Hugo Preuss

Hugo Preuss (born Oct. 28, 1860, Berlin—died Oct. 9, 1925, Berlin) was a German political theorist and legal expert who became the principal author of the constitution of the Weimar Republic.

Schooled in the organic-state philosophy of the German political theorist Otto von Gierke, Preuss sustained throughout his own writings the theoretical orientation of his master. A liberal in the politics of Germany under the Kaiser, he belonged to the Progressive People’s Party and contributed to such liberal organs as Nation and Die Hilfe (“Assistance”). As a leading authority on public law, he was commissioned by the new republican government in November 1918 to draft a national constitution. Drawing extensively on both German and foreign concepts and precedents, he contributed a strong preference for administrative centralization; he sought to combine the political and economic principles of both liberalism and Socialism in the constitution. Subsequently, as Weimar minister of the interior (February–June 1919) and then as special government commissioner, he defended his work before the national parliament.

From 1919 he belonged to the German Democratic party. Among his published works, his Die Entwicklung des deutschen Städtewesens (1906; “The Development of the Organization and Constitution of German Cities”) is probably the most important.