The State of Thuringia (, ) was a state of the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933, of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 and of East Germany from 1949 to 1952. Following German reunification, the renamed Free State of Thuringia became a member state of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990.
The State of Thuringia formed in the aftermath of World War I and the German revolution of 1918–1919. The eight small Thuringian states that had been part of the German Empire drove out their ruling royal houses and adopted republican constitutions in 1918–1919. On 1 May 1920, all except Coburg, which chose to become part of Bavaria, combined to create the State of Thuringia within the Weimar Republic.
From the beginning, Thuringia's Landtag (state assembly) was politically fractured, leading to a series of short-lived, unstable governments. When the Communist Party was brought into a coalition in 1923, the German government sent troops into Thuringia's major cities to force the communist ministers to withdraw. In 1929 Thuringia became the first German state to have members of the Nazi Party in its government. The year they were in office is seen as Adolf Hitler's trial run for his rise to power. The Nazis gained full control of the Thuringian government in August 1932, five months before Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
After World War II, Thuringia became part of the Soviet Occupation Zone and then of East Germany. It was enlarged by the addition of the Erfurt district, which had been part of Prussia, and in 1948 Erfurt replaced Weimar as the state's capital. In 1952, Thuringia was split into three regional districts and formally dissolved by the East German government in 1958.
Historical background
The majority of the territory that became the Weimar Republic in 1918 had been part of the highly fragmented Holy Roman Empire (800–1806). At the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars of 1803–1815, the Empire was made up of over 300 individual states. The consolidations under Napoleon that set the stage for the post-war establishment of the 39-state German Confederation (1815–1866) largely bypassed the Thuringian region, as did the changes that brought about the North German Confederation (1866–1871) with its 22 member states, and the German Empire with 25.
Thuringia's splintered political makeup dates back to at least the 15th century and involved three noble houses, the Wettins, Reusses and Schwarzburgs. In the Treaty of Leipzig (1485), Albert and Ernest, the two sons of the Saxon Elector Frederick II, divided the territory belonging to the House of Wettin between themselves. The Albertine lands remained largely intact and eventually became the Kingdom of Saxony, while the territory Ernest received branched into numerous small duchies as inheritances were split over a period of many generations. After the Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg line died out in 1825, the six extant Ernestine duchies were reorganized under an arbitration ruling by King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony. It created the four duchies of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Meiningen and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.
The House of Reuss can be traced back to the early 14th century. In 1586 it divided its possessions into the Elder (Lower Greiz), Middle (Upper Greiz) and Junior Lines (Gera). The Middle Line died out in 1616; the other two, after periods of splitting and recombining, became principalities in 1778 (Elder Line) and 1848 (Junior Line).
Into the 15th century, the part of the Schwarzburg lands that became Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was held by the Albertine line of the House of Wettin and the part that became Schwarzburg-Sondershausen by the Ernestine line. After Saxon sovereignty over the area ended, the head of the Sondershausen branch was elevated to the rank of imperial prince in 1697; Rudolstadt followed in 1710.
All of the Thuringian states became members of the North German Confederation in 1866 and were constitutional monarchies in the German Empire (1871–1918). Their parliaments were single-chamber Landtags and had franchises that were more restrictive than that of the German Empire's Reichstag, which gave the vote to all men over the age of 25 with the exception of active members of the military and recipients of poor relief. In some but not all of the Thuringian states, voting was limited to men who paid direct taxes. Some also used indirect elections, in which the voters chose electors who then voted for the individual candidates. The most distinctive feature of Thuringian voting rights under the Empire was that all of their Landtags were composed of some combination of members appointed by the monarch, elected by the men who paid the highest taxes (or by manorial lords and the largest landowners), by cities, rural districts and/or clergy, and by members elected by the remainder of the eligible populace. In Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, for example, six members were appointed for life by the prince, six were elected by the male taxpayers who paid the most in taxes and six by the rest of the eligible voters.
German revolution and the free states
In the final days of World War I, when it became clear that Germany was facing defeat, the revolution of 1918–1919 broke out and brought down the German Empire and all of Germany's royal houses. The revolution began in late October 1918 when rebellious sailors at Kiel set up a workers' and soldiers' council and in early November spread the revolt across the rest of Germany. Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland on 10 November, and councils quickly took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed.
The revolution followed the same pattern when it reached the Thuringian states on 8 November. Workers' and soldiers' councils took control in all seven states, and by 23 November the last of the ruling monarchs (Prince Günther Victor, for Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) had abdicated. The revolution in the Thuringian states unfolded for the most part without violence and often within the framework of the states' existing constitutions. Typical of the sequence of events is the Free State of Saxe-Altenburg, where a workers' and soldiers' council took control on 9 November. Four days later, Duke Ernst II abdicated under pressure from both the council in Altenburg and the events in Germany as a whole. The state ministry (government) was then expanded to include a representative of the moderate left Social Democratic Party (SPD), and it scheduled an election for a new Landtag (state parliament) under universal and equal voting rights. The SPD won an absolute majority of the seats, and the Landtag went on to pass an interim republican constitution for the new Free State of Saxe-Altenburg in April 1919. The following month it ratified the preliminary agreement on the unification of the Thuringian states that it had helped work out with the other states, and on 1 May 1920 Saxe-Altenburg ceased to exist when it became part of the new State of Thuringia.
In Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the revolution led to the Duchy breaking apart. In the Coburg region, the revolution played out quietly, much as it did in Saxe-Altenburg and the other Thuringian states, but in Gotha events were more turbulent. It was the only region within the Thuringian states where the radical left Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) won a majority of the seats when it elected a new Landtag. The USPD favored the establishment of a council (soviet) republic, whereas the SPD, which dominated in Coburg, wanted a parliamentary republic. The election campaign in Gotha was overshadowed by the occupation of the city by Freikorps units that supported the SPD-led government in Berlin. They were sent in to disarm workers in Gotha who were seen as a potential threat to the Weimar National Assembly, which was meeting nearby. The occupation led to eight days of street fighting between the Freikorps and workers before the troops withdrew.
In spite of the USPD's dominance, Gotha's Landtag rejected a draft constitution that established a council republic and instead opted for a parliamentary republic. During the right-wing Kapp Putsch in Berlin in March 1920, striking workers in Gotha armed themselves and set up a 40-member executive council (). The government sent a Reichswehr unit to the city and serious clashes broke out, with 127 deaths counted before the fighting ended on 19 March. On 10 April the Berlin government implemented a Reichsexekution against Saxe-Gotha to resolve its government crisis. A state of emergency was imposed, a Reich commissioner took control in the Free State, the Landtag was dissolved and a new election held in which the USPD, although still the largest party, lost its absolute majority.
Gotha went on to become part of the new state of Thuringia when it was formed on 1 May 1920. In Coburg, the people voted in a referendum against joining Thuringia and instead merged into Bavaria on 1 July 1920.
The two former Reuss principalities merged into the People's State of Reuss in April 1919 before joining Thuringia in 1920.
Founding Calls to consolidate the numerous small monarchies of the Thuringian region and create a unified state began at least as far back as the Revolution of 1848. Many saw advantages in a larger economic and administrative community, along with the potential for improvements in the small states' financial situations. No substantive progress was made, however, until after the end of World War I and the fall of the German Empire. Representatives of Thuringia's workers' and soldiers' councils, the states and industrial trade associations met in Erfurt (then part of Prussia) on 10 December 1918. They voted to work towards the establishment of a 'greater' Thuringia that would include not only the eight small states of the former Empire but also the Thuringian areas of Prussia such as the Erfurt region. Few additional steps were taken in the short term amid the post-war problems of food shortages, political unrest and, crucially, the question of whether the successor state to the Empire would be federal or unitary.
In late March 1919, when it had become clear that the new Germany would remain federally structured and after all of the Thuringian states had elected parliaments, their representatives met in Weimar to begin discussing plans to form a unified state that would include the Thuringian regions of Prussia. On 29 April, Reuss's leading minister, , presented a draft “Community Agreement on the Merger of the Thuringian States” (the ). It proposed establishing a 12-member State Council () made up of representatives of the states and a 42-member People's Council () to be elected by the state parliaments. The State Council, acting as Thuringia's transitional government, met for the first time on 14 July 1919 in Weimar under the leadership of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach's state minister of the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP).
Discussions with Prussia regarding Erfurt and other Thuringian regions within Prussia failed due to its resistance to ceding any of its territory and to the desire of the majority of the regions' residents to remain in Prussia. In a referendum held on 30 November 1919, voters in Coburg chose not to join the new Thuringia, clearing the way for it to become part of Bavaria. The slightly reduced Thuringian People's Council met in mid-December, and the Community Agreement officially came into force on 4 January 1920. It marked the abandonment of the hopes for a 'greater Thuringia'. The 'lesser' Thuringia they had to accept included numerous exclaves that were surrounded by Prussia, Saxony or Bavaria, and a number of enclaves within it that belonged to either Prussia or Saxony.