The 1932 Prussian coup d'état or Preußenschlag (German pronunciation: [ˈpʁɔʏsənˌʃlaːk]; lit. 'Prussian hit') took place on 20 July 1932, when Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, at the request of Franz von Papen, then Reich Chancellor of Germany, replaced the legal government of the Free State of Prussia with von Papen as Reich Commissioner. A second decree the same day transferred executive power in Prussia to the Reich Minister of the Armed Forces Kurt von Schleicher and restricted fundamental rights.
Papen had two rationales for the coup. One was that the 1932 Prussian state election had left a divided parliament with no viable possibilities for a coalition. This led to a caretaker government under the coalition that had held power before the election, with no clear path to replacing it with a new governing coalition. The second and major rationale was that in parts of Prussia there were violent street demonstrations and clashes taking place that Papen said the caretaker government could not control.
The immediate result was elimination of the last resistance in Prussia to Papen's attempt to establish a "New State", essentially a precursor to a restored monarchy. However, the coup also weakened the federalist Constitution of the Weimar Republic and ultimately facilitated the centralization of the Reich under Adolf Hitler after he was appointed chancellor in January 1933.
Historical context
Discussions about a reorganization of the Reich
Since the late 1920s the relationship between the Reich and Prussia had been the subject of discussion by the League for the Renewal of the Reich (Bund zur Erneuerung des Reiches), a group to which von Papen belonged. The aim of the circle, often called the Luther League after its founder Hans Luther, a former Reich chancellor and president of the Reichsbank (1930–1933), was to strengthen the Reich's central power, reorganize northern Germany, especially Prussia, which was by far the largest state in Germany, and create an authoritarian presidential regime. The program included having the Reich president, the Reich government and the Reichstag replace the Prussian government and parliament, and empowering the chancellor to appoint provincial commissioners. It was assumed that Prussia, contrary to the interest of the entire nation, was as a state pursuing hegemony within the existing national structure. A comprehensive segmentation and disempowerment was proposed.
In 1928 a conference of the states, consisting of members of the Reich cabinet and all of the state minister presidents, came to the joint resolution that the relationship between the Reich and the states in the Republic was unsatisfactory and in need of fundamental reform, and that a "strong Reich power" was necessary. A constitutional committee was appointed to draw up workable proposals for constitutional and administrative reform and for prudent financial management.
On 21 June 1930 the assessments were presented. The four main points as laid out by the architect of the reform plan Arnold Brecht, then Ministerial Director of the Prussian State Chancellery and later the main representative of the Prussian government in the lawsuit against the emergency decree, were as follows:
- unite the central administration of the Prussian state government with the central administration of the Reich government
- unite the central authorities of the Prussian state government with those of the Reich
- eliminate Prussia as a state
- place the thirteen Prussian provinces, including Berlin, under the direct control of the Reich government as new states
The reform effort faced objections primarily from Bavaria and Prussia. Bavaria, the second largest state, objected because it feared that the proposal would immediately unify the northern German states while the south would gain only a reprieve from becoming part of a unified, non-federal Reich.
Political developments made implementation of the program impossible, but, as the political scientist Everhard Holtmann wrote, "core elements of the reform package, such as the abolition of Prussia's statehood, were [...] henceforth employed in a targeted manner in the domestic power struggle."
Papen's idea of a 'New State'
Papen's initiative for the Prussian coup is to be understood within the context of the plan for the establishment of a ‘New State’, a concept propagated above all by Walther Schotte – a journalist and historian who provided Papen with ideas and theories – and Edgar Jung, a lawyer and anti-democratic journalist. They did not favor the National Socialists but rather wanted to create the precursor to a monarchy, an authoritarian presidential regime with a chancellor dependent on the confidence of the president and a parliament severely limited in its rights, similar to the government under the constitution of the German Empire. Papen's long-term goal was to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. The ‘New State’ was to stand above particularist interests and provide the necessary security, order, and tranquility for economic development.
Situation in Prussia after the state elections of 24 April 1932
The Free State of Prussia had been governed since 1920 by a stable coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Catholic Centre Party and the German Democratic Party (DDP). In the 1932 Prussian state election of 24 April, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) won 162 seats and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 57, a total of 219 out of 423, or 52%. All other parties together won only 204 seats, or 48%. The NSDAP and KPD would not work together, and none of the other parties could form a government with a parliamentary majority without the support of one of the anti-democratic parties, something that none of them was willing to accept. That meant that after the formal resignation of the previous state government – the third cabinet of Otto Braun – it remained in office on a caretaker basis in accordance with Article 59 of the state constitution. With parliamentary rules having recently been changed to require an absolute majority for the election of a minister president, it was possible that the caretaker government could continue on indefinitely. The situation was similar to that in Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, Württemberg and Hamburg, although the Reich government did not concern itself with them.
Papen's and Hindenburg's approach
A center-right government in Prussia consisting of the NSDAP (162 seats) and the Centre Party (67 seats) with a 53% majority was technically possible. Together with the 31 seats of the nationalist-conservative German National People's Party (DNVP), the coalition would have had as many as 260 of 423 seats. Reich Chancellor von Papen sought such a coalition, but the NSDAP claimed power for itself alone. On 7 June 1932, Papen, although not formally authorized to do so, asked Hanns Kerrl, president of the state parliament and a member of the NSDAP, to replace the caretaker Prussian government with an elected one, something Kerrl was unable to guarantee due to the failure of coalition negotiations to that point.
As a result, Papen considered other possibilities. The first was to carry out the long-debated Reich reform which would have dissolved or divided Prussia. Because such a path would have achieved its goal only in the long term, was difficult to accomplish and highly controversial, he favored another option. He planned to appoint a Reich commissioner in place of the previous government and to enforce the new order, if necessary with the help of the Reichswehr.
For this he had certain precedents. Reich President Friedrich Ebert of the SPD had issued a Reich execution (Reichsexekution) – an intervention against an individual state led by the central government to enforce national law – during 1923's German October. In the face of Communist Party participation in democratically elected left-wing governments in Saxony and Thuringia, the forcible removal of the governments had been justified by the fact that peace and order were endangered in the two states.
Papen found an analogous justification for Prussia in the clashes culminating in the Altona Bloody Sunday of 17 July 1932 which involved the Nazi SA, which had just had the ban against it lifted by the Papen government, and the Communists and their supporters. The deadly confrontations and ensuing police action differed markedly from the Reich execution against Saxony in 1923. Then there had indeed been doubts about the loyalty of Saxony's left-wing government to the constitution and its willingness to take police action, but there was no question of this in Prussia's case.
Three days earlier, on 14 July, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg had at Papen's request signed an undated emergency decree pursuant to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which allowed the Reich president, with the chancellor's co-signature, to take the necessary measures, including use of the military, to restore public security and order if they were endangered. By means of the decree Hindenburg authorized the Reich Chancellor to become Reich Commissioner for Prussia and enabled him to remove the caretaker Prussian government from office. By not dating the decree, Hindenburg left to Papen the choice of the time at which to make use of the power. Papen chose 20 July.
The third option, which would have consisted of waiting and leaving Prussia's caretaker minority government in office and trusting that it would get the situation under control even without a parliamentary majority, was one that Papen from the outset did not consider.
Course of the coup
On 20 July 1932, Prussia's Deputy Minister President Heinrich Hirtsiefer, in place of the acting but ill Minister President Otto Braun, along with Interior Minister Carl Severing and his colleague from the finance department Otto Klepper, went to see Papen at his request. Papen informed the constitutional ministers about the Hindenburg decree that allowed him to be installed as Reich commissioner and for the caretaker government to be removed. He said that the step was necessary because it appeared that "public safety and order in Prussia could no longer be guaranteed". A state of emergency was declared with immediate effect, and the Reichswehr minister was appointed as holder of executive power. Prussia's representatives objected to the coup saying that Prussia had not violated any of its responsibilities under the Reich constitution and its laws, and had done as much for security as the other states even though its jurisdiction included the areas of greatest unrest. The Braun government therefore challenged the constitutionality of the emergency decree. Severing responded negatively to Papen's suggestion that he voluntarily relinquish his official duties, saying that he would "yield only to force".
Otto Klepper reported a year later in an essay in the exile newspaper The New Journal that he had hoped that Severing would resist after he made his declaration, especially since both Papen and Interior Minister Wilhelm von Gayl, who was also present, had seemed very uncertain. "I suggested that we recess the meeting with Papen for an hour to discuss further action by the Prussian government and went to the door. But Severing declared that he had nothing more to discuss with me, and remained seated. Only then – after it was certain that no resistance was in the offing – was State Secretary Erwin Planck given the order to set the command to the Reichswehr in motion."
In the afternoon of the same day, Severing, who as interior minister commanded a force of 90,000 Prussian police officers, let himself be led out of his office and ministry by a delegation consisting of the police chief whom Papen had just appointed and two police officers. At 11:30 a.m. Papen had imposed a military state of emergency under the Reichswehr – a national force of 100,000 men – and, after the Prussian government backed down, occupied the Prussian Interior Ministry, the Berlin police headquarters and the headquarters of the Schutzpolizei (protective police).
The Berlin police chief Albert Grzesinski, his deputy Bernhard Weiß, and the commander of the protective police, the Centre Party politician Magnus Heimannsberg, were taken into custody and released the next day, after they had bound themselves in writing to engage in no more official acts. Immediately after the dismissal of the state government, a large-scale purge began. Numerous officials who had belonged to the previous coalition parties, especially the SPD, were put on temporary retirement and replaced by conservative officials, the majority of them German nationalists. This step, in addition to affecting the cabinet of Otto Braun, was directed especially against Social Democratic provincial presidents and leading Social Democrats within police organizations. Following a decree issued on 12 November 1932, those who had been placed on retirement were either dismissed or delegated to the provinces. In this way 69 ministerial officials with republican sentiments were sidelined. In addition to members of the Braun cabinet, they included among others Carl Steinhoff, vice-president of the province of East Prussia, and Carl Freter, district administrator of Calau in Brandenburg.