Politics in the dual capital of Berlin 1867-1918. Reciprocities, interdependencies and interferences between the politics of Prussia and the Reich from the Norddeutsche Bund until the end of the Kaiserreich
Final Report Abstract
The starting point of the project was the cultural-historical question about the interactions and the intercrossings between Prussian politics and imperial (Reich) politics in the dual capital of Berlin from 1867 to 1914 centering around the countless personal unions of the Prussian-German system of government: the German Kaiser was in addition King of Prussia, the chancellor of the German Reich was, moreover, prime minister of Prussia. There were, in addition, parliamentarians performing the dual role of members of the Reichstag and simultaneously of the Prussian Landtag. The classic research controversy of whether the Reich was "prussified'' (Sonderweg thesis) or Prussia was "imperialised" (unitarisation and parliamentarisation theses) seems to be under-complex against this background. The cultural-historical research of the interrelationship between the Prussian politics and the Reich politics revealed three dynamics that had an increasingly destructive effect on the Prussian-German system of government after the turn of the century: 1) the work overload in the Berlin parliamentary system, 2) the drifting apart of the party political majorities in the Reichstag and Landtag, and 3) the diametrical parliamentarisation tendencies in the Reichstag and Landtag. The result, according to the main thesis of the project, was therefore an increasing disintegration and destabilisation of the system of government in Imperial Germany.
Publications
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Die Tripolarität der Reichshauptstadt: Berliner Politik im Spannungsfeld von Reich, Staat und Kommune 1871-1918. In: Andreas Braune, Michael Dreyer, Markus Lang und Ulrich Lappenküper (Hrsg.): Einigkeit und Recht, doch Freiheit? Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in der Demokratiegeschichte und Erinnerungskultur. Stuttgart 2021, S. 121-142.
Bohnenkamp, Lennart
