Free State of Saxony (Weimar Republic)
| Free State of Saxony (Weimar Republic) Freistaat Sachsen | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany | |||||||||
The Free State of Saxony (red) within the Weimar Republic | |||||||||
| Anthem | |||||||||
| Sachsenlied | |||||||||
| Capital | Dresden | ||||||||
| Demonym | Saxon | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| • Coordinates | 51°1′37″N 13°21′32″E / 51.02694°N 13.35889°E | ||||||||
• 1925 | 14,986 km2 (5,786 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1925 | 4,994,281 | ||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| • Type | Republic | ||||||||
| Minister-President | |||||||||
• 1918–1919 (Revolutionary Period) | Richard Lipinski | ||||||||
• 1919–1920 (first) | Georg Gradnauer | ||||||||
• 1930–1933 (last) | Walther Schieck | ||||||||
| Reichskommissar | |||||||||
• 1933 | Manfred Freiherr von Killinger | ||||||||
| Legislature | Landtag | ||||||||
| Historical era | Interwar | ||||||||
• Established | 1919 | ||||||||
• Constitution enacted | 26 October 1920 | ||||||||
| 7 April 1933 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Germany | ||||||||
The Free State of Saxony (German: Freistaat Sachsen) was one of the constituent states of the federally organized Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933. The Free State was established in 1919 as the successor to the Kingdom of Saxony and lasted until the Nazi regime effectively absorbed all of Germany's federal states in April 1933. Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, the name "Free State of Saxony" was taken up again and remains Saxony's official name.
The Free State of Saxony grew out of the German Empire's defeat in World War I and the German revolution of 1918–1919. King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony abdicated in November 1918 in the face of the revolutionary events, and workers' and soldiers' councils set up revolutionary governments in Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz and other Saxon cities. In a largely peaceful conflict between radical and moderate socialists on the councils, the moderates prevailed. A democratically elected constituent assembly passed a constitution for a republican Free State of Saxony in October 1920.
A minority of Saxon workers continued to push for a soviet-style council government, leading to sporadic outbreaks of violence in the early 1920s. In 1923, Minister-President Erich Zeigner appointed two members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to his cabinet, following which the German government sent troops to forcibly remove them. Unknown to Zeigner and the Berlin government, Soviet Russia had been planning to use the events as a signal for a communist revolution across Germany. They had badly misjudged the overall workers' mood in Germany, and no uprising took place.
From 1924 until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the political and economic situations in Saxony improved. After Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in January 1933, Saxony's political leadership was replaced by Manfred von Killinger as Reich commissioner. The two Nazi Gleichschaltung (synchronization) laws in 1933 brought Saxony and all the other German states fully under Nazi control and effectively ended both the Weimar Republic and the Free State of Saxony. Saxony became part of East Germany after World War II and was dissolved as a political entity in 1952 before being revived in 1990.