Constitution of the German Confederation 1871

The Constitution of the German Confederation (German: Verfassung des Deutschen Bundes, or Novemberverfassung) was the constitution of the German federal state at the beginning of the year 1871. It was enacted on January 1st, 1871. This is a slightly changed version of the Constitution of the North German confederation; it is not to be confused with the constitutional laws of the German Confederation of 1815.

The Constitution of the German Confederation of 1871 incorporated agreements between the North German Confederation and some the South German states that joined the Confederation: with Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, but not Bavaria and Württemberg. The new constitution appeared on 31 December 1870 in the Bundesgesetzblatt des Norddeutschen Bundes (Federal Law Gazette) and came into effect the following day. Already on 16 April 1871 the country exchanged it with another constitution which was valid until the end of the Empire in 1918.

There are four different constitutions or texts to distinguish between:

In all of those four texts, the policial system remains the same. The changes relate mainly to the agreements with the South German states regarding their accession to the North German Confederation. For example the number of delegates to the Federal Council were adjusted. All this was executed in a rather messey way. Constitutional historian Ernst Rudolf Huber called the constitution of 1 January 1871 a 'Monstrum'.

The constitution of 1 January 1871 was one step from the North German Confederation to the German Empire. Those steps did not create a new state but concerned the accession of the South German states. The North German Confederation was renamed, and some of its organs received a new title. The constitution of 1 January 1871 did have lasting significance in the German Empire despite of the new constitution of 4 May 1871: article 80 (not repeated in the new constitution) transformed most of the North German laws into Imperial laws.

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