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Concept
Reichsstatthalter
Summary
The Reichsstatthalter (ˈʁaɪçsˌʃtathaltɐ, Reich lieutenant) was a title used in the German Empire and later in Nazi Germany.
The office of Statthalter des Reiches (otherwise known as Reichsstatthalter) was instituted in 1879 by the German Empire for the areas of Alsace (Elsaß) and Lorraine (Lothringen) that France had ceded to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War. It was a form of governorship intended to exist while Alsace-Lorraine became a federal state of the Empire. It was abolished when Alsace-Lorraine was, in turn, ceded back to France after Germany lost World War I.
During the Third Reich, the Nazis re-created the office of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor or Reich Deputy) to gain direct control over all states (other than Prussia) after winning the general elections of 1933. Their independent state governments and parliaments were successively abolished, and the Reich government took over direct control in a process called Gleichschaltung ("coordination"). Prussia's government had already been taken over by the Reich a year earlier in the Preußenschlag under Chancellor Franz von Papen.
Two weeks after the passage of the Enabling Act of 1933, which effectively made Adolf Hitler the dictator of Germany, the Nazi government issued the "Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich" (Zweites Gesetz zur Gleichschaltung der Länder mit dem Reich) on 7 April 1933. This law deployed one Reich Governor in each of Germany's 17 states. The Reich Governors were given the task of overseeing the fulfillment of Hitler's political guidelines in the states. Indeed, the law required them to carry out "the general policy of the Chancellor." In practice, they acted with complete authority over the state governments. The governors' main authorities lay in:
appointing and dismissing the state minister-president
dissolving the state parliament and calling new elections
issuing and announcing state laws
appointing and dismissing important state agents and judges
granting amnesty
In Prussia, the largest of the German states, Hitler took direct control by appointing himself as Reichsstatthalter.
Official source
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