Finland Almost Became a Kingdom Ruled by a German Prince Who Never Showed Up.
Finland — Constitution Profile
| 📅 Current Constitution | March 1, 2000 |
| 🏛️ Government | Parliamentary Republic with Semi-Presidential Elements |
| 🌍 Capital | Helsinki |
| 📄 First Constitution | July 17, 1919 |
| 🗳️ Independence Declared | December 6, 1917 |
| 👑 Almost Became | A monarchy under a German king |
For a Few Months in 1918, Finland Genuinely Had a King — On Paper
Most people who know anything about Finland think of it as a country that has always been a calm, stable republic. That isn't quite the full story. When the Finnish Civil War ended in the summer of 1918, the men who had just won decided the country's future shouldn't be a republic at all. When the Civil War ended, it was decided, during the summer of 1918, to make Finland a monarchy, and in October the German prince Frederick Charles of Hessen was chosen as king.
Finland — the country we now associate with saunas, design, and Nokia phones — was, for a brief window, officially a kingdom with a German royal sitting on its still-unbuilt throne. The original draft of the Finnish Constitution did indeed designate Finland a constitutional monarchy, and the German-born Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse was even chosen as King of Finland.
He never actually ruled. Germany lost the First World War weeks later, and the entire plan quietly fell apart before the prince ever set foot in his new kingdom.
So Instead, a General Almost Became President — and Lost
With the monarchy plan dead, Finland needed a different head of state, fast. With Germany's defeat in the war, General Mannerheim was designated regent, with the task of submitting a proposal for a new constitution.
Mannerheim was, by any measure, the most powerful man in the country at that moment — the general who had led the winning side of the civil war. He expected to become Finland's first president. The strong position held by the Conservatives after the Civil War enabled them to force through their motion that the president should be chosen by popularly elected representatives, independent of Parliament, and that he should possess a great deal more authority than was usual for a head of state.
But when the vote actually happened, something unexpected occurred. On July 25, 1919, Dr. Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg was elected the first President of Finland, defeating Gustaf Mannerheim with 143 to 50 votes. A liberal lawyer beat the war hero by a landslide. The Social Democrats positioned themselves behind the liberal National Progressive Party leader to defeat the Conservative candidate Mannerheim, who had not convinced them of his loyalty to republicanism.
Mannerheim got his presidency eventually — but not until 1944, twenty-five years later, in the middle of the Second World War.
The Country That Gave Women the Vote Before It Was Even Independent
Here's something that genuinely surprises people once they learn the timeline. Finland did this while it was still legally part of the Russian Empire. A revised suffrage law gave the vote to all Finns twenty-four years of age or older, including women, making Finland a prominent example of voting democracy. The nation's granting of suffrage to women was the first such example in modern Europe.
And the results were not symbolic. A new unicameral legislature was created in 1907, with two hundred elected members. In 1907, Finland — while still part of Russia — became the first country in Europe to elect women, in fact nineteen of them, to the National Assembly.
Nineteen women in parliament, more than a decade before Finland even had its own constitution, while the country was still technically a Russian territory. That's not a footnote — that's a genuinely radical fact most people never hear.
The Constitution Was Written in Three Languages Because Nobody Could Agree on One
Language wasn't a minor administrative detail in early Finland — it was one of the most bitterly fought issues in the entire country's politics. Another interesting point to note is that when Finland declared its independence in 1917 it had three official languages: Russian, Finnish, and Swedish. Law books printed in 1920 included the laws written in all three languages.
The fight over Finnish versus Swedish didn't end with independence either. The 1919 constitution provided that both Finnish and Swedish should be the national languages. A younger radical generation now raised the demand for the supremacy of Finnish, and the language controversy was a bitterly contested issue during the interwar period.
It took the shared trauma of an entire world war to finally cool things down. The enmity of the language issues was not healed until after the unifying effects of World War II.
A Constitutional Trick That Let Parliament Quietly Bypass Its Own Rules
Finland's constitutional system has one feature that lawyers from other countries often find baffling when they first encounter it. The flexibility of the Finnish Constitution is due to the use of "exceptive laws," a distinctive feature of the Finnish system: instead of amending or changing the Constitution, an act may be passed as an ad hoc exception to it. Such an exceptive law does not become part of the Constitution and it may be repealed like an ordinary act.
In plain terms — rather than going through the difficult process of formally changing the constitution, Finnish lawmakers could simply pass a regular law that quietly overrode it for a specific situation. The fundamental principles of the 1919 Constitution remained unchanged during the first fifty years of Finnish independence. However, this prevented the Constitution from adapting to changes in society. The flexibility of the Finnish Constitution comes from the use of extraordinary laws.
It became such a common workaround that, formerly much used, even to the point of threatening to undermine respect for Constitutional provisions, today their use is limited. Finland eventually had to rein in its own loophole because the loophole was becoming bigger than the rule it was supposed to be an exception to.
One Single Statute, After Eighty-One Years of Four Separate Ones
For most of the twentieth century, anyone trying to understand Finland's constitution had to read four completely different documents at once. Before the enshrinement, the Finnish constitutional provisions were divided between four separate statutes, which all had a constitutional status: the Constitution Act of 1919, the Parliament Act, the Ministerial Responsibility Act, and the Act on the High Court of Impeachment.
It took until the very end of the century to finally simplify this. The Commission completed its work on 17 June 1997, and during 1998 the bill was considered by the Constitutional Law Committee, which finally produced its unanimous report on the bill in January 1999. The current draft of the Constitution came into force on 1 March 2000.
Eighty-one years after Finland's first constitutional documents were written, the country finally consolidated everything into a single statute: the Constitution of Finland (731/1999).
Constitution at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Independence Declared | December 6, 1917 |
| Civil War | 1918 |
| Monarchy Plan Collapsed | November 1918 |
| First President Elected | July 25, 1919 |
| First Constitution | July 17, 1919 |
| Current Constitution Came into Force | March 1, 2000 |
| Official Languages | Finnish and Swedish (equal status since 2000) |
| Legislature | Unicameral Eduskunta — 200 members |
| Women's Suffrage Granted | 1906 |
| First Women Elected to Parliament | 1907 — 19 women, a European first |
📥 Read the Constitution of Finland
Read the complete, official English text of the Constitution of Finland:
👉 Read Constitution of Finland — Official Ministry of Justice Website
A kingdom that never had a king. A war hero who lost the presidency to a lawyer. A loophole that almost swallowed the constitution it was supposed to work around. What surprised you most about Finland's story? Tell us in the comments below.
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