Constitution of the State of Schleswig-Holstein

The German lawyer and civil servant Uwe Jens Lornsen, who was temporarily employed by Denmark, had already done some preliminary work in the first half of the 19th century with his writings on the constitutional situation of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which were linked to the Danish crown.

At that time, Schleswig was a fief of Denmark, Holstein a member state of the German Confederation - but both territories were ruled by the Danish king in personal union as duke.

At the beginning of the Schleswig-Holstein uprising on July 24, 1848, a commission of the provisional government had already presented a draft of a "Basic State Law for the Duchies of Schleswig = Holstein".

The term "statute" was chosen instead of "constitution" because, like the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, it was only to be valid until the divided Germany was reunited in one state.

Through these regulations, the SPD intended to permanently secure the highly controversial core points of its policy, the six-year primary school and land reform.

After the Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Käber, presented the draft of the state statutes containing these regulations on October 24, 1949, the representative Hermann von Mangoldt of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein demanded that the CDU not participate in the constitutional consultations on this basis and would contest the result before the Federal Constitutional Court.

Minister-President Hermann Lüdemann (SPD) tried to find a compromise by proposing to delete the paragraph on the six-year primary school.

The length of the legislative period was extended from 3 to 4 years compared to the draft (although this rule would only apply from the next election) and a constructive vote of no confidence was introduced.

The SPD's efforts to use the constitution to permanently protect the core points of its policy against democratic opinion-forming were unsuccessful.

On November 20, 1950, the constitutional provisions on the six-year primary school and land reform were deleted from the state statutes.

The Kiel affair involving the then Prime Minister Uwe Barschel led to a comprehensive constitutional and parliamentary reform in 1990, which culminated in the law amending the state statutes for Schleswig-Holstein of 13 June 1990 (GVOBl.