ABSTRACT
Prime Minister Hirsch promised the central council in January 1919 that after the government’s political reforms had been implemented, “the position of the Landrat will be exactly like that of a mayor—that is, he will have to be the spokesman of his inhabitants.” In consideration of the disparate political heritage of Hesse-Nassau’s constituent Regierungsbezirke, a separate district assembly, the Kommunallandtag, was elected in the Kassel and Wiesbaden districts. In the early autumn of 1919 Erich Koch, mayor of Kassel since 1913 and a charter member of the new German Democratic Party, was offered the post of mayor of Dusseldorf. The Kassel Social Democratic party (SPD) was unsure whom to propose as Koch’s successor or even whether to nominate a candidate of its own. Richard Hausschildt declared in the Casseler Volksblatt that the SPD was fully justified in expecting the new mayor to be a Socialist since the party held a majority in the Kassel city assembly.
