People's State of Hesse

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People's State of Hesse Volksstaat Hessen
State of Germany
1918–1945
Flag Coat of arms
The People's State of Hesse (red) within the Weimar Republic
Anthem
Hessenlied "Song of Hesse"
Capital	Darmstadt
Area
• Coordinates	49°52′N 8°39′E / 49.867°N 8.650°E / 49.867; 8.650
• 1925	7,692 km2 (2,970 sq mi)
Population
• 1925	1,347,279
Government
• Type	Republic
President
• 1919–1928	Carl Ulrich
• 1928–1933	Bernhard Adelung
• 1933	Ferdinand Werner
• 1933–1945	Jakob Sprenger (as Reichsstatthalter)
Historical era	Interwar · World War II
• German Revolution	9 November 1918
• Constitution	12 December 1919
• Disestablished	19 September 1945
Preceded by Succeeded by Grand Duchy of Hesse Greater Hesse Rhineland-Palatinate

The People's State of Hesse (German: Volksstaat Hessen) was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1945, as the successor to the Grand Duchy of Hesse (German: Großherzogtum Hessen) after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, on the territory of the current German states of Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. The State was established after Grand Duke Ernest Louis was deposed on 9 November 1918. The term "People's State" referred to the fact that the new state was a Republic (rather than implying that it was a socialist state) and was used in the same manner as the term Free State, which was employed by most of the other German States in this period.

Like the Grand Duchy, the capital was Darmstadt and the state consisted of provinces Upper Hesse (German: Oberhessen, capital Gießen), Starkenburg (capital Darmstadt) and Rhenish Hesse (German: Rheinhessen, capital Mainz). The area of the state was 7,692 km²; it had 1,347,279 inhabitants in 1925. Around two-thirds professed Protestantism, the other third were Roman Catholics.

Under the Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich of 30 January 1934, the Nazi government abolished the People's State's Landtag and transferred sovereignty from the People's State to the Reich, converting Hesse into an administrative unit of the central government, though formally it retained some local government.

After the German surrender in May 1945, at the end of World War II, Upper Hesse and Starkenburg formed part of the American occupation zone, while Rhenish Hesse, on the left bank of the Rhine, fell within the French occupation zone. On September 19, 1945, American administrators merged the section of the People's State of Hesse with the Prussian provinces of Hesse and Nassau and Frankfurt am Main to form Greater Hesse (German: Groß-Hessen). Greater Hesse was renamed Hesse on December 1, 1946, and later became one of the federal states of West Germany. The parts of the state on the left bank of the Rhine became part of the new state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) on 30 August 1946.

On 8 November 1918, some of the troops stationed in Darmstadt revolted. Grand Duke Ernest Louis reacted by appointing a State Council (Staatsrat), composed of the Grand Duke, his ministers, and two members drawn from each of the parties represented in the Grand Duchy's parliament. The left-leaning parties in this council called for the Grand Duke's abdication, but he refused, and was supported in this by the National Liberal representatives on the Council: Arthur Osann [de] and Heinrich Köhler [de].

The next day, the Darmstadt Workers' and Soldiers' Council responded by declaring that the monarchy was abolished and entrusting Carl Ulrich, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Hesse, with the task of forming a government. A transitional government composed of Carl Ulrich (SDP), Heinrich Fulda [de] (SPD), Konrad Henrich [de] (Progress Party) and Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo [de] (Centre) was formed on 14 November. Although the republic had been unilaterally declared by the Workers' and Soldiers' Council, Carl Ulrich was a strong supporter of representative democracy. On 27 November, he instructed the state bureaucracy to accept instructions exclusively from the transitional government and not from the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. At the same time, free elections were scheduled for 26 January 1919.^[1] On 10 December 1918, the Ordinance for the election of a constitutional convention for the Republic of Hesse was published^[2] in the Hessian government's gazette, along with some basic laws, drafted by Carl Ulrich.

In accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, approximately 40% of the state's territory (in particular, Rhine Hesse and part of Starkenburg) was occupied by the French Army from January 1919 until June 30, 1930.

In the first state elections on 26 January 1919, the SPD received 44.5% of the vote and Ulrich formed a second cabinet with the German Democratic Party (DDP) and the Centre Party which took office in February.^[3] The state constitution came into force on 20 March 1920, and Ulrich continued in office as State-President (German: Staatspräsident). The SDP was re-elected in 1921 (32.6%), 1924 (35.2%), and 1927 (32.6%) and maintained the same coalition. After celebrating his 75th birthday in office in 1928, Ulrich retired and was succeeded as State-President by fellow Social Democrat Bernhard Adelung.

In the November 1931 elections, Adelung's coalition suffered a severe loss, winning only 37.1% of the vote (SDP: 21.4%, Centre: 14.3%; DDP: 1.4%^[4]). The Nazi party won 37.1% of the vote and the Communist Party won 13.6%. As a result, it was not possible for any party to form a government and Adelung remained in place as head of a caretaker government. In a second election on 19 June 1932, the Nazi party increased their portion of the vote to 44%, but it remained impossible for any party to form a government. After the Nazi victory in the March 1933 federal election, they strongly demanded control of the State government. On 13 March, the Centre Party agreed to form a coalition with the Nazi party and Ferdinand Werner [de] became State President.

The first step in the Nazification of the Free State was the appointment of Jakob Sprenger, the Gauleiter of Gau Hesse-Nassau, as Reichsstatthalter ('Reich lieutenant') of the State on 5 May 1933. Over the course of 1933, Sprenger reduced the government of the Free State through various ordinances and personnel decisions. Sprenger claimed the right to make such decisions even when his position as Reichsstatthalter did not legitimately entitle him to do so. By the end of the year, he had reduced the number of ministers from five to one minister and a state secretary, and had reduced the number of ministerial Beamte (civil servants) from 40 to nine. All ministries were united into a single "Hessian State Ministry" (Hessischen Staatsministerium) and Minister-President Werner lost the title of State President (Staatspräsident).

In the process, Spenger prevailed in a personal power battle with Minister-President Werner. Although Werner was a Nazi party member, he attempted to maintain a form of state administration which was more like the pre-Nazi form and he supported police commissioner Werner Best against the Sturmabteilung (SA). Above all, Werner fought against Sprenger's attempts to merge the Free State with the other territories of the Gau Hesse-Nassau (which were in the southern portion of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau). The conflict escalated when Sprenger sought to unite the four chambers of commerce within the Gau. Werner appealed directly to Adolf Hitler, but had no success. Finally, on 20 September 1933, Sprenger forced Werner to retire as Minister-President and appointed Philipp Wilhelm Jung in his place, who bore only the title of State Minister (Staatsminister).

The Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich of 30 January 1934 abolished the People's State's Landtag and transferred sovereignty from the People's State to the Reich. The state government was subordinated to the Reich government. The Reich government extended its constitutional authority over Hesse. Hesse ceased to possess independence and was henceforth a legal subject (Rechtssubjekt) of the central government, without the status of a state (Staatscharakter), though formally it remained a self-governing unit. After Sprenger and Jung came into conflict with one another at the start of 1935, Hitler appointed Sprenger as the head of government in the People's State in the Reichsstatthalter Law. The People's State was the second state of Germany, after the Free State of Saxony, in which the leadership of the local Nazi Gau had completely replaced the local state government. The deputy Gauleiter Heinrich Reiner became the State Secretary in Sprenger's State cabinet, which contained no other ministers.

On 1 April 1937, Sprenger promulgated a law abolishing the provinces of Upper Hesse, Rhenish Hesse, and Starkenburg.

After the German surrender in May 1945, at the end of World War II, the Rhine river formed the boundary between the French and American occupation zones, meaning that Rhenish Hesse was in the French zone, while the rest of the state lay in the American Zone.

On 14 April 1945, Ludwig Bergsträsser was entrusted by the US military government with the task of building a regional administration, as Chairman of a "German Government" (Deutsche Regierung) based in Darmstadt (his title was changed to "President" on 8 May 1945). Around the beginning of August, Bergsträsser's authority was extended over the whole of the former provinces of Starkenburg and Upper Hesse and his administration was renamed as the "German Government of the State of Hesse" (Deutsche Regierung des Landes Hessen).

After the proclamation of Greater Hesse by the American military administration on 19 September 1945, the Darmstadt-based "German government" was renamed the "Government President of Hesse" (Regierungspräsident Hessen) on 4 November 1945, and finally the "Government President of Darmstadt" (Regierungspräsident Darmstadt) on 21 January 1946. Thus the People's State became the Darmstadt Regierungsbezirk within the State of Hesse.

Rhine-Hesse became part of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946, as the Rhine Hesse Regierungsbezirk [de] (merged with the Rhenish Palatinate to create the Rheinhessen-Pfalz Regierungsbezirk in 1968, which was disbanded in 2000).

After the proclamation of the People's State on 9 November 1918,^[5] the first Landtag was elected on 26 January 1919. This parliament enacted a preliminary constitution for the new state on 20 February and began a process of consultations in the Landtag, which served as a constitutional convention. The final constitution of the state was promulgated on 12 December 1919.^[6] It was subsequently altered three times:

• Law of 4 November 1924^[7]
• Law of 27 September 1927^[8]
• Law of 28 March 1930^[9]

Under Article 17 ff. of the constitution, the Landtag consisted of seventy members, who were elected by proportional representation for a three year term. The minimum age for election was twenty-five. All male citizens over the age of twenty had the right to vote.^[10] The tasks of the Landtag were: legislating, passing a budget, electing the Minister-president ("Staatspräsident"), and confirming the selection of ministers. Under the Law on the Renovation of the Reich of 30 January 1934, the Landtag was abolished.

The seat of the Landtag was the Ständehaus on Luisenplatz in Darmstadt. The structure had been built between 1836 and 1839 and was destroyed during the Second World War. The site is now occupied by the main office of the Sparkasse Darmstadt [de].

Under Article 37 of the Hessian constitution, the Minister-President had the title of State-President ("Staatspräsident") and the cabinet was known as the "Entire Ministry" ("Gesamtministerium").

Under the Provisional Law and Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich of 31 March and 7 April 1933 and the Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich of 30 January 1934, the sovereignty of the German states was ended. After that, the state government's functions were mostly taken over by the regional branch of the Nazi Party, Gau Hesse-Nassau, which also controlled the neighbouring Nassau province of Prussia, and the position of Minister-President was held by the Gauleiter from 1935.

	State-President	Portrait	Term of office	Party	Coalition	Notes
	Carl Ulrich		1919–1928	SPD	SPD, DDP, Zentrum	State-President from 1920
	Bernhard Adelung		1928–1933	SPD	SPD, DDP, Zentrum
	Ferdinand Werner		1933	NSDAP		Elected State-President in March, State Presidency abolished and became Minister-President in May
	Philipp Wilhelm Jung		1933–1935	NSDAP		Minister-President
	Jakob Sprenger		1935–1945	NSDAP		As Reichsstatthalter from May 1933, also became Minister-President from March 1935 and Oberpräsident of the Province of Nassau from July 1944

The People's State inherited the Grand Duchy of Hesse's division into three provinces: Starkenburg, Rhenish Hesse, and Upper Hesse, which were themselves divided into a total of eighteen Kreise ("districts"). The state's territory also included eight exclaves of Baden and Prussia, and there were eleven Hessian enclaves within Baden.^[11]

After the abolition of provincial and district councils in 1936, the provinces were eliminated in 1937. In 1938, there was a comprehensive reform at the district level. The districts of Bensheim, Schotten, and Oppenheim were abolished on 1 November 1938, reducing the total number of districts to fifteen. At the same time, the cities of Darmstadt, Giessen, Mainz, Offenbach am Main, and Worms were made independent Stadtkreise ("urban districts").^[12] From 1 January 1939, all Kreise were renamed Landkreise ("rural districts").^[13] This arrangement of the districts remained in place until the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Upper Hesse [de] (Capital: Giessen) Stadtkreis Giessen (from 1938) Kreis Alsfeld [de] Kreis Büdingen [de] Kreis Friedberg [de] Kreis Giessen Kreis Lauterbach [de] Kreis Schotten [de] (until 1938)

Rhenish Hesse [de] (Capital: Mainz) Stadtkreis Mainz (from 1938) Stadtkreis Worms (from 1938) Kreis Alzey [de] Kreis Bingen [de] Kreis Mainz [de] Kreis Oppenheim [de] (until 1938) Kreis Worms [de]

Starkenburg (Capital: Darmstadt) Stadtkreis Darmstadt (from 1938) Stadtkreis Offenbach am Main (from 1938) Kreis Erbach [de] Kreis Darmstadt [de] Kreis Dieburg [de] Kreis Groß-Gerau Kreis Offenbach Kreis Bensheim [de] (until 1938) Kreis Heppenheim [de] (merged with Bensheim in 1938 to form Landkreis Bergstraße)[14]

• Knöpp, Friedrich (1983). "Der Volksstaat Hessen 1918–1933". In Schultz, Uwe (ed.). Die Geschichte Hessens. Stuttgart: Theiss. pp. 217–231. ISBN 3-8062-0332-6.
• Rebentisch, Dieter (1978). "Der Gau Hessen-Nassau und die nationalsozialistische Reichsreform". Nassauische Annalen. 89: 128–162.

• "Overview of the People's State of Hesse". www.gonschior.de (in German). Retrieved 16 October 2022.
• "Constitution of the People's State of Hesse (1919)". Verfassungen der Welt (in German). Retrieved 16 October 2022.