Prussian Estates - Era of The Kingdom of Prussia

Era of The Kingdom of Prussia

With the power of the Commonwealth waning from the mid-17th century onwards the Estates drifted under the influence of the Hohenzollern Electors of Brandenburg, ruling Ducal Prussia in personal union since 1618 (first the eastern Duchy of Prussia, sovereign after the Treaty of Wehlau in 1657 and upgraded to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, then the western Royal Prussia, annexed to the former after the First Partition of Poland in 1772). Under the Hohenzollern's absolutist rule the power of the estates would be increasingly limited.

The West and East Prussian estates, separately, the latter gathering after 1772 representatives of newly formed East Prussia, comprising the former Duchy of Prussia and the parts of former Royal Prussia west of the Vistula, played again a role in the transformation from feudal traditional agriculture to agricultural business. The Silesian Wars had imposed high taxes so that many Prussian tax-payers went into debts. Feudal manor estates were no free property sellable at the will of their holders or – in case of over-indebtedness – by way of execution prompted by the creditors of the holders. So it was difficult for the holders of feudal manor estates to borrow against their estates. Therefore in 1787 the West Prussian estates, and the year after the East Prussian estates, took on the task to form each a credit corporation called the Westpreussische Landschaft and the Ostpreussische Landschaft, respectively.

Members of the estates, then by status mostly noble landed manor holders, and the circle of potential debtors were literally the same. In order to overcome the restrictions on selling manor estates to fulfill outstanding debts the manor estate holders formed a corporation of mutually liable debtors. So solvent manor estate holders had to step in for over-indebted borrowers, thus transforming the manor estate holders into a corporation of collective liability. Coming up for over-indebted borrowers imposed hardship for the solvent manor estate holders. This strengthened many one's opinion and even aroused appeals to abolish the feudal system of manor estate holding, while others demanded the re-establishment of pure feudalism without borrowing at all.

In the Napoleonic era the East Prussian estates gained some political influence again. King Frederick William III of Prussia needed to raise funds in order to pay the enormous French war contributions of thaler 140 million imposed after Prussia's defeat, and making up about an annual pre-war budget of the government. In 1807 the East Prussian Estates made a political bargain on accepting the king as a member within their credit corporation with his royal East Prussian demesnes, to be encumbered as security for the Pfandbriefe to be issued in his favour, which he was to sell to investors, thus raising credit funds.

In return the estates reached a wider representation of further parts of the population by integrating the East Prussian free peasants, called Kölmer (holders of free estates according to Culm law) and forming a considerable group only in former Teutonic Prussia holding about a sixth of the arable East Prussian land, and non-noble manor estate holders, which had meanwhile acquired 10% of the feudal land mostly by eventual, but complicated and – subject to government authorisation – purchases of manor estates from over-indebted noble landlords. With representation in the estates they were also entitled to eventually raise credits, obliged to liability for credits of others, but simultaneously gained a say in the estates assembly.

On 9 October 1807 the Prussian Reform minister Heinrich vom und zum Stein prompted the king to decree the October Edict (Edict concerning the relieved possession and the free usage of real estate as well as the personal relations of the rural population) which generally transformed all kind of landholdings into free allodial property. This act enormously increased the amount of alienable real estate in Prussia apt to be pledged as security for credits, needed so much to pay the higher taxes in order to finance Napoléon's warfare through the compulsory war contributions to France. Serfdom was thus also abolished. Most remaining legal differences between the estates (classes) were abolished in 1810, when almost all Prussian subjects – former feudal lords, serfs, burghers (city dwellers), free peasants, Huguenots etc., turned into citizens of Prussia, finally including also the last excepted group of the Jews in 1812.

When in 1813 the defeated and intimidated king, forced into a coalition with France since 1812, refrained to take his chance to shake off the French supremacy in the wake of Napoleon's defeats in Russia, the East Prussian estates stole a march on the king. On 23 January Count Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, president of the estates assembly, called its members for 5 February 1813.

After debating the appeal of Ludwig Yorck, illoyal and – therefore by Berlin – outlawed general of the Prussian corps within Napoléon's army, to form a liberation army, which was widely agreed, on February 7 the East Prussian estates unanimously voted for financing, recruiting and equipping a militia army (Landwehr) of 20,000 men, plus 10,000 in reserve, out of their funds following a proposal designed by Yorck, Clausewitz and Stein. The hesitant king could not stop this anymore, but only approve it on March 17.

However, this civic act of initiating Prussia's participation in the liberation wars was not thanked by the monarch, who again and again protracted his promise to introduce a parliament of genuine legislative competence for all the monarchy. Only in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848 Prussia received its first constitution providing for the Prussian Landtag as the parliament of the kingdom. It consisted of two chambers, the Herrenhaus (Prussian House of Lords) and the Abgeordnetenhaus (House of Representatives).

In 1899, the Prussian Landtag moved into a new building consisting of a complex of two structures, one for the House of Lords (now used by the Bundesrat) in Leipziger Straße and one for the House of Representatives in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, today's Niederkirchnerstraße.

The House of Lords was reorganised and renamed into the Staatsrat (state council) of the Free State of Prussia after the abolition of the monarchy. Its members were representatives of the Provinces of Prussia. Konrad Adenauer used to be its long serving president.

Since 1993 the former House of Representatives is the seat of the Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin (House of Representatives of Berlin), and similar to the Reichstag, among Berliners it is still sometimes referred to colloquially as Preußischer Landtag.