page_title: Free State of Brunswick
section_title: Free State
hierarchical_section_title: Free State of Brunswick / History / Free State
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Der braunschweigische Innenminister Dr. Franzen zurückgetreten! Der nationalsozialistische braunschweigische Innenminister Dr. Franzen in nationalsozialistischer Uniform, welcher von seinem Posten zurückgetreten ist.
context_page_description: The Free State of Brunswick was a state of the German Reich in the time of the Weimar Republic. It was formed after the abolition of the Duchy of Brunswick in the course of the German Revolution of 1918–19. Its capital was Braunschweig.
context_section_description: Jasper's government stabilized public policy, however, in the 1920 state election the SPD suffered a heavy loss of votes and the succeeding coalition government was again led by his USPD rival Sepp Oerter. The Brunswick free state constitution was adopted on 6 January 1922.
  In the 1922 elections, the SPD/USPD government finally lost its majority, whereafter the Social Democrats under Heinrich Jasper formed a coalition with the DDP and the national liberal German People's Party (DVP). At the same time, the rising Nazi Party (NSDAP) established first local branches in Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel, until it was banned by the state government on 13 September 1923. Nevertheless, the party was represented in the Brunswick Landtag, when Sepp Oerter switched from left to right and joined the NSDAP in 1924.
  After the 1924 elections, the DVP led a right-wing coalition government of several national liberal and conservative parties, among them the National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFB), a substitute of the outlawed Nazi Party. The Social Democrats under Heinrich Jasper once again were able to form a government upon the 1927 elections, however, it lost its majority in the following elections of 1930. The NSDAP reached 22.9% of the votes cast, whereafter the Nazi politician Anton Franzen joined the new right-wing government as Minister of the Interior, succeeded by his party fellow Dietrich Klagges on 15 September 1931.
  Klagges was instrumental for the dismissal of opposition public servants and in organizing the anti-democratic Harzburg Front in October 1931. He is especially known for naturalizing the former Austrian citizen Adolf Hitler, who had been stateless for seven years and aimed to run in the 1932 German presidential election. After the failure of a first attempt to obtain him a tenure at Braunschweig University of Technology, Minister Klagges finally managed to appoint Hitler as a public functionary at the Brunswick delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin in 1932, which gave him citizenship of Brunswick, and thus automatically of Germany. There are no records of any activity by Hitler in this (high-paid) position. After his appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933, he was officially dismissed.
  Before and after the Nazi Machtergreifung, Communist and SPD politicians were persecuted and arrested in Brunswick. The composition of the Landtag legislature was re-arranged according to the results of the German federal election of 5 March 1933 and, after the national conservative DNVP deputies joined the Nazi Party, it constituted a single-party parliament. Klagges was elected Minister-president of Brunswick on 6 May, and together with his party colleagues Justice Minister Friedrich Alpers and Chief of Police Friedrich Jeckeln, he established a terror regime. He nevertheless had to accept the superior power of Reichsstatthalter Wilhelm Friedrich Loeper, whose office was established in the course of the Nazi Gleichschaltung process. The last Landtag session was held on 13 June 1933; the legislature was finally dissolved on 14 October.
caption: Hitler in Braunschweig (with Minister Franzen), 1931
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