Even the short period intervening between the first publication of the Preuss draft and its submission to the National Assembly had sufficed to bring about one important and significant development. Preuss himself was an advocate of the so-called _Einheitsstaat_, a single state on the French plan, divided into departments merely for administrative purposes. Many of his friends of the German Democratic Party and all Socialists also wanted to do away with the separate states, both for doctrinal and selfish partisan reasons. Preuss realized from the beginning the impossibility of attaining his ideal completely, but he endeavored to pave the way by a dismemberment of Prussia, the largest and dominant German state, and by doing away completely with several of the smaller states, such as Anhalt, Oldenburg, etc. His constitutional draft of January proposed the creation of sixteen "territories of the state" (_Gebiete des Reichs_): Prussia (consisting of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Bromberg), Silesia, Brandenburg, Berlin, Lower Saxony, the three Hansa cities (Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck), Upper Saxony, Thuringia, Westphalia, Hesse, the Rhineland, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemberg, German-Austria, and Vienna.
It became quickly apparent that Preuss and his followers had underestimated the strength of the particularistic, localized patriotism and respect for tradition cherished by a great part of the Germans. Not only were the South Germans aroused to opposition by the implied threat of a possible eventual onslaught on their own state boundaries, but the great majority of the Prussians as well protested mightily against the proposed dismemberment of Prussia. The unitarians saw themselves compelled to yield even in the temporary constitution by inserting a provision that "the territory of the free states can be altered only with their consent." The plan to reduce the states to mere governmental departments was thus already defeated.
With the erection by the National Assembly of the _Staatenausschuss_, or Committee of the States,[67] the draft of the constitution was laid before that body for further consideration. On February 21st the committee submitted the result of its deliberations to the National Assembly, which referred it in turn to a special committee of twenty-eight members, whose chairman was Conrad Haussmann, a member of the German Democratic Party.