A bust of the late Dr. Hugo Preuss, who as German Minister of the Interior after the Revolution, drew up the present Constitution of the German Republic, is to be placed in the Reichstag building, the Chief Commission of the Reichstag decided to-day. The funds for the bust will be provided by the State Party, in which the Democratic Party, of which Dr. Preuss was one of the leaders, merged at the last elections.
Dr. Hugo Preuss, who died in 1925 at the age of 65, was described by the German press at the time of his death as “after Walter Rathenau the greatest German Jew in politics”. President von Hindenburg and the widow of President Ebert, the first President of the German Republic, paid tributes to him, the latter sending a wreath with the inscription “To my husband’s loyal colleague”. So important is the work done by your husband in politics before 1914 and after 1919 that the German people will not soon see another Parliamentarian and scholar such as the father of the Weimar Constitution, Dr. Koch, the Chairman of the German Democratic Party, wrote to his widow. His name has become immortal. Preuss was the creator of our Republican Constitution, the Social Democratic “Vorwaerts” wrote. In the Germany of the Kaiser, he could not get a Government post, could not even get his professorship, nor a seat in Parliament. Only because he was a Jew and a Democrat. The Constitution of the German Republic is a monument to Hugo Preuss.
A few days after his death, one of the principal streets in the Teltow district in Berlin was renamed the Preuss Street in his honour.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
