The Problems of the Landrat: A Study of County Government in the U. S. Zone of Germany

Abstract

new Germany shall be federal in character. This principle has been rightly urged not only by the Western occupation powers but also by many Germans. It has operated to prevent a uniform, centralizing pattern of state (Land) constitutions and of basic local government statutes in the various zones. Developments since the beginning of the occupation have produced a motley diversity among the individual zones and states-a diversity which is more than formal and which reaches deeply into fundamentals. The widely differing conceptions of the occupation powers as to the structure of the state and its constitutional and administrative organization, and their desire to fashion German governmental institutions according to the models of their respective homelands cause serious concern to every thoughtful student of German affairs. Will such developments still permit the voluntary union of all the parts and their successful future cooperation in a future German federal state? Comparing the occupation powers, the Americans, in this and other respects, have taken the most account of traditional German types of organization; and certainly they are right in perceiving that the schematic transference of legal forms by itself in no way produces the same sociological facts. In view of these circumstances, I must refrain from dealing further with the role of the Landrat (county director)' in the British, French. and esDeciallv the Soviet, zones. Likewise. it is not sim-