So in 2018 I shared with y'all a map showing a proposal by the German jurist and politician Hugo Preuß about redrawing the borders of the states of the Weimar Republic [here].
Recently I've been on a new research binge on the subject and I wanna share some fascinating new findings about proposals to redraw Germany's internal borders.
First, while I can't a high-quality version of it, I'm linking [here] a map from 1919 by the German historian Walther Vogel in a small publication titled "Deutschlands bundesstaatliche Neugestaltung", which clearly aimed to incorporate both German Austria, while also still using Germany's imperial borders elsewhere.
Secondly, there's an excellent booklet titled "Die Neugliederung Deutschlands Grundlagen - Kritik - Ziele und die Pläne zur "Reichsreform" von 1919 - 1945" by Werner Münchheimer, which I also can't find online, that covers at least five proposals at reorganizing Germany in the interwar era in great detail, including Preuß's plan. I have found an article in German [here] that shows four of them in a low resolution. To summarize these plans:
- in the Baumann-Plan (from 1923 and largely based on the ideas of an industrial engineer) included the idea that Prussia should be dismantled and that a state covering the Rhine-Ruhr industrial area should be created, almost identical to the future state of North Rhine-Westphalia
- the 1927/28 Scheu-Plan proposed to divide Germany into nine economic zones, with a highlight for me being the Baltic economic zone, covering Mecklenburg, Pommerania, and East Prussia
- the 1926 Weitzel-Plan (sometimes also known as the "Frankfurter Entwurf", or Frankfurt proprosal), modified in 1930 by the economic Erich Obst, suggested twelve states, including a partition of Bavaria into two states and the creation of a massive Rheinfranken state covering most of modern day Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg
- the 1943 Schulenberg-Plan (also known as the "Plan der großen Einheiten", plan of large units), which suggested the creation of eleven states, and, as its alternative name implies, most of them are big, except East Prussia and Lower Saxony, which would only consist of the southern portions of the province of Hannover and the Free State of Brunswick (while the rest of Hannover would be partitioned between the new states of Niederrhein-Westfalen and Nordsachsen)
I do hope to get my hands on a copy soon, because it's still available for purchase by the university that issues that booklet originally. We'll see. It supposedly has ten maps in its 64 pages, which would be wonderful to study more in-depth.
Lastly I wanna share four maps from an article by Rudolf Hrbeck titled "Das Problem der Neugliederung des Bundesgebietes" (the problem of reorganizing the federal territory), published in 1971, and available online by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung [here]. It covers the proposals to redraw German state borders in the late 60s and early 70s.
These first two were made in the context of the Rhineland-Palatinate state being in financial strains at the time. The first of these is the Krausse-Modell, which was proposed in 1969 by the then-minister of the interior of Baden-Württemberg. sought to merge the Hessian towns of Lampertheim & Viernheim, the former Bavarian Palatiante, and the Saarland into Baden-Württemberg, while attaching the remainder of Rhineland-Palatinate to Hesse. The justification for this was to ensure continuity between the Rhine-Main area (within Hesse) and the Rhine-Neckar area (within BaWü).
What's fascinating to me is that this proposal didn't touch the municipalities of Hirschhorn, Michelbuch, and Neckarsteinach, which are disconnected parts of the Hessian district of Bergstraße (just like Lampertheim and Viernheim), and which are very close to Heidelberg. In fact Neckarsteinach even has a light rail connection to Heidelberg and a ferry service over the Neckar river to BaWü. Also, based on when the proposal was made, I presume that the villages of Hüttenfeld, Hofheim, and Rosengarten weren't included in the transfer of Lampertheim to Baden-Württemberg, since they only were joined to Lampertheim in the late 70s.
The second proposal shown in this image, the Osswald-Modell (named after the minister president of Hesse in 1970, was intended as a counter-proposal and instead sought to integrate both the Rhine-Main area and the Rhine-Neckar area into a new state called Mittelrhein-Hessen.
Osswald also had three variants of his proposal, which were:
- merging the Palatinate to Baden-Württemberg instead of Hesse, but with the remainder of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland still going to Hessen(-Mittelrhein)
- attaching the Eifel region of Rhineland-Palatinate to North Rhine-Westphalia, the Saarland and the Palatinate to Baden-Württemberg, and the remainder of the Rhineland-Palatinate to Hesse
- attaching the districts of Koblenz and Trier to North Rhine-Westphalia, the districts of Rheinhessen and Montabaur to Hesse, and the Palatinate and the Saarland to Baden-Württemberg
That third variant proprosal is very similar to a voted-down plebiscite question from 1955, and was ultimately used for another plebiscite in 1975, which also got rejected by the voters in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Lastly here are two other maps. Both of these exist as and are intended to be ways to create efficient states with strong local democracies within the German state. The Wagener proposal in its relative vagueness isn't very interesting to me, however with the Schäfer-Proposal the border drawn in Lower Saxony is quite interesting, clearly trying to contain the Elbe within the new state of Norddeutschland, thus ensuring that most folks dependent on Hamburg but living in Lower Saxony become part of the same state as the Hanseatic juggernaut. It even includes Cuxhaven/Ritzebüttel, which until the Großhamburggesetz of 1937 was an exclave of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, into that state. The article mentions that Schäfer's proposal specifically was to avoid a massive state in the north, hence the split, while Wagener wanted to avoid states with populations below 7 million people.
Though if I had been in Schäfer's place, I would've attached Lippe and Minden to Nordwest, and come up with better names...
Recently I've been on a new research binge on the subject and I wanna share some fascinating new findings about proposals to redraw Germany's internal borders.
First, while I can't a high-quality version of it, I'm linking [here] a map from 1919 by the German historian Walther Vogel in a small publication titled "Deutschlands bundesstaatliche Neugestaltung", which clearly aimed to incorporate both German Austria, while also still using Germany's imperial borders elsewhere.
Secondly, there's an excellent booklet titled "Die Neugliederung Deutschlands Grundlagen - Kritik - Ziele und die Pläne zur "Reichsreform" von 1919 - 1945" by Werner Münchheimer, which I also can't find online, that covers at least five proposals at reorganizing Germany in the interwar era in great detail, including Preuß's plan. I have found an article in German [here] that shows four of them in a low resolution. To summarize these plans:
- in the Baumann-Plan (from 1923 and largely based on the ideas of an industrial engineer) included the idea that Prussia should be dismantled and that a state covering the Rhine-Ruhr industrial area should be created, almost identical to the future state of North Rhine-Westphalia
- the 1927/28 Scheu-Plan proposed to divide Germany into nine economic zones, with a highlight for me being the Baltic economic zone, covering Mecklenburg, Pommerania, and East Prussia
- the 1926 Weitzel-Plan (sometimes also known as the "Frankfurter Entwurf", or Frankfurt proprosal), modified in 1930 by the economic Erich Obst, suggested twelve states, including a partition of Bavaria into two states and the creation of a massive Rheinfranken state covering most of modern day Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg
- the 1943 Schulenberg-Plan (also known as the "Plan der großen Einheiten", plan of large units), which suggested the creation of eleven states, and, as its alternative name implies, most of them are big, except East Prussia and Lower Saxony, which would only consist of the southern portions of the province of Hannover and the Free State of Brunswick (while the rest of Hannover would be partitioned between the new states of Niederrhein-Westfalen and Nordsachsen)
I do hope to get my hands on a copy soon, because it's still available for purchase by the university that issues that booklet originally. We'll see. It supposedly has ten maps in its 64 pages, which would be wonderful to study more in-depth.
Lastly I wanna share four maps from an article by Rudolf Hrbeck titled "Das Problem der Neugliederung des Bundesgebietes" (the problem of reorganizing the federal territory), published in 1971, and available online by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung [here]. It covers the proposals to redraw German state borders in the late 60s and early 70s.
These first two were made in the context of the Rhineland-Palatinate state being in financial strains at the time. The first of these is the Krausse-Modell, which was proposed in 1969 by the then-minister of the interior of Baden-Württemberg. sought to merge the Hessian towns of Lampertheim & Viernheim, the former Bavarian Palatiante, and the Saarland into Baden-Württemberg, while attaching the remainder of Rhineland-Palatinate to Hesse. The justification for this was to ensure continuity between the Rhine-Main area (within Hesse) and the Rhine-Neckar area (within BaWü).
What's fascinating to me is that this proposal didn't touch the municipalities of Hirschhorn, Michelbuch, and Neckarsteinach, which are disconnected parts of the Hessian district of Bergstraße (just like Lampertheim and Viernheim), and which are very close to Heidelberg. In fact Neckarsteinach even has a light rail connection to Heidelberg and a ferry service over the Neckar river to BaWü. Also, based on when the proposal was made, I presume that the villages of Hüttenfeld, Hofheim, and Rosengarten weren't included in the transfer of Lampertheim to Baden-Württemberg, since they only were joined to Lampertheim in the late 70s.
The second proposal shown in this image, the Osswald-Modell (named after the minister president of Hesse in 1970, was intended as a counter-proposal and instead sought to integrate both the Rhine-Main area and the Rhine-Neckar area into a new state called Mittelrhein-Hessen.
Osswald also had three variants of his proposal, which were:
- merging the Palatinate to Baden-Württemberg instead of Hesse, but with the remainder of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland still going to Hessen(-Mittelrhein)
- attaching the Eifel region of Rhineland-Palatinate to North Rhine-Westphalia, the Saarland and the Palatinate to Baden-Württemberg, and the remainder of the Rhineland-Palatinate to Hesse
- attaching the districts of Koblenz and Trier to North Rhine-Westphalia, the districts of Rheinhessen and Montabaur to Hesse, and the Palatinate and the Saarland to Baden-Württemberg
That third variant proprosal is very similar to a voted-down plebiscite question from 1955, and was ultimately used for another plebiscite in 1975, which also got rejected by the voters in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Lastly here are two other maps. Both of these exist as and are intended to be ways to create efficient states with strong local democracies within the German state. The Wagener proposal in its relative vagueness isn't very interesting to me, however with the Schäfer-Proposal the border drawn in Lower Saxony is quite interesting, clearly trying to contain the Elbe within the new state of Norddeutschland, thus ensuring that most folks dependent on Hamburg but living in Lower Saxony become part of the same state as the Hanseatic juggernaut. It even includes Cuxhaven/Ritzebüttel, which until the Großhamburggesetz of 1937 was an exclave of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, into that state. The article mentions that Schäfer's proposal specifically was to avoid a massive state in the north, hence the split, while Wagener wanted to avoid states with populations below 7 million people.
Though if I had been in Schäfer's place, I would've attached Lippe and Minden to Nordwest, and come up with better names...
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