Nominally Thuringia became a democracy with the old noble families populating the upper house of parliament and elected deputies of the people in the lower. In reality, not much had changed. Through a baroque system of rules, only the Fürstentag (House of Princes) had any actual power to pass laws, negotiate treaties or use any other powers of the state. Combined with arcane voter eligibility rules, gerrymandering and judicious voter suppression, the deputies of the lower Landestag were generally younger princely sons with supposed rebellious republican leanings, complicit in the theatrics when the upper house felt it necessary to make it look like the lower house had any powers at all. Sometimes this was used to make a people's deputy look good, other times to charge them ambiguous crimes against the state. All of that was combined with a secret police that would have made a Russian Tsar weep tears of joy.



Flag barry sable and or with base gules, a bend vert. Recalls the ancient Saxon coat of arms, with the red bar for the peoples of Germany after the official flag of the dissolved Germanic Confederation.In spite of the red bar at the bottom, the country is not truly a republican child of 1848 like Baden, the Rheinpfalz and Hesse, but rather a crypto-monarchist state. With growing student disturbances encouraged by those other nations threatening to spread to the general civilian population, the Ernestine Saxon dukes and petty princes of the region banded together and gave the people a constitution, but not one that does what they think.