The New German Constitution

by René Brunet

There are only collectivities that are according to different circumstances more or less broad in power. They differ one from another not in quality or in nature but in the quantity, in the total powers which they may exercise. Here all one can ask is, whether the states, as they are defined by the Constitution, resemble more the type generally called a state, or the type generally called autonomous province; and one can say, if one wishes, that they are more the former than the latter.[17]

2.—PRUSSIA AND THE REICH.

There is a second question of more immediate interest; and that is to know how the political forces in the Reich are divided and in what relation they find themselves one to another.

The Constitution has increased the power of the central state already great under the old régime as compared with the individual states; the states have lost considerably in their importance and this in the measure that the Reich has gained. They have undoubtedly the theoretical right to legislate; but the Reich legislates on all matters of any importance and the legislative domain of the states is thereby reduced almost to nothing.

They have in principle judiciary and administrative services, but in all important respects such as relations with foreign states, military administration, railroads, waterways, posts and telegraphs, their authority has been taken away; the whole domain of financial legislation has also passed to the Reich and they can no longer exist except through subsidies from the Reich.

They have a territorial sovereignty; but a constitutional law, and in certain cases even an ordinary law may modify that territory against their will.

They still have their citizens; but every German may exercise in every state of the Reich the same rights and duties as those exercised by a citizen of his own state.

In reality the states no longer count and the Reich is all powerful. Such is the situation in which the centralizing tendencies of the Constituent Assembly have culminated. But we come back to it in a problem that presents itself as follows: Has Prussia retained the hegemony which it exercised actually under the Empire and has it kept it to the extent that any increase in the centralizing character of the republic will only increase the power of Prussia in the Germany of to-day? Professor Schücking said one day to the National Assembly that all history of Germany past and future can be summed up with, “Up to 1867 Prussia was against the Reich; from 1867 to 1918 Prussia was above the Reich; the Reich must hereafter be above Prussia.”[18] Will this consummation ever be attained? To what extent has the Prussian hegemony been diminished since November, 1918?

The Constitution embodies several important provisions affecting this question. Prussia has lost all the advantages it derived from the fact that the German Emperor was the King of Prussia; the privileges it enjoyed in the legislative initiative, in military matters and in fiscal affairs have disappeared; the Bundesrat, in which it played a preponderant rôle, and which was in itself the most powerful organ of the Empire, is now reduced to a Reichsrat which can no longer prevent anything. There is no longer a Chancellor nominated by an Emperor-King and chief of all the politique of the Empire and of the entire administration; the powers of the Emperor have been transferred to the President of the Reich elected by all the people; Prussia may even against its will—though not for two years, it is true—be deprived of several sections of its territory and see them erected into new states or attached to still other states. All these diminutions of right have been consented to by Prussia itself. Are they sufficient to suppress totally the political domination which Prussia exercised over the German states, small and great? It does not seem so, for there still remains this paramount fact: Prussia represents four-sevenths of the total population of the Reich; that is to say, Prussia alone has the majority. The Reich being a democracy wherein the majority is sovereign Prussia is assured in important questions of the opportunity to impose its will always on Germany.

The remedy is evidently to divide Prussia into several states. But the Constituent Assembly did not have the desire—or the force—to resort to this; so that to-day Prussia is still above the Reich.