Map S.13.3     Die Vertretung der Wahlkreise bei Schluß des Reichstags 1911

 

 

This stylized map was produced to demonstrate the result of 40 years of “negative gerrymandering”—that is, the government’s refusal to redraw constituency boundaries. After 1867, the geographical outlines of Germany’s Reichstag constituencies (Wahlkreise) were not changed, despite massive shifts in population (mainly from the countryside to the cities). In 1867, the number of eligible electors in each constituency had been approximately equal, but by 1911 some constituencies had grown to immense size (in terms of the electorate, but shown here as differently sized squares to demonstrate the point). The above-average size of Berlin’s 6 constituencies jumps out at the viewer, but so does the fact that the biggest constituencies were held by Social Democratic deputies even before the “red” Reichstag elections of January 1912. In central Germany, one can see the relatively over-populated constituencies in Saxony’s three biggest cities: Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz.

 

Source: Walter Koch, Volk und Staatsführung vor dem Weltkriege (Stuttgart, 1935), back matter.

 

Copyright © 2017 James Retallack. All rights reserved. This page is part of the Online Supplement to James Retallack, Red Saxony: Election Battles and the Spectre of Democracy in Germany, 1860-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). ISBN 978-0-19-966878-6. Last updated: 4 March 2022.