concern about reliability and organizational efficiency, he was not happy in the council. Its majorities often changed, its composition was highly dependent on chance, and the discussions frequently did not revolve around practical issues but got lost in ideological debates about principles. Because of his experience with it he retained a lifelong aversion to "the wretchedness () of councils". In 1919 and 1920 Braun was a member of the Weimar National Assembly, which was both the new Republic's interim parliament and the body that drafted and adopted the Weimar Constitution. From 1920 to 1933, he was a member of the German Reichstag. Due to conflicts of interest between the Reich and Prussia and because of Braun's often hands-on and unconventional manner, he and the SPD's party leadership became estranged even though both the national and the Prussian parliaments were often governed by what came to be called the Weimar Coalition made up of the SPD, the center-left German Democratic Party (DDP) and the center-right Catholic Centre Party. While as a pragmatist Braun focused his actions primarily on the interests of the coalition in Prussia and thus on the stability of the government, the SPD's own interests took precedence for the leadership of both the party and the Reichstag parliamentary group. Especially after the Majority Democratic Party and the USPD reunited in September 1922, conflicts often arose over the proper political course. Personal rivalries, especially between Braun and SPD party chairman Otto Wels, continued to worsen the climate and communications. Braun accused the SPD leadership of acting irresponsibly, and Wels thought that Braun's behavior toward the party was reckless and that he lacked respect for Social Democratic principles. In the Prussian government In 1918, after the fall of the monarchy, Braun became Prussia's Minister of Agriculture under Minister President Paul Hirsch. He opposed the breakup of Prussia that many were proposing following the war. In contrast to the ultra-conservative government of Bavaria which was referred to as an ('cell of order'), he saw Prussia as Germany's democratic . He also feared that the dissolution of Prussia, which covered about two-thirds of Germany in area but was very inhomogeneous in composition, would strengthen the annexation demands of the victorious powers. As Minister of Agriculture he attempted an agrarian reform designed primarily to strip the great landowners east of the Elbe of their power. The centerpiece of his idea was a policy that