Reichstag

The Reichstag of the North German Confederation was the federal state's lower house of parliament. The popularly elected Reichstag was responsible for federal legislation together with the Bundesrat, the upper house whose members were appointed by the governments of the individual states to represent their interests. Executive power lay with the Bundesrat and the king of Prussia acting as Bundespräsidium, or head of state. The Reichstag debated and approved or rejected taxes and expenditures and could propose laws in its own right. To become effective, all laws required the approval of both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. Voting rights in Reichstag elections were advanced for the time, granting universal, equal, and secret suffrage to men above the age of 25. When the German Empire was established in 1871, the North German Reichstag formed the basis of the new Reichstag of the German Empire. Background The draft constitution Following Prussia's victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, Otto von Bismarck, who was then minister president of Prussia, prepared a draft constitution for the North German Confederation in which the Reichstag was to form the representative body of the people . It was to take its place alongside the monarchical-federal executive power of the Bundesrat and the – the head of state in the person of the king of Prussia, William I. The Reichstag was to be given the powers of a popular legislative body customary for the era and was meant to counterbalance both monarchical influences and the particularism of the 22 states that made up the Confederation. Equally important for Bismarck, it was to integrate the liberal-national movement into it. Unlike the parliaments of the individual German states, it was to be elected by universal, equal, and secret manhood suffrage rather than by class or census suffrage, under which votes were weighted differently based on income, rank in society, and the like. The voting age was set at twenty-six. Although the Reichstag was weaker than the other federal bodies, it was by no means marginalized in the draft of the constitution.