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The Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Public Works was a ministry in Prussia that was founded in 1848. Its beginnings date back to 1740. In 1878 it became the Ministry of Trade and Commerce by spinning off the Ministry of Public Works, which was dissolved in 1921; the responsibilities were transferred back to the Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forestry and of Trade and Commerce. In 1932 it became the Ministry of Economy and Labor.
In 1740, the Prussian King Frederick II founded the "Department for Factories, Commerce and Manufacturing" when he took office, which corresponded to a ministry of economics in the administrative structure at the time. The responsible ministers (who, however, usually covered other areas of responsibility) were also called Trade Ministers. There were corresponding ministers before, but they were responsible for many areas. [1]
In the first half of the 19th century, this area of responsibility was managed as a department (section) of the Ministry of the Interior. However, several section heads already had the title of Minister or were referred to as Trade Ministers by their contemporaries. [1]
On April 17, 1848, an independent ministry was formed, the official name of which was the Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Public Works. [1]
The service building was the former gold and silver factory in Berlin's Friedrichstadt, Wilhelmstrasse 79. [2] In 1854–1855, the building was expanded by another floor according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, and in 1868 the adjacent new building at Wilhelmstrasse 80 was added. [3]
On April 17, 1878, the Public Works, including infrastructure and construction administration, was spun off as the Ministry of Public Works, leaving the Ministry of Trade and Commerce. However, both ministries were run concurrently until 1879. [4]
In 1917 the Reich Economic Office was established and, in 1919, the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs was created. By law of August 15, 1921, the Ministry of Public Works was dissolved. Its responsibilities, including the remaining responsibilities for the railway system, largely fell back to the Ministry of Commerce, which at that time was called the Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forestry and of Trade and Commerce. The state construction administration was ultimately affiliated to the Ministry of Finance, as was already the case in other German states. [5]
In 1932, the name Ministry of Economics and Labor was introduced under the Prussian coup d'état (German : Preußenschlag). [6]
Prussia was a German state located on most of the North European Plain, also occupying southern and eastern regions. It formed the German Empire when it united the German states in 1871. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.
Paul Justin von Breitenbach was a Prussian politician and railway planner.
The Provinces of Prussia were the main administrative divisions of Prussia from 1815 to 1946. Prussia's province system was introduced in the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms in 1815, and were mostly organized from duchies and historical regions. Provinces were divided into several Regierungsbezirke, sub-divided into Kreise (districts), and then into Gemeinden (townships) at the lowest level. Provinces constituted the highest level of administration in the Kingdom of Prussia and Free State of Prussia until 1933, when Nazi Germany established de facto direct rule over provincial politics, and were formally abolished in 1946 following World War II. The Prussian provinces became the basis for many federal states of Germany, and the states of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein are direct successors of provinces.
The 1932 Prussian coup d'état or Preußenschlag took place on 20 July 1932, when Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, at the request of Franz von Papen, then Reich Chancellor of Germany, replaced the legal government of the Free State of Prussia with von Papen as Reich Commissioner. A second decree the same day transferred executive power in Prussia to the Reich Minister of the Armed Forces Kurt von Schleicher and restricted fundamental rights.
Wilhelmstrasse is a major thoroughfare in the central Mitte and Kreuzberg districts of Berlin, Germany. Until 1945, it was recognised as the centre of the government, first of the Kingdom of Prussia, later of the unified German Reich, housing in particular the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office. The street's name was thus also frequently used as a metonym for overall German governmental administration: much as the term "Whitehall" is often used to signify the British governmental administration as a whole. In English, "the Wilhelmstrasse" usually referred to the German Foreign Office.
The Free State of Prussia was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1947. The successor to the Kingdom of Prussia after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, it continued to be the dominant state in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as it had been during the empire, even though most of Germany's post-war territorial losses in Europe had come from its lands. It was home to the federal capital Berlin and had 62% of Germany's territory and 61% of its population. Prussia changed from the authoritarian state it had been in the past and became a parliamentary democracy under its 1920 constitution. During the Weimar period it was governed almost entirely by pro-democratic parties and proved more politically stable than the Republic itself. With only brief interruptions, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) provided the Minister President. Its Ministers of the Interior, also from the SPD, pushed republican reform of the administration and police, with the result that Prussia was considered a bulwark of democracy within the Weimar Republic.
Leipziger Straße is a major thoroughfare in the central Mitte district of Berlin, capital of Germany. It runs from Leipziger Platz, an octagonal square adjacent to Potsdamer Platz in the west, to Spittelmarkt in the east. Part of the Bundesstraße 1 highway, it is today one of the city's main east–west road links.
Paul Ludwig Simon, also known as Paul Louis Simon, was a German architect and professor at the Building Academy (Bauakademie) in the faculty of architectural physics and a privy architectural counsellor at the Prussian Higher Council of Architecture in Berlin. In the latter position Simon was the predecessor of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Simon was serving as well as Senior Director of public works for the Marches of Pomerania and Prussia. Beside these fields of activity Simon did – at that time in Europe well known – research work in the field of Electrochemistry and Galvanism. He published different articles on these subjects in German scientific journals – as for example “Annals of Physics”.
The Landtag of Prussia was the representative assembly of the Kingdom of Prussia implemented in 1849, a bicameral legislature consisting of the upper House of Lords (Herrenhaus) and the lower House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus). 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 1934, when it was abolished by the Nazi regime.
In Germany and Austria, the running of railway services for a railway administration or the regional network of a large railway company was devolved to railway divisions, variously known as Eisenbahndirektionen (ED), Bundesbahndirektionen (BD) or Reichsbahndirektionen (RBD/Rbd). Their organisation was determined by the railway company concerned or by the state railway and, in the German-speaking lands at least, they formed the intermediate authorities and regional management organisations within the state railway administration's hierarchy. On the formation of the Deutsche Bahn AG in 1994 the system of railway divisions (Eisenbahndirektionen) in Germany was discontinued and their tasks were transferred to new "business areas".
Wilhelmplatz was a square in the Mitte district of Berlin, at the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Voßstraße. The square also gave its name to a Berlin U-Bahn station which has since been renamed Mohrenstraße. A number of notable buildings were constructed around the square, including the old Reich Chancellery, the building of the Ministry of Finance and the Kaiserhof grand hotel built in 1875.
The Prussian State Council was the second chamber of the bicameral legislature of the Free State of Prussia between 1921 and 1933; the first chamber was the Prussian Landtag. The members of the State Council were elected by the provincial parliaments and gave the provinces of Prussia a voice in the legislative process. The Council had an indirect right to introduce legislation, could object to bills passed by the Reichstag and had to approve expenditures that exceeded the budget.
The Prussian Constitution of 1920 formed the legal framework for the Free State of Prussia, a constituent state of the Weimar Republic, from 1918 to 1947. It was based on democratic parliamentary principles and replaced the Constitution of 1848/50. During the National Socialist era, it was eroded to the point of irrelevance and following World War II lost legal force when the state of Prussia was abolished by the Allies in 1947.
The Reich Ministry of Transport was a cabinet-level agency of the German government from 1919 until 1945, operating during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Formed from the Prussian Ministry of Public Works after the end of World War I, the RVM was in charge of regulating German railways, roadways, waterways, and the construction industry - a kind of infrastructure agency in today's understanding. In the 1920s, the Ministry's involvement in the rail sector was limited to administrative and technical supervisory functions. The National Railway was initially organized as an independent state-owned company to guarantee that Germany paid war reparations according to the provisions of the 1924 Dawes Plan.
The Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture was responsible for the agricultural policy of Germany during the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933 and during the Nazi dictatorship of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945. It was headed by a Reichsminister under whom a state secretary served. On 1 January 1935, the ministry merged with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forests, founded in 1879. Until 1938 and the Anschluss with Austria, it was called the "Reich and Prussian Ministry of Food and Agriculture". After the end of National Socialism in 1945 and of the Allied occupation of Germany, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture was established in 1949 as a successor in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Prussian State Ministry from 1808 to 1850 was the executive body of ministers, subordinate to the King of Prussia and, from 1850 to 1918, the overall ministry of the State of Prussia consisting of the individual ministers. In other German states, it corresponded to the state government or the senate of a free city.
The Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs was a Prussian ministry that was created in 1817 from the former department "for culture and public education" that existed from December 1808 to November 1817 and was part of the Ministry of Interior. The term "Ministry of Culture" was not used in official addresses but existed under various names and responsibilities until 1945.
The Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forestry (German: Ministerium für Landwirtschaft, Domänen und Forsten was the Ministry of Agriculture of the State of Prussia. It was established in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1848 and continued to exist in the Free State of Prussia. In 1935, the ministry was merged with the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The official headquarters was in Berlin.
