Whether the plebiscite is ordered by the government or results from popular initiative, it must, to be effective, satisfy the following conditions of majority. They must obtain (a) three-fifths of the total number of votes cast; (b) a majority of the votes of the inhabitants entitled to suffrage; (c) and finally when the question is one of dividing a territory which wishes to separate from its state, the population of the whole district or administrative division of which it was a part must be consulted; this in order to avoid break-ups due to parochial quarrels. In other words, the plebiscite must extend to the whole district even if the part that wishes to separate forms only a fraction of this district. Nevertheless [Article 18] provides for practical purposes one exception to this third condition. This refers to exceptional districts, that is to say, sections of territory that have no geographical kinship with the district to which they belong. In such a case a special law of the Reich could decide that the wish of the population of this special district is sufficient and that the entire population of the district to which it belongs need not be consulted.
The plebiscite having rendered an affirmative verdict the government of the Reich must submit to the Reichstag the project of law necessary to effect the changes in territory desired by the population.
(3) An ordinary law is sufficient to modify the outer boundaries of the state, that is to say, the frontiers of the Reich itself, when these are necessitated by a treaty of peace. When these modifications are to be effected otherwise than by the special case of a treaty of peace, the consent of the state affected must be obtained ([Article 78]).
Such are the provisions of the Constitution relative to the territorial status of the states, but it must be recalled that certain of these provisions—those which aim at territorial change based on the desires of the population but against the wishes of their state government—do not become operative until two years after the adoption of the constitution. Thus up to August 12, 1921, no parcel of the territory of Prussia, Bavaria, Hesse, Oldenburg, occupied by foreign armies, could be constitutionally taken away from their states without their wish. The aim pursued by the constituent Assembly in adopting this provision was to combat separatist attempts of powers whose armies occupy German soil, and to avoid all appearances and possibilities of dismemberment until revolutionary effervescence and political disorders shall have come to an end.
3.—THE CREATION OF A STATE—THURINGIA.
The provisions which we have elucidated have already been put into operation. A new state has appeared in the Reich created by the fusion of several former states.
Almost immediately after the revolution of November, 1918, a project was born in central Germany to fuse several states there and to form of their territories the state of “Thuringia.”
First the two states of Reuss reunited. On December 21, 1918, they organized an administration in common and the fusion became operative on April 4, 1919. This new state appeared thereafter as a sort of centre for crystallization. The first state to join this movement was the Republic of Altenburg, with which Reuss had many interests in common.
But this development toward the federation of states of central Germany was soon interrupted and seemed for a time even definitely arrested. The men who were pushing the project of extending this movement conceived the idea of the creation of a “Great Thuringia,” which would comprise important parts of Prussian territory and which would have as the economic and political centre and as capital the Prussian city of Erfurt.
The execution of this plan aroused violent opposition on the part of the government of Prussia, such as it manifested whenever the question came up of the separation from it of any part of its territory. It encountered also the strong objection on the part of the authorities and the population of Erfurt who preferred the present advantage of belonging to the most powerful German state rather than the possible benefit of becoming an important element in a new state. The project of a “Great Thuringia” was abandoned and the effort continued as before to form a state which should comprise all the states of Thuringia without appropriating any Prussian territory.