stable coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) , the Catholic Centre Party and the German Democratic Party (DDP). In the 1932 Prussian state election of April 24, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) won 162 seats and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 57, a total of 219 out of 423, or 52%. All other parties together won only 204 seats, or 48%. The NSDAP and KPD would not work together, and none of the other parties could form a government with a parliamentary majority without the support of one of the anti-democratic parties, something that none of them was willing to accept. That meant that after the formal resignation of the previous state government – the third cabinet of Otto Braun – it remained in office on a caretaker basis in accordance with Article 59 of the state constitution. With parliamentary rules having recently been changed to require an absolute majority for the election of a minister president, it was possible that the caretaker government could continue on indefinitely. The situation was similar to that in Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, Württemberg and Hamburg, although the Reich government did not concern itself with them. Papen's and Hindenburg's approach A center-right government in Prussia consisting of the NSDAP (162 seats) and the Centre Party (67 seats) with a 53% majority was technically possible. Together with the 31 seats of the nationalist-conservative German National People's Party (DNVP), this coalition would have had as many as 260 of 423 seats. Reich Chancellor von Papen sought such a coalition, but the NSDAP claimed power for itself alone. On 7 June 1932, Papen, although not formally authorized to do so, asked Hanns Kerrl, president of the state parliament and a member of the NSDAP, to replace the caretaker Prussian government with an elected one, something Kerrl was unable to guarantee due to the failure of coalition negotiations to that point. As a result, Papen considered other possibilities. The first was to carry out the long-debated Reich reform which would have dissolved or divided Prussia. Because this path would have achieved its goal only in the long term, was difficult to accomplish and highly controversial, he favored another option. He planned to appoint a Reich commissioner in place of the previous government and to enforce the new order, if necessary with the help of the Reichswehr. For this he had certain precedents. Reich President Friedrich Ebert