1.
Lower house
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A lower house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position below the house, in many legislatures worldwide. A legislature composed of one house is described as unicameral. In comparison with the house, lower houses frequently display certain characteristics, Powers In a parliamentary system, Much more power. Able to override the upper house in some ways, can vote a motion of no confidence against the government. In a presidential system, Somewhat less power, as the house alone gives advice. Given the sole power to impeach the executive Status Always elected directly, while the house may be elected directly, indirectly. Its members may be elected with a different voting system to the upper house, most populated administrative divisions are better represented than in the upper house, representation is usually proportional to population. Elected all at once, not by staggered terms, in a parliamentary system, can be dissolved by the executive. Has total or original control over budget and monetary laws, lower age of candidacy than the upper house. Many lower houses are named in the manner, House/Chamber of Representatives/the People/Commons/Deputies
2.
Prussian estates
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They were at first composed of officials of six big cities of the region, Braunsberg, Culm, Elbing, Danzig, Königsberg and Thorn. Later, representatives of towns as well as nobility were also included. The estates met on four times per year, and discussed issues such as commerce. Obligations would be changed if new coins, too plentifully issued. Thus a law was passed by the Diet of Teutonic Prussia in 1418, thus creditors and recipients of nominally fixed revenues were not to lose by debasement-induced inflation. The Estates drifted towards the Kingdom of Poland in their political alignment, norman Housley noted that The alienation of the Prussian Estates represented a massive political failure on the part of the Order. The estates eventually became governed by Kingdom of Poland, on 10 December 1525 at their session in Königsberg the Prussian estates established the Lutheran Church in Ducal Prussia by deciding the Church Order. Nicolaus Copernicus, then canon of the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, addressed the Prussian estates with three memoranda, in fact little essays, on currency reform, debasements continued to ruin Prussian finances, the groat had been debased by 1/5 to 1/6 of its prior bullion content. In 1517,1519 and again in 1526 he suggested to return to the law passed in 1418, however, especially the cities refused that. At least the estates refused to peg the Prussian currency to the Polish, under the Hohenzollerns absolutist rule the power of the Estates increasingly diminished. The West and East Prussian Estates, separately, again played a role in the transformation from feudal traditional agriculture to agricultural business, the Silesian Wars of 1740-1763 had required high taxes, such that many Prussian tax-payers went into debt. Feudal manor estates were not 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 the holders of feudal manor estates found it difficult to borrow against their estates. Members of the Estates, then by status mostly noble landed manor holders, in order to overcome the restrictions on selling manor estates to fulfil 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, coovering over-indebted borrowers imposed hardship for the solvent manor-estate holders. This affected many opinions and even aroused appeals to abolish the system of manor estate holding. In the Napoleonic era the East Prussian Estates gained some political influence again, in return the Estates reached a wider representation of further parts of the population. The last excepted group - the Jews - became citizens in 1812, on 23 January Count Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, president of the Estates assembly, called its members for 5 February 1813. The hesitant king could not stop this anymore, but only approve it, only in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848 did Prussia receive its first constitution providing for the Prussian Landtag as the parliament of the kingdom
3.
Landtag of Prussia
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After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–19 the Landtag diet continued as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia between 1921 and 1933. The Prussian National Assembly however was dismissed by royal decree of 5 December 1848, both houses and the King of Prussia had the right to introduce bills. The assembly raised a blistering protest and over the following years Bismarcks cabinet had to govern without a government budget passed by the legislature. In September 1866 the prime minister, at a peak of his power after the Battle of Königgrätz, the balloting led to the split-off of the National Liberal Party which became a loyal supporter of Bismarcks policies. During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the new Prussian government of Social Democrats, a constitutional convention was elected on 26 January 1919, after the introduction of equal franchise for all men and women. After the failed Kapp Putsch of 1920, the confirmed the first cabinet of Minister-president Otto Braun. The Preußischer Landtag was re-established as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia in 1921, the provinces were represented in the Prussian State Council, which succeeded the former Herrenhaus as a kind of upper house. The Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer served as its president until 1933, a legislative period lasted for no longer than four years. The parliament could be dissolved early by joint resolution of the minister and the presidents of the Landtag. In 1931 just such a referendum took place on the initiative of the Stahlhelm veterans association with the support of the Nazi Party, Landtag elections took place on 20 February 1921, on 7 December 1924, on 20 May 1928 on 24 April 1932 and on 5 March 1933. In 1899, the House of Representatives moved into a building on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße No,5, close to Potsdamer Platz and situated opposite to the Martin Gropius Bau. During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the Reichsrätekongress held its assemblies here from 16 to 20 December 1918, on 1 January 1919, the Communist Party of Germany was founded here. The seat of the Prussian House of Lords on Leipziger Straße was inaugurated in 1904, both buildings were built back-to-back according to plans designed by Friedrich Schulze, they intercommunicate via a common restaurant wing. Upon the Nazi Machtergreifung, the Herrenhaus building served as an annex of the neighbouring Ministry of Aviation, after World War II it housed several departments of the German Academy of Sciences and since 29 September 2000 is the seat of the German Bundesrat. Philo Fine Arts, Dresden 2001, ISBN 3-364-00378-5 Tabelle zur Geschichte des Preußischen Landtags Informationen zum Freistaat Preußen
4.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
5.
Prussian House of Lords
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The Prussian House of Lords in Berlin was the upper house of the Preußischer Landtag, the parliament of Prussia from 1850 to 1918. Together with the house, the House of Representatives, it formed the Prussian bicameral legislature. A member of the House of Lords was known as a pair, the House consisted of hereditary peers, life peers appointed by the King of Prussia, peers by virtue of position, representatives of cities and universities, etc. The majority of members were nobles, although the House also had commoners as members, life members, Holders of the four great court appointments of the kingdom—these were the state steward, the chancellor, the lord marshal, and the lord burgrave. Members entrusted by the king—these were both nobles and commoners, and included select generals and admirals, senior government officials, business leaders, Members called by presentation—these were primarily holders of noble estates, the university representatives, and the lord mayors of cities given the right of presentation. According to the 1920 constitution of the Free State of Prussia it was replaced by the Staatsrat of representatives delegated by the Landtag assemblies of the Provinces, the Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer served as president of the state council from 1921 until the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933. Since 1856 the House of Lords met at a Baroque city palace on Leipziger Straße No,3, near Leipziger Platz, formerly owned by the merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky and seat of the Royal Porcelain Factory from 1763. It had been acquired by Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, father of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, in summer 1826, young Felix Mendelssohn wrote his A Midsummer Nights Dream ouverture, which premiered at his fathers house. After the Prussian state had purchased the building in 1856, it served for the meetings of the Reichstag of the North German Federation from 1867 to 1870. No.3 and 4 buildings were demolished in 1898 to make space for a new building for the House of Lords, the Neo-Renaissance Herrenhaus building, designed by the architect Friedrich Schulze, was completed in 1904. Schulze had had built the adjacent Abgeordnetenhaus on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße from 1892 to 1898. Both structures were connected by a functional wing in the rear. Since 1993, the Abgeordnetenhaus building is the seat of the Berlin state parliament, seat of the Prussian state council from 1921 to 1933, the former Herrenhaus building from 1933 served for Hermann Görings Preußenhaus foundation. Heavily damaged by Allied bombing and the Battle of Berlin, the building was restored after the war, since 2000, it is again the site of the parliamentary sessions of the Federal Council of Germany. One of the characters in Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment references the Prussian Upper House when talking about the characters sister. List of Presidents of the Prussian State Council Members of the Prussian House of Lords The Bundesrat building Preußisches Herrenhaus
6.
Kingdom of Prussia
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It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia was a power from the time it became a kingdom, through its predecessor, Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia continued its rise to power under the guidance of Frederick II, more known as Frederick the Great. After the might of Prussia was revealed it was considered as a power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia went on to win many battles and it was because of its power that Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states under its rule. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation which lasted from 1867–1871, created a union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, the German Empire lasted from 1871–1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power. Prussia is considered the predecessor of the unified German Reich. The Kingdom left a significant cultural legacy, today notably promoted by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in 1415 a Hohenzollern Burgrave came from the south to the March of Brandenburg and took control of the area as elector. In 1417 the Hohenzollern was made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Polish wars, the newly established Baltic towns of the German states including Prussia, suffered many economic setbacks. Many of the Prussian towns could not even afford to attend political meetings outside of Prussia, the towns were poverty stricken, with even the largest town, Danzig, having to borrow money from elsewhere to pay for trade. Poverty in these towns was partly caused by Prussias neighbors, who had established and developed such a monopoly on trading that these new towns simply could not compete and these issues led to feuds, wars, trade competition and invasions. However, the fall of these gave rise to the nobility, separated the east and the west. It was clear in 1440 how different Brandenburg was from the other German territories, not only did it face partition from within but also the threat of its neighbors. It prevented the issue of partition by enacting the Dispositio Achillea which instilled the principle of primogeniture to both the Brandenburg and Franconian territories, the second issue was solved through expansion
