The service of these Housing Commissioners was under the Minister of Labour for the Reich. Finally, in order to protect tenants, the ordinances of September 23, 1918, and of June 22, 1919, sanctioned and supplemented by the law of May 11, 1920, _limit considerably the rights of owners to dispose of habitable quarters_ and entrust to the “offices for distribution of lodgings,” extensive rights relative to the renting out of apartments and the terms of lodgings. In particular, according to the law of 1920, if grave inconveniences result from the lack of lodgings, the states may, with the consent of the Minister of the Reich, authorize or constrain the municipalities to take, or themselves take, measures that constitute encroachments on the liberty of settlement and the inviolability of domicile, on condition that these measures be expressly necessary to meet a housing crisis or to combat it. This law specifies, in addition, that decisions taken in the fight against the shortage of houses may be executed by administrative constraint. 3.--FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF COMMUNITIES. The Constituent Assembly did not limit itself to the establishment of a list of rights and duties of the individual. The social conceptions by which it was dominated led it to proclaim, after the rights and duties of the individuals, the rights and duties of certain groups and communities that seemed to it to play a particularly important rôle in society--the family, associations, municipalities, civil service. * * * * * I.--THE FAMILY.--For the first time the family, the natural foundation of all ordered national life, finds itself mentioned in the Declaration of Rights of a modern state. The Constitution of Weimar formulates the general principles which should dominate legislation relating to marriage, to the education and the protection of children and to the duties of education devolved upon parents. Article 119 places marriage under the special protection of the Constitution. Marriage, which forms the basis of family life and on which depends the increase of the population of the nation, is based on the equal rights of both sexes. Marriage and the family are recognized as the basis on which social life reposes and as the primary source from which develop German customs and culture. In consequence Article 119 enunciates a legislative course of considerable social and political importance. It prescribes the care of the purity, the health and the social advancement of the family as a duty of the state and of the municipalities. Families with numerous children have a claim to equalizing assistance. Motherhood has the right to the protection and care of the State.