German Reichstag Membership Spells 1867-1918

Aggregating 6,357 membership spells for 2,703 individuals who served in the German Reichstag from 1867 to 1918. It includes information on legislative and electoral party affiliation, electoral district, and election type and date.

Use Cases

• Analyze the duration of membership spells for legislators based on their electoral party affiliation.
• Map the geographic distribution of legislators by electoral district across the North German Confederation and German Empire.
• Study the frequency of re-election and changes in legislative party affiliation for individual members over time.
• Examine the relationship between election type and subsequent party affiliation changes within legislative terms.

Strengths

• Contains 6,357 distinct membership spells for detailed temporal analysis.
• Covers a 51-year period from 1867 to 1918, spanning two political entities.
• Includes data on 2,703 unique individuals, allowing for individual-level tracking.

Limitations

• The dataset is small at 3.1 KB, indicating limited scope and detail per record.
• Specific column definitions and data types are not provided, requiring schema inference.
• The data ends in 1918 and does not cover modern German political history.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse, contributed by author Häge, Frank M.

Collection Method

Compiled from historical parliamentary records of the North German Confederation and German Empire.

Time Range

1867 to 1918

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-03-20.

Geography

Germany (North German Confederation and German Empire)