Hömig, Herbert: Das preußische Zentrum in der Weimarer Republik, Mainz 1979

Herbert Hömig: Das preußische Zentrum in der Weimarer Republik.

Prussian domestic policy after the First World War has recently attracted increasing interest from scholars. In addition to biographical publications on the important Social Democratic minister-president Otto Braun, numerous studies on the evolution and organization of the civil service and state apparatus have appeared, as well as on economic and domestic policy up to Papen’s »Preußenschlag« of 20 July 1932 (when that Reich chancellor deposed the Prussian government by decree). This scholarship has helped establish the fact that the »Prussian system’s« often cited stability rested not least on the long-lasting alliance between the SPD and the Center Party. In contrast, no such stable majority coalition was achieved at the national level from 1920 onward.

Herbert Hömig’s study is the first to investigate the politics of the Center Party faction in the Prussian Landtag (provincial parliament) between 1929 and 1933, in connection with Prussian and Reich domestic policies. Hömig elaborates the successes in cultural policy, such as securing confessional schools and the training of religion teachers, the laws governing priests’ pay, and the concordat of 1929. He also examines the effects of the Center Party’s demands for Catholic parity in the civil service and the schools. These proved decisive arguments for the Prussian Center Party leadership under Felix Porsch and Joseph Heß in internal debates on behalf of a coalition with the Social Democrats. That coalition succeeded in holding its parliamentary basis until the National Socialist election victory of 24 April 1932. Hömig also gives an account of the Center Party’s controversial exchanges with the NSDAP over forming a new government after Prussia’s Gleichschaltung (alignment) in July 1932.