were asked to stay on in order to maintain peace and order. On 23 December the government issued an administrative order for the election of a constitutional assembly. Universal, free and secret suffrage for both women and men replaced the old Prussian three-class franchise. At the municipal level, however, it took eight months before the existing governmental bodies were replaced by democratically legitimized ones. Deliberations concerning a fundamental reform of property relations in the countryside, in particular the breaking up of large landholdings, did not bear fruit. The manor districts that were the political power base of the large landowners remained in place. In educational policy, Minister of Culture Adolph Hoffmann abolished religious instruction as a first step in a push towards the separation of church and state. The move triggered considerable unrest in Catholic areas of Prussia and revived memories of Bismarck's 1870s Kulturkampf ('cultural conflict') against the Catholic Church. At the end of December 1919, MSPD Minister Konrad Haenisch rescinded Hoffmann's decree. In a letter to the Cardinal of Cologne Felix von Hartmann, Minister President Hirsch assured him that Hoffmann's provisions for ending clerical supervision of schools had been illegal because they had not been voted on in the cabinet. More strongly than any other government measures, Hoffmann's socialist cultural policies turned large segments of the population against the revolution. The Christmas riots in Berlin between the People's Navy Division and units of the German army led to the withdrawal of the USPD from the government in both Prussia and at the Reich level. The dismissal of Emil Eichhorn (USPD) as Berlin's police chief triggered the failed Spartacist Uprising of 5–12 January 1919 that attempted to turn the direction of the revolution towards the founding a communist state. Separatist tendencies and the threat of dissolution Prussia's continued existence was by no means assured in the aftermath of the revolution. In the Rhine Province, the advisory council of the Catholic Centre Party, fearing a dictatorship of the proletariat, called on 4 December 1918 for the formation of a Rhineland-Westphalian republic independent of Prussia. In the Province of Hanover, 100,000 people signed an appeal for territorial autonomy. In Silesia too there were efforts to form an independent state. In the eastern provinces, a revolt broke out at Christmas 1918 with the aim of restoring a Polish state. The movement soon encompassed the entire Province of Posen and eventually took on