The December 1946 Bavarian state election was held on 1 December 1946 to elect the members of the First Bavarian Landtag. The election came after the dissolution of the Bavarian Constituent Assembly after the passing of the

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 ...

, which stipulated that a democratically elected Landtag would elect the Minister-President. It saw Bavaria's first democratically chosen Minister-President since

Heinrich Held Heinrich Held (6 June 1868 – 4 August 1938) was a German Catholic politician and Minister President of Bavaria. He was forced out of office by the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933. Biography Heinrich Held was born in Erbach in the Taunus, th ...

Background

Bavaria was completely occupied by American troops at the end of April 1945. General

George S. Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...

appointed

Christian democrat Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

Fritz Schäffer Fritz Schäffer (12 May 1888 – 29 March 1967) was a German politician of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) and the Christian Social Union (CSU). He was the Bavarian Minister of Finance from 1931 to 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Berlin ...

as interim Minister-President on 28 May 1945, before being dismissed by General

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

on 28 September 1945 due to Schäffer's past anti-Semitic positions, and hiring of ex-Nazis within his administration."Power Grabber"
''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', 20 February 1956, accessed: 27 May 2020. The ministry was then handed over to social democrat

Wilhelm Hoegner Wilhelm Johann Harald Hoegner (23 September 1887 in Munich – 5 March 1980 in Munich) was the second Bavarian prime minister (SPD) after World War II (1945–46 and 1954–57) and father of the Bavarian constitution. He has been the only Socia ...

, who oversaw the creation of a new Bavarian constitution in the spring and summer of 1946. To aid him, the Advisory State Committee was formed, with its members being appointed by the political parties or the state. The body was eventually dissolved, with direct elections being called for a Constituent State Assembly to oversee the passage of the Constitution. After the Constitution had been ratified by the State Assembly, the body was dissolved and elections were called for the first official

Landtag A Landtag (State Diet) is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence in non- ...

since the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

. On the same day of the Landtag elections, Bavaria held a plebiscite whether to affirm the newly written Constitution.
Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, accessed 27 May 2020

Results

The

regime had been installed by the American military forces in Germany and did not reflect the popular opinion of Bavarians. The Constitution stated that the Minister-President was to be elected by the Landtag, thus when the CSU gained a majority of the seats, the SPD entered a coalition with the CSU and WAV, with a CSU Minister-President,

Hans Ehard Hans Ehard (10 November 1887 – 18 October 1980) was a German lawyer and politician, a member of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria, Christian Social Union (CSU) party. Biography Hans Ehard was born in Bamberg in 1887, the son of a local off ...

. In September 1947, the SPD withdrew its ministers and the CSU abandoned its partnership with WAV, forming a sole majority government.
Bayerische Staatsregierung, accessed 29 May 2020 This was also the first election in post-war Bavaria that introduced the ten-percent rule, in which a seat would only be allotted to a candidate if they received at least ten percent of the vote in any given constituency. The KPD, while gaining a net positive in overall votes, failed to meet this requirement in any constituency and lost all of their seats.
Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, accessed 29 May 2020

Parties

The table below lists parties represented in the Constituent State Assembly of Bavaria. , - ! colspan="2" , Party ! Votes ! % ! +/- ! Seats ! +/- ! Seats % , - , bgcolor=, , align=left , Christian Social Union in Bavaria, Christian Social Union (CSU) , align= 1,593,908 , align= 52.3 , align= 6% , align= 104 , align= 5 , align= 56.1 , - , bgcolor=, , align=left ,

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) , align= 871,760 , align= 28.6 , align= 0.2% , align= 54 , align= 3 , align= 30 , - , bgcolor= , , align=left ,

Economic Reconstruction Union The Economic Reconstruction Union (Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung or WAV) was a German political party that was active immediately in Allied-occupied Germany after the Second World War. Although usually translated into English as the Economic R ...

(WAV) , align= 225,404 , align= 5.1 , align= 2.3% , align= 13 , align= 5 , align= 7.2 , - , bgcolor=, , align=left ,

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) , align= 185,023 , align= 6.1 , align= 0.8% , align= 0 , align= 9 , align= 0 , - , bgcolor=, , align=left , Free Democratic Party (FDP) , align= 172,242 , align= 5.7 , align= 3.2% , align= 9 , align= 6 , align= 5 , - ! align=right colspan=2, Total ! align= 3,048,337 ! align= 100.0 ! align= ! align= 180 ! align= ±0 ! align= , - ! align=right colspan=2, Voter turnout ! align= ! align= 75.7 ! align= 3.6 ! align= ! align= ! align= , - , colspan=8 align=left, Source
Statistik Bayern
an
Historisches Lexikon Bayerns

References

External links

Historisches Lexikon Bayerns

House of Bavarian Elections
{{DEFAULTSORT:1946 12 Bavarian state election 1946 elections in Germany Elections in Bavaria