Hanseatische Tradition und demokratischer Umbruch

The work presents the first complete legal history of the Hamburg Constitution of 1921 following the line of Hamburg’s constitutional tradition spanning from the late Middle Ages to the present.
To this end, the Hamburg interwar constitution undergoes a comprehensive and problem-oriented scrutiny which establishes its close ties with the Weimar Constitution (of the German Reich) as well as with the constitutions of the other Hanseatic towns and is incorporated into the constitutional history of Hamburg. The first democratic constitution of Hamburg is thus perceived in a twofold context, because the author makes clear both how it is interwoven with the old Hanseatic tradition and how much it lives on in the post-war constitution.
This constitutional development, however, has not been completely continuous as it seems, but was interrupted by a revolutionary past history and the disruption of all traditions under the National Socialist rule.