Otto Braun

This article is about the Prime Minister of Prussia. For the German Communist and once the Comintern military adviser to the Chinese Communist revolution see Otto Braun (Li De).

Otto Braun (28 January 1872 – 14 December 1955) was a German Social Democratic politician who intermittently served as Prime Minister of Prussia from 1920 to 1932.

Originally from Königsberg, East Prussia, Braun became a leader of the Social Democratic Party in that province, and in 1913 was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives. In 1919, he was elected to the Weimar National Assembly. He became Prime Minister of Prussia, a position in which he served almost continually between 1920 and 1932. He also became the Social Democratic presidential candidate in the first round of presidential elections in 1925, coming in second. He then withdrew his candidacy during the run-off in order to help the Centre Party's Wilhelm Marx defeat Paul von Hindenburg, who had not stood in the first round. Marx was eventually defeated by Hindenburg.

Braun's coalition government, one of the strongest bastions of the Weimar Republic, lost its majority in the April 1932 Prussian elections, but remained as a caretaker government as the Landtag, in which the Communists and National Socialists between them had a majority, could not agree to form a new government. Braun's government was deposed in the Preußenschlag of July 1932, when Germany's chancellor Franz von Papen assumed direct Reich control of Prussia's administration. Braun, however, remained de jure Prime Minister and continued to represent the state of Prussia in the Reichsrat until January 1933, when Papen became Prime Minister for two months. Hermann Göring then held the office for the next twelve years until 1945. As an opponent of the Nazi regime, Braun decided to leave Germany and emigrated to Switzerland after Adolf Hitler attained the office of Chancellor in January 1933.

At the end of the Second World War, Braun approached the allies to reinstate the previous democratic Prussian government, but they were not receptive to his proposition due to their earlier decision to abolish the state of Prussia and divide East Prussia between Poland and the Soviet Union. Braun died in exile in Locarno in 1955.