Otto Braun, the red czar of Berlin

Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-10131

Otto Braun. have you ever heard of him ? An extremely ordinary name, like Hans Müller, or Karl Schmidt. Still, he hold a key position in Germany’s history in the first half of the 20th century.

If his name nevertheless doesn’t ring a bell with you, there is a good reason for that. The important position he hold was not in the German republic’s government but in the Prussian region’s. And while many have heard of Weimar Republic’s politicians like Gustav Stressemann, Walter Rathenau, Friedrich Ebert or Paul von Hindenburg, few are aware that there was another important state in the Republic, quite independent of the Reich, a kind of republic inside the republic. It was the Free State of Prussia.

Otto Braun (1872-1955) was one of history's most important social democrats worldwide, even if his name is less known than that of Friedrich Ebert, Willy Brandt, Olof Palme or Felipe González. He never ruled Germany, but from his headquarters in Berlin he did govern the Prussian State, which comprised about two thirds of the German republic, including cities like Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Breslau, Königsberg and, of course, Berlin. It had its own parliament, its own ministers and its own mighty police force. Otto Braun was known as « Prussia’s red czar ».

The son of a railway clerk in Königsberg, he joined the social democratic party SPD at the age of sixteen and soon became well known as a leader among rural labourers in East Prussia.

After the German Empire collapse in 1918, he became prime minister of Prussia, a post he retained for more than ten years, thanks to his ability to build stable coalitions with catholics and liberals. He was also aided by the fact that Prussia was a full parliamentary democracy, unlike the German republic, where the prime minister had to co-habite with a president with formidable powers. The Weimar Republic was, from 1925, undermined by its president, marshal Hindenburg, who was not a republican but a monarchist. In his Prussia, Braun could rule without that kind of interference. Having a parliamentary majority sufficed.

One could compare the Weimar Republic’s constitution to the French Fifth Republic of today, whereas Prussia’s constitution was more like the German one of our days.

Braun’s pragmatism and moderation helped to create a framework for harmonious government in Germany’s largest federal territory under the Weimar Republic. Prussia became the bastion of democracy and political stability within the Weimar Republic. Whereas Weimar politics at the national level were marked by extremism, conflict and the rapid alternation of governments, the Prussian grand coalition held firm and steered a steady course of moderate reform. Whereas the German national parliaments of the Weimar era were periodically cut short by political crises and dissolutions, every one of their Prussian counterparts (except the last) was allowed to live out its full natural lifespan.

In 1932, Braun could look back with a certain satisfaction on what had been achieved since the end of the First World War. ‘In twelve years,’ he declared, ‘Prussia, once the state of the crassest class domination and political deprivation of the working classes, the state of the old feudal Junker caste hegemony, has been transformed into a republican people’s state.’

But later that year, his proud Prussia lost its autonomy through a coup d’état, and in 1933, Braun, like other democrats, was forced into exile. 

Some information from Iron kingdom, by Christopher Clark.