be of a size and capacity to perform its functions effectively". In their letter to
Konrad Adenauer, the three western military governors approved the Basic Law but suspended Article 29 until such time as a peace treaty should be concluded. Only the special arrangement for the southwest under Article 118 could enter into force. Upon its founding in 1949,
West Germany thus had eleven states. These were reduced to nine in 1952 when three south-western states (
South Baden,
Württemberg-Hohenzollern, and
Württemberg-Baden) merged to form
Baden-Württemberg. From 1957, when the French-occupied
Saar Protectorate was returned and formed into the
Saarland, the Federal Republic consisted of ten states, which are referred to as the "
Old States" today. West Berlin was under the sovereignty of the Western Allies and neither a Western German state nor part of one. However, it was in many ways integrated with West Germany under a special status. A new delimitation of the federal territory has been discussed since the Federal Republic was founded in 1949 and even before. Committees and expert commissions advocated a reduction of the number of states; academics (
Werner Rutz,
Meinhard Miegel,
Adrian Ottnad, etc.) and politicians (
Walter Döring,
Hans Apel, and others) made proposals some of them far-reaching for redrawing boundaries but hardly anything came of these public discussions. Territorial reform is sometimes propagated by the richer states as a means to avoid or reduce
fiscal transfers.
Establishment of Baden-Württemberg In southwestern Germany, territorial revision seemed to be a top priority since the border between the French and American occupation zones was set along the Autobahn Karlsruhe-Stuttgart-Ulm (today the
A8). Article 118 stated "The division of the territory comprising
Baden,
Württemberg-Baden and
Württemberg-Hohenzollern into may be revised, without regard to the provisions of Article 29, by agreement between the concerned. If no agreement is reached, the revision shall be effected by a federal law, which shall provide for an advisory referendum." Since no agreement was reached, a
referendum was held on 9 December 1951 in four different voting districts, three of which approved the merger (
South Baden refused but was overruled, as the result of total votes was decisive). On 25 April 1952, the three former states merged to form Baden-Württemberg.
Petitions to reconstitute former states With the
Paris Agreements in 1954, West Germany regained (limited) sovereignty. This triggered the start of the one-year period as set in paragraph 2 of Article 29. As a consequence, eight petitions for referendums were launched, six of which were successful: • Reconstitution of the
Free State of Oldenburg 12.9% • Reconstitution of the
Free State of Schaumburg-Lippe 15.3% • Integration of
Koblenz and
Trier into
North Rhine-Westphalia 14.2% • Reintegration of
Rheinhessen into
Hesse 25.3% • Reintegration of
Montabaur into Hesse 20.2% • Reconstitution of
Baden 15.1% The last petition was originally rejected by the Federal Minister of the Interior by reference to the referendum of 1951. However, the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that the rejection was unlawful: the population of Baden had the right to a new referendum because the one of 1951 had taken place under different rules from the ones provided for by article 29. In particular, the outcome of the 1951 referendum did not reflect the wishes of the majority of Baden's population. The two
Palatine petitions (for a reintegration into Bavaria and integration into Baden-Württemberg) failed with 7.6% and 9.3%. Further requests for petitions (Lübeck, Geesthacht, Lindau, Achberg, and 62 Hessian communities) had already been rejected as inadmissible by the Federal Minister of the Interior or were withdrawn as in the case of Lindau. The rejection was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court in the case of Lübeck.
Saar: the little reunification In the
Paris Agreements of 23 October 1954, France offered to establish an independent "Saarland", under the auspices of the
Western European Union (WEU), but on 23 October 1955 in the
Saar Statute referendum the Saar electorate rejected this plan by 67.7% to 32.3% (out of a 96.5% turnout: 423,434 against, 201,975 for) despite the public support of Federal German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer for the plan. The rejection of the plan by the Saarlanders was interpreted as support for the Saar to join the Federal Republic of Germany. On 27 October 1956, the
Saar Treaty established that Saarland should be allowed to join Germany, as provided by the German constitution. Saarland became part of Germany effective 1 January 1957. The Franco-Saarlander currency union ended on 6 July 1959, when the
Deutsche Mark was introduced as legal tender in the Saarland.
Constitutional amendments Paragraph 6 of Article 29 stated that, if a petition was successful, a referendum should be held within three years. Since the deadline passed on 5 May 1958 without anything happening, the Hesse state government filed a constitutional complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court in October 1958. The complaint was dismissed in July 1961 on the grounds that Article 29 had made the new delimitation of the federal territory an exclusively federal matter. At the same time, the Court reaffirmed the requirement for a territorial revision as a binding order to the relevant constitutional bodies. The
grand coalition decided to settle the 1956 petitions by setting binding deadlines for the required referendums. The referendums in Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate were to be held by 31 March 1975, and the referendum in Baden was to be held by 30 June 1970. The threshold for a successful vote was set at one-quarter of those entitled to vote in Bundestag elections. Paragraph 4 stated that the vote should be disregarded if it contradicted the objectives of paragraph 1. In his investiture address, given on 28 October 1969 in Bonn, Chancellor
Willy Brandt proposed that the government would consider Article 29 of the Basic Law as a binding order. An expert commission was established, named after its chairman, the former Secretary of State Professor Werner Ernst. After two years of work, the experts delivered their report in 1973. It provided an alternative proposal for the two regions: the north and center-southwest. In the north, either a single new state consisting of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and Lower Saxony should be created (solution A) or two new states, one in the northeast consisting of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and the northern part of Lower Saxony (from
Cuxhaven to
Lüchow-Dannenberg) and one in the northwest consisting of Bremen and the rest of Lower Saxony (solution B). In the center and southwest, one alternative was that Rhineland-Palatinate (with the exception of the
Germersheim district but including the
Rhine-Neckar region) should be merged with Hesse and the Saarland (solution C), the district of Germersheim would then become part of Baden-Württemberg. The other alternative was that the Palatinate (including the region of
Worms) could be merged with the Saarland and Baden-Württemberg, and the rest of Rhineland-Palatinate would then merge with Hesse (solution D). Both alternatives could be combined (AC, BC, AD, BD). At the same time, the commission developed criteria for classifying the terms of Article 29 Paragraph 1. The capacity to perform functions effectively was considered most important, whereas regional, historical, and cultural ties were considered as hardly verifiable. To fulfill administrative duties adequately, a population of at least five million per state was considered as necessary. After a relatively brief discussion and mostly negative responses from the affected states, the proposals were shelved. Public interest was limited or nonexistent. The referendum in Baden was held on 7 June 1970. 81.9% of voters decided for Baden to remain part of Baden-Württemberg, only 18.1% opted for the reconstitution of the old state of
Baden. The referendums in
Lower Saxony and
Rhineland-Palatinate were held on 19 January 1975 (the percentages given are the percentages of those eligible who voted in favour): • reconstitution of the
Free State of Oldenburg 31% • reconstitution of the
Free State of Schaumburg-Lippe 39.5% • integration of
Koblenz and
Trier into
North Rhine-Westphalia 13% • reintegration of Rheinhessen into Hesse 7.1% • reintegration of Montabaur region into Hesse 14.3% The votes in Lower Saxony were successful as both proposals were supported by more than 25% of eligible voters. The Bundestag, however, decided that both Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe should remain part of Lower Saxony. The justification was that a reconstitution of the two former states would contradict the objectives of paragraph 1 of article 29 of the constitution. An appeal against the decision was rejected as inadmissible by the Federal Constitutional Court. On 24 August 1976, the binding provision for a new delimitation of the federal territory was altered into a mere discretionary one. Paragraph 1 of Article 29 was rephrased, with the provision that any state had to be "of a size and capacity to perform its functions effectively" put first. The option for a referendum in the Federal Republic as a whole (paragraph 4) was abolished, which meant territorial revision was no longer possible against the will of the population affected by it.
Reunited Germany, 1990–present East Germany had originally consisted of five states (i.e., Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia). In 1952, these states were abolished and the East was divided into
14 administrative districts called
Bezirke.
Soviet-controlled
East Berlin – despite officially having the same status as
West Berlin – was declared East Germany's capital and its 15th district. The debate on territorial revision restarted shortly before
German reunification. While academics (Rutz and others) and politicians (Gobrecht) suggested introducing only two, three, or four states in East Germany, legislation reconstituted the East German states in an arrangement similar to that which they had had before 1952, as the five "
New States" on 3 October 1990. The former district of East Berlin joined West Berlin to form the new state of Berlin. Henceforth, the 10 "old states", plus 5 "new states", plus the new state of Berlin, add up to the current 16 states of Germany. After reunification, the constitution was amended to state that the citizens of the 16 states had successfully achieved the unity of Germany in free self-determination and that the
West German constitution thus applied to the entire
German people. Article 23, which had allowed "any other parts of Germany" to join, was rephrased. It had been used in 1957 to reintegrate the
Saar Protectorate as the
Saarland into the Federal Republic, and this was used as a model for German reunification in 1990. The amended article now defines the participation of the
Federal Council and the 16 German states in matters concerning the
European Union. Article 29 was again modified and provided an option for the states to "revise the division of their existing territory or parts of their territory by agreement without regard to the provisions of paragraphs (2) through (7)". Article 118a was introduced into the Basic Law and provided the possibility for Berlin and Brandenburg to merge "without regard to the provisions of Article 29, by agreement between the two with the participation of their inhabitants who are entitled to vote". A state treaty between Berlin and Brandenburg was approved in both parliaments with the necessary two-thirds majority, but in a popular referendum of 5 May 1996, about 63% voted against the merger. The German states can conclude treaties with foreign countries in matters within their own sphere of competence and with the consent of the federal government (Article 32 of the Basic Law). Typical treaties relate to cultural relationships and economic affairs. Some states call themselves a "
free state" (). It is merely a historic synonym for "republic" and was a description used by most German states after the abolition of monarchy after
World War I. Today, is associated emotionally with a more independent status, especially in Bavaria. However, it has no legal significance. All sixteen states are represented at the federal level in the (Federal Council), where their voting power depends on the size of their population. ==Politics==