Kingdom of Finland (1918)
핀란드 왕국 (1918)
The failed attempt by the victorious Whites after the Finnish Civil War to make Finland a monarchy under a German prince. On 9 October 1918 a Parliament with almost no Social Democrats elected Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse king, but he never took the throne or came to Finland, and renounced it on 14 December after Germany’s defeat. The republican constitution of 1919 confirmed Finland as a republic.
In depth
At independence in December 1917 only a minority of deputies leaned towards monarchy, and Parliament declared Finland a republic. After the civil war, however, the victorious Whites excluded the Social Democrats from Parliament (according to the English-language source only Matti Paasivuori remained; before the war they had held 92 of 200 seats), and the monarchists argued that the war had shown the instability of an unconstrained elected parliament and that the nation needed a king above factions. Their legal ground was that the Swedish-era Instrument of Government of 1772 was still in force. In July Lithuania had elected the Duke of Urach as Mindaugas II, and Baltic German nobles were asking for a German protectorate. Germany was the only power that had supported the preparations for independence, not least by training the Jäger troops, and had also intervened in the civil war; Finland’s position was already drifting towards that of a protectorate. In October the pro-German government of Prime Minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi offered the crown to Prince Friedrich Karl, brother-in-law of Wilhelm II, while Pehr Evind Svinhufvud became Regent. A new monarchist constitution was delayed for lack of the required qualified majority, and one deputy proposed the style “Karl I, King of Finland and Karelia”.
After Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November and the armistice followed two days later, warnings from the West led the government of Prime Minister Lauri Ingman, himself a monarchist, to ask Friedrich Karl to give up the crown. The victors made clear that Finland’s independence would be recognised only if it abandoned its alliance with Germany. Friedrich Karl renounced the throne on 14 December, the Baltic Sea Division left Finland, Svinhufvud resigned and Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim became Regent. The proposals of Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, who had backed a republic against the monarchy plan in 1918, became the 1919 Instrument of Government, and in the March 1919 election republican parties won three-quarters of the seats. In July Parliament elected Ståhlberg the first president, succeeding Mannerheim.