Rebuilding the German Constitution, I

The hectic sequence of Germany's constitutional history led that unhappy country, following the final liquidation by Napoleon of the last remnants of medieval constitutionalism, through the confusion of Austro-Prussian rivalry, Empire, democratic Republic, and Fascist dictatorship, to the total vacuum of unconditional surrender in May, 1945. The pretense of a four-power (quadripartite) condominium by means of the Allied Control Council, which at first looked to many responsible people like a feasible stop-gap, has been revealed in this sequence as an empty façade. During the years 1945–49, Germany has been governed by a bewildering maze of conflicting and competing authorities whose legitimacy, beyond the reach of their immediate power, has been in considerable doubt. Authority, power, legitimacy; unless these are effectively combined and balanced, the existence of a true government may well be doubted. Continental Europeans, who prefer to talk about the “state” in discussing problems of government, have therefore been wondering whether the German state has continued to exist—a problem in higher semantics which is briefly discussed below.