Hugo PreuÃŸ

Hugo Preuss ( born October 28, 1860 in Berlin, † October 9, 1925 ) was a German constitutional lawyer and politician. The co-founder of the German Democratic Party ( DDP ) is considered the "father" of the Weimar Constitution.

Life and career

Preuss was born in 1860 into a Jewish merchant family. From 1879 he studied law at the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University and the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg. In 1883 he appealed to the Berlin Court of Appeal from his first state exam and received his doctorate in the same year at the Law Faculty of the Georg -August- University of Göttingen with an unpublished work in Roman Law ( Eviktionsregreß of defeated in possessorio buyer). He broke his clerk from but to become a scientist. In 1889 he qualified as a professor in constitutional law at the University of Berlin and worked, because it could not be Professor baptized there as a lecturer in public law. In 1891 he joined the Society of Friends at ( a Berlin Jewish club ). It was not until 1906 he got his first professorship at the newly established Graduate School of Berlin, in 1918 he became its rector.

As a student of Otto von Gierke Preuss was like this pendant of the organic theory of the state and the cooperative theory. With regard to the idea of self -government was to be modeled on the Prussian reformers Freiherr vom Stein.

Policy

After the November Revolution Preuss was appointed on November 15, 1918 Secretary of the Office of the Interior and asked to design a constitution. For this office and this task, the Council of People's Commissars had next to Prussian considered the appointment of Max Weber, which later - apparently because of Weber's dismissive attitude towards the revolution - was omitted. Preuss was in turn influenced by the parliamentary theory Robert Redslobs. The Constitution submitted by him on February 3, 1919, not fully implemented. Criticism came mainly from the conservative side, for which resembled the design to the very Paulskirchenverfassung; would have been on this side of the political spectrum, a reference to the Prussian constitution of 1848/ 50 is preferably. The critics were afraid particular centralization due to the reallocation of currently dominated by Prussia federal structure, and the abolition of the reserved rights. Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution allowed Hitler in 1933, the abrogation of fundamental and human rights.

In the cabinet Philipp Scheidemann Preuss was from February to June 1919 the first interior minister of the Weimar Republic. From him, the term authoritarian state, which he coined in 1916 came from.

Preuss was a member of the Reichsbanner black-red- gold. His Judaism took the Nazi propaganda later as an opportunity to discredit the Weimar Republic and its Constitution as " un-German ".

Honors

The square in front of the Federal Labour Court in Erfurt is named in his honor Hugo Preuss place.
A street in Kassel- Wilhelm height is named after him.
A bridge at Berlin's Humboldt harbor was 1928-1933 Hugo Preuss bridge. The successor building bears this name since 2004.
The family burial urn on the cemetery court in Berlin- Wedding is since 1952 an honorary grave of Berlin.

Works

Collected Writings. On behalf of the Hugo - Preuss -Gesellschaft eV 5 vols, ed. by Detlef Lehnert, Tübingen 2007ff. [ previously published 4 vols ], Volume 1: Politics and Society in the German Empire, 2007; Vol 2: Public law and legal philosophy in the Empire, 2009; Vol 3: Draft Constitutions, Constitutional comments, constitutional theory [not published ]; Vol 4: Policy and constitution of the Weimar Republic, 2008; Vol 5: Municipal Science and local politics, in 2012.
Francis Lieber, a citizen of two worlds. Habel, Berlin 1886 ( Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf )
Community, state, empire, 1889
The municipal office in Prussia, 1902
The development of the German town life. Volume 1: A History of the German cities Constitution, 1906
City and State, 1909
The German people and politics, 1915
Germany's republican constitution, 1921
From the authoritarian state to the People's State, 1921
To the Weimar Constitution, 1924
State, law and liberty. For forty years, German politics and history, Tübingen 1926 ( Collected Essays by Hugo Preuss, ed. Of Theodor Heuss )
Constitutional Political developments in Germany and Western Europe, ed. Hedwig Hintze, Berlin 1927
Empire and countries. Fragments of a commentary on the Constitution of the German Reich, ed. Gerhard Anschütz, Berlin 1928

402699