The Constitution of Hesse, signed on the December 1, 1946, is the constitution of the German state of

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

Origins

A committee was formed for the preparation of the draft

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When ...

and made up of 12 participants from each party. Participants of the advisory state committee (German: beratender Landesausschuss) February 26 - July 14, 1946 were, among others, Walter Fisch and Eleonore Wolf. On June 30, 1946 elections were held for the state constitutional convention (Ger: verfassungsberatende Landesversammlung). Out of a total election turnout of 71%, the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

(SPD) got 44.3% of the delegates, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 37.3%, the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...

(KPD) 9.7% and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) got 6%. There were 51 participants at the state constitutional convention July 15 - November 30, 1946. Other people involved in the development of the Hesse Constitution: * Dr. Valentin Heckert. Drafted as assistant secretary of state (Ger.: Ministerialdirektor) for the production of a draft of the new constitution. He got involved with, among other things, the democratization of the police. *

Oskar Müller Oskar Müller (25 June 1896 – 14 January 1970) was a German politician who was the first employment minister in Hesse after World War II. Early career Müller was born in Wohlau in Prussian Silesia as the son of a farmer. He fought in World ...

, Labor Secretary (Ger.: Arbeitsminister) of the first Hesse government. *

Emil Carlebach Emil Carlebach (10 July 1914, Frankfurt, Hesse-Nassau - 9 April 2001) was a Hessian Landtag member, a writer, and a journalist. He was born and died in Frankfurt am Main. Life Emil Carlebach was descended from a family of rabbis who had practiced ...

, delegate of the first parliament and publisher of the German daily,

Frankfurter Rundschau The ''Frankfurter Rundschau'' (FR) is a German daily newspaper, based in Frankfurt am Main. It is published every day but Sunday as a city, two regional and one nationwide issues and offers an online edition (see link below) as well as an e-pa ...

. The state convention adopted the historic Hesse Constitutional Compromise on September 30, 1946. On December 1, 1946, the Hesse Constitution took effect by popular vote as the first German postwar constitution, with 76.4% for the entire constitution and 72% for socialization article 41. Article 41 provided for socialization in the mining, iron and steel sectors, as well as in energy and transportation. Other points of constitutional importance were recognition of the dignity and humanity of people; in the economic sphere, this included the right to work, the

eight-hour workday The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. An eight-hour work day has its origins in the 1 ...

, minimum 12 days of vacation, the right to strike, as well as a uniform industrial law for workers, employees and officials in which lockout is prohibited. Due of the recency of historical events under Nationalsocialism, the social aspects of the constitution went much further than they did in constitutions adopted later on by the other Federal states in Germany. Article 21 used to be a legal curiosity. According to it, the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

may be imposed for particularly grave crimes. Article 21 was changed in 2018 and its content replaced with ''The Death penalty is abolished'' so that it mirrors the Federal Constitution. Before that, Article 21 was no longer in effect due to the abolishment of the death penalty at the level of the Federal constitution. The same goes for lockout, which is unlawful according to the Hesse constitution.

References

External links

Originaltext der Verfassungsurkunde für das Großherzogtum Hessen vom 17. Dezember 1820 (auf documentArchiv.de)

* ttp://www.hessenrecht.hessen.de/gesetze/10_1verfassung/10-1-verfass/verfass.htm Verfassung des Landes Hessen {{Authority control

Hesse law 1946 in law