Читать книгу The New German Constitution - René Brunet - Страница 14

The elaboration of the permanent Constitution lasted nearly seven months. There were preliminary drafts, drafts and supplementary drafts; which were studied in conference with the states, in sub-committees and committees, and in full session of the National Assembly with countless changes and modifications up to the last minute.

The man who was constantly in the breach throughout all this labour and who may be considered the principal author of the Constitution was Professor Preuss.

Before the Revolution he belonged to the Progressive Party; after which he joined the Democrats. Under-secretary of State for the Interior, on February 15, 1918; Minister of the Interior in Scheidemann’s cabinet of February, 1919; representative of the government at the National Assembly to discuss the Constitution when, in June, 1919, he left office; it was on him from the beginning to end that the chief burden of these discussions rested. Master of constitutional law he showed himself in politics essentially a realist. He fought stubbornly for the ideas he put forward in his first draft—the necessity of unifying the Reich and dismembering Prussia, the need of creating confidence in democracy, the superiority of a parliamentary régime. He fought for these to the very end with vigour of argument and such fertility of resources that the greater part of his ideas survived every attack. Certainly the definitive text of the Constitution is quite different from his original project; Preuss did not underestimate the forces and influences with which he had to deal; nevertheless he won great support on his principal issues and he is really the chief artisan of the work of Weimar.

The Constitution was adopted on July 31 by a vote of 262 for and 75 against. Those who voted against it were the German Nationalists, the German People’s Party, The Independents, The Bavarian Peasant Union, and several members of the Bavarian People’s Party, among them Dr. Heim.

It was promulgated and published on August 11, 1919, and became operative at once.

Having concluded peace and adopted the Constitution the National Assembly, it would seem, should have dissolved. But it did not. It had the authority to fix the duration of its mandate. The Assembly considered that its work was not finished on August 11, 1919, two tasks still remaining to be accomplished; the first of these to draw up and pass the principal laws needed for the application of the constitution. The latter in a number of its provisions necessitated the passing of a series of special laws and ordinary laws regulating details which, in the course of the deliberations on the Constitution, the members could not find time to enact or on which they had not been able to agree. Among such were laws regulating the election of the Reichstag and of the President of the Reich, laws on initiative and referendum, on the state of siege, the army, Workers Councils, and Economic Councils, laws regulating the transfer of railroads and postal systems of the various states to the control of the Reich, etc.

The Assembly in addition considered itself bound to study and pass laws of a character not necessarily constitutional but urgently needed by the Reich. In the front rank in importance were the laws designed to create the financial resources of which the Reich had great need in order to meet the enormous charges imposed upon it by the treaty of peace, the losses of five years of war and the increased public expenditure. It was also urgent to enact laws governing pensions and indemnities to the wounded, the mutilated, and the widows of the war, etc.

But from the moment the Constitution entered into force on August 11, Germany was under a new constitutional régime. It was no longer the régime of the Provisional Constitution of February 10, 1919; that Constitution was abolished by the definitive one. Nor had it as yet entered on the complete régime of the definitive Constitution; for that provided for a Reichstag, and no one would dream of calling a Reichstag to sit at the same time as the National Assembly. It was a transitional régime; from August 12, 1919, to June 6, 1920, the Constitution of August 11 was in force but the National Assembly performed the function of the Reichstag, and the President of the Reich, elected by the National Assembly, remained in office until the people should elect his successor (Article 180 of the Constitution).

In conformity with this decision on August 21, 1919, President of the Reich, Ebert, took the oath of allegiance to the new Constitution before the National Assembly in the course of its last session at Weimar.

From September 30 on, the Assembly sat in Berlin in the palace of the Reichstag, where it discussed and passed important financial legislation, which included “a law on the income tax”; another “on a consumption tax on liquors”; and still others dealing with “factory councils and with the relief of public distress throughout the Reich.”

In the early part of March, 1920, the parties of the Right, who hoped by means of new elections to obtain considerable increase in strength, submitted a proposal in which the Reich was asked to make known at once what projects for laws it expected to submit to the Assembly before its dissolution; and demanding that the Assembly submit as soon as possible proposals regulating the elections to the Reichstag, the election of the President, on initiative and referendum; and in addition proposing that the Assembly declare itself dissolved on May 1, 1920. This motion was defeated on March 10 after the Minister of Interior, Koch, had indicated the laws which still remained to be enacted. He insisted on the necessity of a profound study of the project of the law governing the election of the Reichstag; and that the first Reichstag of the Republic should not be elected according to the provisions of a temporary and little studied law. He declared that the National Assembly could not be dissolved nor the elections held before the autumn of 1920.

But two days later came the putch of Kapp and Lüttwitz. Berlin fell into the hands of a military faction who announced openly their determination to bring back the old régime. The regular government fled to Stuttgart, where it hastily convoked the National Assembly. A general strike was declared everywhere. Defeated by this, Kapp and Lüttwitz fled and the regular government came back to Berlin. But the workers refused to resume work without receiving first the guarantees they considered necessary against the return of the military dictatorship. Then followed also troubles in the Ruhr and the occupation of German cities on the right bank of the Rhine by Franco-Belgian troops.

All these events were too important and upset too profoundly the political situation to make it feasible to go on without an immediate consultation with the people of Germany. Therefore, after hastily enacting the last of the immediately urgent laws, particularly electoral provisions, the Assembly dissolved at the end of May, 1920.