Bavaria: 50 years ago the administrative district reform came into force – Bavaria

The year 1972 is remembered as a year of yearning lightness, not least because of the cheerful beginning of the Olympic Games in Munich. However, when Martin Geiger took office as mayor of Wasserburg, dark clouds hung over the city. And they didn’t want to go away. On the day he took office, July 1, 1972, a regional reform came into force that had previously caused tremors throughout Bavaria. The number of districts was suddenly reduced from 143 to 71. The district of Wasserburg was also among the victims.

Years later, the malaise triggered a hearty grant from the lawyer Geiger. Because the loss of the district office resulted in a loss of residents and jobs, and even Wasserburg’s importance as a central school location was endangered. If the city wanted to maintain its function as a middle center, it required not only great efforts, but also political visions, which Geiger certainly possessed in abundance.

Ultimately, the mayor turned out to be a stroke of luck for Wasserburg, because despite all opposition, he managed to stabilize the city politically, economically and culturally after the dissolution of the district and to keep it attractive. Except that she now advertised herself with a theatre, a library and a leisure pool. So were the population’s fears of the district reform unfounded after all?

Of all the hardships of the territorial reform, Wasserburg was probably the most blatant case. A county whose foundations rested on a thousand years of history should disappear from the scene, unthinkable. The planned dissolution triggered mass protests and great distrust. Who could you still trust? In February 1970, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Bruno Merk, responded to a question from District Administrator Josef Bauer (CSU) that the district of Wasserburg had a “healthy structure” and could continue to fulfill the tasks that awaited it in the future.

The district is not endangered in the event of a reorganization, wrote Merk, who at the time called 50,000 inhabitants the benchmark for the continued existence of a district. At that time, 53,000 people lived in the district of Wasserburg. After the 1970 state elections, in which the CSU achieved 56 percent of the vote, the cards were reshuffled. Prime Minister Alfons Goppel (CSU) has now declared that 80,000 residents are required to maintain independence. The alarm bells were ringing in Wasserburg.

“Everything was supposed to be better, more modern and more efficient in the 1960s,” says former state parliament director Peter Maicher, who is researching the consequences of local government reform in Wasserburg’s neighboring district of Ebersberg. It was said that only a reform of local government could prevent small districts and communities from being overburdened in terms of personnel and finances. Up until July 1, 1972, nine rural districts in Bavaria had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. In his government statement of January 25, 1967, Goppel called the district reform the most important domestic political task. The implementation was the responsibility of the then Interior Minister Bruno Merk (CSU) and State Secretary Erich Kiesl (CSU).

It was clear from the outset that the smaller counties would resist. In February 1971, the Vilsbiburg district administrator Hans Geiselbrechtinger spoke of the “scaffold for the districts”. And even parts of the CSU met the plan with skepticism. One of the main opponents of the territorial reform was – hard to believe – Franz Josef Strauss, who surprisingly could not assert himself on this issue. “So far no one has been able to explain to me what the advantages of this territorial reform are,” he powdered. Years later, Strauss criticized Merk for destroying thousands of mandates.

In his “Memoirs” Strauss wrote that it was a wrong decision to “dissolve the traditional district of Wasserburg”. But he was also annoyed about the incorporation of the old Franconian bishopric of Eichstätt into Upper Bavaria. He also recognized an unhistorical sense in the decision to move the district of Aichach, the seat of the Wittelsbach ancestral castle, from Upper Bavaria to Swabia. Merk was the bogeyman, but he pushed the plan through unwaveringly.

Open detailed view

In October 1971, a good 5,000 residents of Wasserburg called for a protest rally in Munich to fight for the preservation of the district “by all means”. District Administrator Bauer pleaded: “God protect our district.” And he complained: “Our district is to be divided into quarters using medieval methods.” On the facade of the town hall one could read: “Justice or arbitrariness – are we Wasserburgers a colonial people?” An early form of hate speech, which is so popular today, poured out about Interior Minister Merk: “A Judas in our ranks,” it said, or: “Merk and Kiesl, let’s go to the shift.” Or: “Lightning should touch them.” Things went haywire: Both in the city council and in the Wasserburg district council, the respective CSU faction resigned from the party as one.

In their existential fears, the neighboring districts also attacked each other. Everyone feared their downfall, new variants, power games and intrigues were constantly blazing up. And it wasn’t as if the county towns were eagerly awaiting expansion. “We have to renew our floor in the district office when the provincials come with their nailed shoes,” the Rosenheimers slandered about the Wasserburgers. The CSU member of parliament Otto Freiherr von Feury (1906-1998) played a key role in this struggle. “A dismemberment of the district of Ebersberg. That would be insane,” he scolded. It is largely thanks to his influence that the district of Ebersberg was finally allowed to live on and that the district of Wasserburg was divided into the districts of Rosenheim, Ebersberg, Erding and Mühldorf.

But there were also successful rebels

There is no doubt that small regional princes, as well as friendliness and animosity, had a significant influence on the shape of the territorial reform. The historian Ferdinand Kramer also points to the loss of political participation. The Bavarian Constitution of 1946 and the Municipal Code of 1952 gave the municipalities and local authorities a high priority, he says.

The seven districts, 143 rural districts and around 7,100 municipalities were regarded as the place and school of democracy. “So it was a deep cut in the flesh to make significant changes to their layout and function between 1972 and 1978,” says Kramer. After the completion of the local government reform in 1978, only 2,052 municipalities remained in addition to 71 counties, which meant a loss of half of the counties and more than 5,000 municipalities in rural areas. As a result, the country lost 32,000 honorary mandates. “These sponsors were also co-creators and advocates for their region,” Kramer sums up.

The inevitable price of such a mammoth project was that human dramas also took place. Leaving a thousand years of history behind without a trace, as in the case of Wasserburg, will probably take a hundred years or more. Some of the wounds from back then still hurt today, especially since the expectations of greater efficiency and lower costs have not always been fulfilled. In Wasserburg, says the former district homestead curator Ferdinand Steffan, some suspect that without the reform the town would not be as good as it is today. It is obvious, however, that other dissolved district towns are suffering from desertification and economic bleeding. It seems almost paradoxical that the state is now relocating authorities to those regions that it once gutted.

And then there were those rebels who resisted until the state gave up. Like the municipality of Ermershausen in Lower Franconia, whose residents even occupied the town hall. In 1994 they regained their independence, a curious footnote in a reform of the century that was arguably essential but was bought with much tears and chagrin.