Federalism in the Nazi State

Abstract

In 1928 the Länder conference, which had been convened to discuss a reform of the federal structure of the Reich, had concluded its delibera­tions with the statement that ‘the regulation of the relationships between Reich and Länder’ was ‘unsatisfactory’ and required ‘a funda­mental reform’.¹ The problem had two aspects. On the one hand, there was the lack of geographic and demographic proportion between the sixteen Länder or states that made up the German Reich, which ranged in size from Prussia with three fifths of the area of the Reich and 61 per cent of its population to tiny Schaumburg-Lippe with only 53 195 inhabitants (1941);² seven of the Länder had fewer than half a million. On the other hand, there was the issue of the distribution of power and governmental responsibilities between the central Reich institutions and the Länder, which possessed their own governments and parliaments and exercised a wide measure of control over their own internal administration, including the police, judicial and educa­tional systems, and cultural affairs.