Historical Background

Years of Crisis, Reform, and Resurgence, 1919–1929

The Weimar Constitution (August 1919)

Although the National Assembly had to deal with numerous pressing issues, its primary task was the creation of a new constitution. The liberal politician Hugo Preuss (DDP) gave the first draft a decidedly democratic liberal framework. Although disagreements arose over issues such as the national flag, religious education, and the rights of the states, these were resolved by August 1919. The constitution passed overwhelmingly (262 to 75), but many deputies abstained, and members from conservative parties (DNVP and DVP) and the left wing of the SPD opposed it, revealing the fault lines that would plague the Republic. As the Republic's first president, Ebert signed the new constitution into law on 11 August 1919.

As a whole, the constitution enshrined the values of liberal democracy. It was arguably the most progressive constitution in the world at the time. In the first elections, held on 6 June 1920, pro-Republic parties obtained a solid 80 percent of the vote, with the socialist parties achieving 45 percent. Led by Scheidemann, they created and led the first cabinet in the Weimar Coalition (SPD, Centre Party, and DDP).

Despite this solid base of support, several factors led to unexpected problems:

• The allocation of presidential powers was deeply problematic. The government structure deliberately mixed presidential and parliamentary systems, with the president acting as a replacement kaiser
• The proportional electoral system allowed a wide diversity of views. However, the lack of minimum thresholds to win representation facilitated the rise of splinter parties. It was possible to win a seat in the chamber with as little as 0.4 percent of the vote

The historian Richard J. Evans concluded:

All in all, Weimar's constitution was no worse than the constitutions of most other countries in the 1920s, and a good deal more democratic than many. Its more problematical provisions might not have mattered so much had the circumstances been different. But the fatal lack of legitimacy from which the Republic suffered magnified the constitution's faults many times over.

Confronting Political Violence

Given the context, the birth of the Republic failed to unify Germans. Instead, an extreme nationalist movement emerged that repeatedly blamed the Republic for leading to defeat, revolution, and humiliation. Meanwhile, the radical Left accused the ruling coalition of having betrayed the workers' movement and being a mere prop for the militarists and capitalists. Both agreed that the Republic must be destroyed, and they launched numerous uprisings while simultaneously attacking each other.

Yet the government, assured of the support of the military through the Ebert-Groener Pact, dealt severely and successfully with the occasional outbreaks of violence even as the army and its Freikorps allies committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against workers and leftists.

This further alienated the KPD, which saw the Republic's action as additional evidence that the SPD had betrayed the ideals of the revolution. The success of the Freikorps at destroying the Bavarian Soviet Republic only encouraged the antidemocratic Right to use violence to seize power.

Consequently, right-wing death squads acted with impunity—shielded by the military and repeatedly absolved of wrongdoing by the courts. Assassinations of alleged November criminals became common. Hundreds of political assassinations occurred—almost all committed by right-wing activists. The judiciary, comprised almost exclusively of conservative holdovers from the Kaiserreich, issued sentences that revealed extraordinary leniency toward right-wing assassins and a corresponding severity against the few leftists who engaged in political violence:

The Kapp Putsch (March 1920)

In this climate, on 13 March 1920, twelve thousand Freikorps soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp (a right-wing journalist) as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike against the putsch.

The strike meant that no official pronouncements could be published, and, with the civil service out on strike, the Kapp Putsch collapsed after only four days, on 17 March.

Inspired by the general strike, a workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region when fifty thousand people formed the Red Army and took control of the province. The workers, who were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalize major industries, supported the national government, but the SPD leaders in the government did not want to lend support to the left wing of the SPD or KPD, which favored the establishment of a socialist regime.

As a result, the regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority—without receiving any formal authorization from the government, but with clear consent from the right wing of the SPD leadership. The repression of an uprising of socialist supporters by the Freikorps on the instructions of SPD ministers repeated the pattern of the Ebert-Groener Pact and became a further source of conflict within the socialist-communist movements, contributing to the weakening and fracturing of the largest bloc that supported the young Republic.

The Assassination of Walther Rathenau (1922)

Despite such instances of left-wing political violence, terrorism and insurrections remained largely the purview of the Right after 1919. One example of the link of right-wing terror to political events came with the Treaty of Rapallo. In 1922, the Reichswehr and civilian leaders, in an attempt to subvert the military restrictions of Versailles, signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union, which allowed Germany to train military personnel in the USSR in exchange for military technology.

While the Reichswehr leadership supported the treaty, it forced Germany to publicly renounce territorial claims against the USSR. As a result, two extremist junior army officers assassinated foreign minister Walther Rathenau (DDP). He was also targeted because he was part of the delegation that signed the Versailles Treaty. In addition, he was a Jew.

The assassins were members of the right-wing terrorist group Organization Consul, which had carried out numerous assassinations. They believed Rathenau's death would bring down the government by prompting the radical Left to take revolutionary action. They hoped to use this as an opportunity to establish an authoritarian regime or a military dictatorship with the aid of the Reichswehr.

The terrorists' aims were not achieved, however, and civil war did not come. Instead, millions of Germans gathered on the streets to express their grief and to demonstrate against counterrevolutionary terrorism. When the news of Rathenau's death became known in the Reichstag, the session fell into turmoil. Karl Helfferich (DNVP) in particular became the target of criticism because he had just recently made a vitriolic speech against Rathenau.

The Beer Hall Putsch (November 1923)

The shift toward ending political violence was not immediately effective, however. In 1923, the small, local NSDAP under Adolf Hitler in Munich launched the Beer Hall Putsch (aka the Munich Putsch). On 8 November 1923, in a pact with Ludendorff, the NSDAP took over a meeting of Prime Minister von Kahr of Bavaria at a beer hall. Ludendorff and Hitler declared that the Berlin government was deposed and that they were taking control of Munich.

Bavarian authorities, however, thwarted the three thousand insurrectionists. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason. The sentence, though, was the minimum allowable under law. The same conservative judges, who routinely sentenced striking workers and communists to death or to life in prison for lesser offenses, again proved highly sympathetic to right-wing terrorists even though four police officers had been killed.

Hitler served less than eight months in a comfortable cell, receiving a daily stream of visitors before his early release in 1924. While in jail, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which laid out his ideas. During this time, Hitler also decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power.

Yet, overall, the reactions to Rathenau's assassination strengthened the Republic. For as long as the Republic existed, the date 24 June remained a day of public commemorations. In public memory, Rathenau's death increasingly was seen as a martyr-like sacrifice for democracy.

Stabilizing the Economy

The year 1923 was a year of hyperinflation as well as uprisings. Without stabilizing the economy, there was little hope of ending the violence. In the early postwar years, with the economy in shambles, inflation was already growing at an alarming rate, but the government simply printed more banknotes to pay the bills. As a result, the value of the German mark decreased tenfold between December 1918 and April 1920.

Yet in 1923, the government engaged in a high-risk attempt to convince the Allies to renegotiate reparations, launching a conscious policy of Katastrophenpolitik to simultaneously defy obligations under Versailles and deliberately sabotage the economy to convince the Allies of the treaty's unfairness. The consequences were, as intended, catastrophic.

Subsequent governments pointed to this abject failure to justify Erfüllungspolitik. Economic stability, they argued, led to political stability, which in turn would ultimately erode Versailles. But it was a long-term approach, and it required both patience and favorable economic conditions.

Social Reform

Despite the instability, the provisional governments carried out a wide range of progressive social reforms during and after the revolutionary period:

Golden Era, 1924–1929

For all the turmoil, after the crisis year of 1923, Germany recovered—indeed, it thrived by many estimates. Stresemann, who served as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, embodied to the world a renewed Germany, steadily reclaiming its position in world affairs. His tenure marked a period of relative stability for the Republic, known as the Golden Twenties. Prominent features of this period were a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest; political assassination and insurrection all but disappeared.

Restoring civil stability and stabilizing the currency promoted confidence in the German economy and helped the recovery so ardently needed for the German nation to keep up with reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation.

Shortly after, the French and Germans agreed that the borders between their countries would not be changed by force, but left open the prospect of negotiated changes. Other foreign policy achievements included the evacuation of the Ruhr and improved relations between the Soviet Union and Germany. In 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member. Meanwhile, trade increased and unemployment fell. Indeed, for the first time, a government remained in power for its full term (1924–28).

Cultural Renaissance

In this context, the 1920s saw a remarkable cultural renaissance.

German artists, especially in cosmopolitan Berlin, looked to contemporary progressive cultural movements such as impressionism, expressionism, and cubism coming from Paris as well as radical artistic innovations emanating from the Soviet Union. They often condemned the excesses of capitalism and demanded revolutionary cultural changes. German literature, cinema, theater, and music entered a period of great creativity as innovative street theater brought plays to the public, and the cabaret scene and jazz became wildly popular. Many new buildings followed the straight-lined, geometrical style being popularized in the United States. Examples of the new architecture included the Bauhaus Building, the Grosses Schauspielhaus, and the Einstein Tower.

Foreign Relations

Reparations: The Dawes Plan and the Young Plan

The Reichstag considered the Dawes Plan a temporary measure and expected a future revision. In 1928, Foreign Minister Stresemann called for this final plan. The ensuing Young Plan of 1929 proposed additional payment reductions and early evacuation of the Rhineland by France in 1930, five years ahead of schedule. Almost all observers, including the Allies and German cabinet, saw the Young Plan as yet another dramatic foreign policy success of Erfüllungspolitik.

The cabinet of Hermann Müller (SPD) made clear that they would not support the law or violate the treaty, and would instead continue with their Erfüllungspolitik, including ratification of the Young Plan:

The Government of the Reich, in agreement with the immense majority of the German people, knows that improvement in the external situation cannot be imposed by a German law. It can only be attained by negotiations with the associates of Germany.

Pushed by the Right, seeking to find a wedge issue after their electoral defeat in 1928, the Freedom Law and the Young Plan became the central intertwined political issues of late 1929.

Poland and the Eastern Border

Complicating matters, the cabinet was simultaneously seeking to resolve a number of issues with Poland. The creation of the Second Republic of Poland by the Treaty of Versailles infuriated nationalists. Poland annexed significant German territories, including the Polish Corridor, a region that separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

Poles successfully argued that access to the Baltic Sea via the port of Danzig was essential for the otherwise landlocked Poland. For Germans, this territorial redrawing:

• Reduced the size of Germany
• Created an isolated and militarily indefensible exclave (East Prussia)
• Abandoned hundreds of thousands of German nationals in a foreign and hostile state
• Severed a centuries-old claim to land in the East considered historically German

Yet the American diplomat David Hunter Miller dismissively concluded, "The Corridor and Danzig should be ceded to Poland. … In the case of Poland they are vital interests; in the case of Germany, aside from Prussian sentiment, they are quite secondary."

The Trade War with Poland

Lacking an army, the cabinet developed a plan to wreck Poland's economy and gain political concessions via a trade war. Even the free-trade, liberal DDP-leaning newspaper the Frankfurter Zeitung (Frankfurt Newspaper) wrote in 1924:

Poland must be mortally wounded after the trade war. With her blood her strength will flow away as well, and finally her independence.

The economic consequences for Germany were minimal since only 3 to 4 percent of German trade was with Poland. Poland, on the other hand, suffered tremendously, since it had little choice but to trade with Germany. The trade war exacerbated the situation in Poland to such an extent that it helped lead to a coup in 1926 that placed the general Józef Piłsudski in charge of what was, in effect, a dictatorship.

Anti-German Actions in Poland

In retaliation, ethnic Germans faced escalating pressure from the local Polish population and officials. Germans traveling between East Prussia and the rest of Germany were regularly harassed by Polish nationalists. In May 1925 a train passing through the corridor on its way to East Prussia crashed due to apparent sabotage on the line: the spikes had been removed from the tracks for a short distance and the fishplates unbolted. Twenty-five people, including twelve women and two children, were killed; some thirty others were injured.

The Liquidation Treaty (1929)

By 1929, however, Polish economic hardship and German inability to staunch the population losses led both sides to commit to a peaceful settlement, though both sides pointed out that any attempt to permanently revise borders would mean war.

To end the crisis, the German government began negotiating a treaty that would resolve these matters, the so-called Liquidation Treaty, and conceptually linked this treaty to certain provisions in the Young Plan—a linkage that made sense financially but only inflamed tensions politically.

Military Affairs

The Reichswehr: A State Within a State

The Treaty of Versailles and the revolution did not destroy most of Germany's traditional institutions, with the notable exception of the monarchy. The civil service, the schools and universities, the judiciary, and, most importantly, the military remained in the hands of the same men who ran them in the Kaiserreich. Most retained their conservative, authoritarian preferences.

After the dissolution of the imperial army in 1918, Germany's military forces consisted of the irregular Freikorps and a few regular units. The Freikorps were formally disbanded in 1920, though they continued to exist in underground groups, and on 1 January 1921 a new Reichswehr was created.

However, for all its professionalism, the Reichswehr was, based on the Ebert-Groener Pact, a "state within a state," autonomous from the government and free from civilian oversight. There were rumors that the Reichswehr attempted to skirt the treaty in various ways—via secret budgets, money laundering, even training in the Soviet Union. That the Reichswehr was subverting international law was not a surprise.

The Reichswehr's officers were also utterly devoted to von Hindenburg, who, as Reich president, was the formal head of the Reichswehr and consistently defended its absolute sanctity. Yet it was general Kurt von Schleicher, as head of the Defense Ministry's Office of Ministerial Affairs that looked after the Reichswehr's political interests, who made day-to-day decisions.

It was unimaginable that the Reichswehr would act without, first, the consent of von Hindenburg, and, second, the coordination of von Schleicher. How they would act under a different president and defense minister, though, was unpredictable.

The Naval Question: Armored Cruisers

One of the debates confronting the Reichswehr involved the navy. The military proposed building three new Deutschland-class armored cruisers, derisively referred to as "pocket battleships" by the English press. Political opposition to the new ships was significant. The Reichswehr therefore decided to delay ordering the first ship until after the Reichstag elections in 1928, hoping for a conservative majority. The question over whether to build the new ships was a major issue in elections, particularly with the SPD, which campaigned with the slogan "Food for children, not armored cruisers."

Yet, to continue building the ships, the Reichstag had to pass an annual naval funding bill, meaning that the divisive issue of guns or butter would resurface every year.

Paramilitary Violence

By 1929, the violent days of the early Republic had faded. Assassinations of leading politicians had ceased. No uprising had occurred since 1923. The Black Reichswehr and Freikorps had disbanded. The Reichswehr and Republic had achieved a modus vivendi. But threats lurked just below the surface. Street fights, especially between the rival paramilitaries of the NSDAP and KPD, often resulted in riots and death. Low-level state officials faced real threats of terror attacks. And most of the large parties continued to maintain paramilitary organizations of such size that they collectively dwarfed the Reichswehr.

Well-organized paramilitaries were legal (provided they did not actively oppose the Republic), and members could wear uniforms and train openly. All were affiliated with a political direction, but they were not legally identified with a party. While this distinction had little real meaning, it did mean that political parties could not be held accountable for their paramilitaries' often unruly, frequently violent, occasionally murderous actions. For example, the Red Front was banned, but not the KPD.

The fact that these paramilitaries waged street fights meant that many people believed they should be banned—if not all of them, then at least those that engaged in clearly documented violence. Unless specified otherwise, the bans were for one year but could be renewed.

The NSDAP's "Legality Strategy"

The government, using the 1922 Law for the Protection of the Republic, made some attempts to ban either the NSDAP or the SA. This happened in 1923 after the Munich Putsch, but it only increased that party's popularity and the ban was soon lifted. Most agreed that a ban on a party violated the essence of constitutional democracy. The Supreme Court indicated that a party ban would be constitutional only in the context of a direct threat (an actual insurrection by a party).

Upon Hitler's release from prison in 1924, he convinced the Bavarian authorities to lift the ban on the NSDAP and reformed the party under his undisputed leadership. The new party was no longer a paramilitary organization, and it officially disavowed any intention of taking power by force. The party and the SA were kept separate and the legal aspect of the NSDAP's work was emphasized. In a sign of this change, the NSDAP admitted women.

In all public statements, the official stance of the NSDAP was the new Legality Strategy—a shift away from attempting to seize power through violence and towards electoralism. However, the street actions by the SA and incriminating evidence found in a police raid on a Nazi lawyer's office made many wonder if the NSDAP was sincere. Indeed, the NSDAP was repeatedly hauled into court to address the violence of the SA. In these courtroom exchanges, state's attorneys attempted to get Hitler to incriminate the NSDAP as supporting violence against the Republic, which would allow the state to use the Law for the Protection of the Republic to ban the NSDAP. Hitler generally deftly parried each attempt without disavowing the party's revolutionary goals, and conservative judges revealed their political sympathies for anti-Republican nationalists.

The Banning of the Red Front (May 1929)

In May 1929, the SPD interior minister used the Law for the Protection of the Republic against the Left and banned the Red Front, the KPD's paramilitary. This action was precipitated by the involvement of the Red Front in protests after the government of Berlin, which was controlled by an SPD-led coalition, banned celebrations of International Workers' Day (1 May). Police, led by the SPD chief of police, shot and killed more than thirty demonstrators.

Not only was the Red Front banned, but all its assets were confiscated by the government. Furthermore, all attempts at creating successor organizations were banned. Even the SPD agreed with the Right that the greater threat came from the KPD, not the NSDAP.

Sexuality and Eugenics

The Eugenics Movement and Sterilization

Germany's hypermilitarized context had inevitable ideational corollaries. Social Darwinism, for example, had entered the German scientific community at the end of the nineteenth century and become a central tenet for many political parties. Proponents contended that modern society had interrupted the natural struggle for existence by preserving the weak—at the national, social, or even individual level. They feared that in Germany, "defective" persons were reproducing faster than healthy ones.

The widely respected natural scientist Ernst Haeckel had written that humans were not always morally obligated to prolong life, and he proposed the establishment of a commission to determine which of the chronically ill should be put to death by poisoning (euthanasia). In 1915, psychiatry professor Alfred Hoche described the end of atomistic individualism and the transformation of the nation into a higher organism, the Volk. This quasi-mystical image portrayed society as an organism with its own health and identified human beings as functional or dysfunctional parts of a larger whole.

Eugenics advocates included physicians, public health officials, and academics in the biomedical fields, on the political left and right. Serving on government committees and conducting research on heredity, experts warned that if the nation did not produce more fit children, it was headed for extinction. A growing segment, linking eugenics to race, championed "Nordics" as a "eugenically advantageous" race and discussed "race mixing" as a source of biological degeneration.

International Eugenics Movement

German supporters of eugenics were part of an international phenomenon:

• The English scientist Francis Galton had coined the term "eugenics," meaning "good birth," in 1883
• German biologist August Weissmann's 1892 theory of "immutable germ plasm" fostered growing international support for eugenics
• The rediscovery in 1900 of Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel's theory that the biological makeup of organisms was determined by certain "factors" that were later identified with genes
• The term "gene" was first used by a Danish scientist in 1909

Since 1900, reform-minded advocates of eugenics worldwide had offered biological solutions to social problems common to societies experiencing urbanization and industrialization. After classifying individuals into labeled groups using the scientific methods of the day (observation, family genealogies, physical measurements, and intelligence tests), they ranked the groupings from "superior" to "inferior."

The political, social, and economic turmoil since the war had radicalized many German professionals and created popular support for the idea of the Volk as a higher good than the individual. Eugenicists criticized new and costly welfare programs as wasting national resources on the most unproductive members of society.

War Losses and "Genetic Stock"

The war had further increased eugenicists' concerns about the loss of valuable genetic stock, based on the idea that Germans with the "best" genes volunteered for war, showed heroism during the fighting, and were consequently killed or injured at a higher rate, while those with the "worst" genes did not fight and continued to propagate.

Along these lines, even the SPD's newspaper, Vorwärts, often wrote favorably of eugenics and estimated the war dead at 1,728,246 soldiers and 24,112 sailors—all supposedly of the best genetic stock.

Sterilization Programs

In 1921, the German Society for Race Hygiene advocated a eugenics program that favored voluntary sterilization, which became the most common proposal for preventing unproductive "inferiors" from reproducing and for saving on costs of special care and education.

Voluntary sterilization was already customary in the Free State of Saxony in the 1920s. In 1923, Gustav Boeters, a medical officer in Zwickau, revealed that he and other surgeons had been sterilizing the intellectually disabled without their consent. Seeking legal sanction for such practices, he publicized a proposed model law in a number of newspapers and offered it to the government of Saxony for consideration. The so-called Lex Zwickau was not adopted, but the medical profession continued to discuss the matter throughout the 1920s.

The Women's Movements, International Women's Day, and Mother's Day

If eugenicists frequently discussed "negative eugenics" (preventing the unfit from reproducing), they also emphasized "positive eugenics" (encouraging the fit to reproduce). Here, they focused on motherhood and found an even wider base of support grounded in fears of moral degeneracy, changing gender norms, and even national demographic decline.

These concerns were even integrated into Article 119 of the constitution, which called for the "preservation and increase of the nation … [and] the purity, health, and social welfare of the family" and stated that "families of many children shall have the right to compensatory public assistance." These issues once again fit into a broader context of women's rapidly changing position in German society since the late nineteenth century.

Women's Organizations Before and After 1918

Men dominated Germany's unification process after 1871 and gave priority to the fatherland theme and related male issues such as military prowess and patriarchy. Nevertheless, formal organizations for promoting women's rights grew in number before the war. Women of all political views began to network and participated in the growth of international organizations. These organizations reflected the broader political fragmentation in Germany. Separate organizational streams with differing ideological goals emerged between liberal feminism, socialism (and later communism), conservative Christianity, and völkisch movements—divisions that continued in the Republic.

In reality, little opportunity existed for women of these different milieus to work together. Yet, by the end of the Kaiserreich, many German women and men were demanding female suffrage. In the wake of the November Revolution of 1918, they succeeded when Article 109 of the constitution stated, "Men and women have the same fundamental civil rights and duties."

Consequently, the majority of the electorate became female, in part because so many men died in the war or were so physically or psychologically wounded that they were unlikely to vote. In 1919, the first year women could vote in Germany, they secured 10 percent of the seats in the Reichstag.

The New Woman

Although the devastating consequences of the war provided the immediate context, the shift in women's roles had been underway for decades. While the proportion of working women remained about the same as before the war, women began to take new kinds of jobs previously dominated by men. They occupied more jobs that were socially visible, such as tram conductors and department store clerks, as well as (in smaller numbers) factory workers, lawyers, and doctors. While many of these positions returned to men in the postwar decade, women also moved into professions where they became firmly established, especially teaching, social work, and secretarial work. More than eleven million women were employed in Germany in 1918 at the war's end, accounting for 36 percent of the workforce.

As women gained more power in both society and government, some exercised freedoms unimaginable before the war. Everyone discussed the emergence of a New Woman and a new family. The psychologist Alice Rühle-Gerstel commented:

Women began to cut an entirely new figure. A new economic figure who went out into public economic life as an independent worker or wage-earner entering the free market that had up until then been open only for men. A new political figure who appeared in the parties and parliaments, at demonstrations and gatherings. A new physical figure who not only cut her hair and shortened her skirts but began to emancipate herself altogether from the physical limitations of being female. Finally, a new intellectual-psychological figure who fought her way out of the fog of sentimental ideologies and strove toward a clear, objective knowledge of the world and the self.

The mainstream goal became not to achieve full equality or emancipation but to make motherhood more attractive. Motherhood was upgraded from a responsibility to a calling through home economics courses, homemaker helper programs, and social work projects. In this way, politicians of the Center and the Right endeavored to make traditional roles attractive to a new generation by underwriting the father's authority and the mother's responsibility within the family.

Most German women continued to hold traditional views, criticizing younger women who adopted the liberated urban life. The better-off classes already largely confined women to the domestic sphere. The Catholic and Protestant milieus agreed with this vision. With economic uncertainty, an increasing number of women turned toward conservative parties. These male-dominated parties welcomed them, but they were generally relegated to "women's issues" such as welfare and education.

The NSDAP was unique in that it refused to allow women to serve in its Reichstag faction, though it encouraged them to join its various auxiliaries. Joseph Goebbels (NSDAP) declared:

The National Socialist movement is the only party that keeps women out of daily politics … not because we see something less valuable in women, but because we see something of different value in them and their mission. … Things that belong to a man must remain his. To which belong politics and defense.

Indeed, in a backlash against the New Woman, the percentage of women in the Reichstag actually dropped to under 7 percent in 1928.

Three Competing Holidays: Women's Day vs. Mother's Day

In an important political cultural manifestation of these gender debates, three competing holidays emerged in Germany—a Communist International Women's Day, a Socialist International Women's Day, and a Mother's Day divided between liberal, Christian, conservative, and eugenically oriented völkisch fascist movements.

The Protestant Salvation Army popularized the idea, and the churches embraced it as reinforcing a woman's Christian duty as mother and wife. Nationalist conservatives linked it to militarism, especially honoring mothers of fallen soldiers for their sacrifices in the World War and promoting motherhood to ensure that women bore enough future soldiers. Even liberals, who presented a domestic ideal of woman as a stay-at-home mother who maintained the presentational propriety of the family home, could support Mother's Day (though many liberals also accepted notions of formal political equality and many liberal middle-class women were New Women).

Race and Culture

Given the deep divisions on other identity issues, it was little wonder that the Republic found no consensus on matters of race and culture. In fact, debates on race and culture became tied to questions of citizenship, of who was really German.

The Legal Definition of German Citizenship

Legally, German citizenship was based on the principle of jus sanguinis, where citizenship was determined or acquired by the nationality of one's parents. On 22 July 1913, the Nationality Law of the German Empire and States established that "a German is one who possesses citizenship in a state or immediate citizenship in the realm." However, it did not add any further clarification. Thus the Kaiserreich had no restrictive völkisch conceptualization of race in this legal definition.

During the Republic, however, the praxis of naturalization of a growing number of foreigners increasingly addressed the matter. Offices were established that issued German Diaspora Certificates to authenticate the German ancestry of noncitizens. Guidelines were surreptitiously issued that established the distinction between "German descent" and "foreign descent," whereby those of German descent were privileged. These secret guidelines also included a further attribute of "culturally alien," which singled out Jews, former colonial subjects, and political leftists to exclude them from naturalization.

Though various Germans questioned the citizenship rights of Slavs (especially Poles), Africans, foreign-born aliens, and those judged eugenically unfit, the most heated debate focused on Jews.

The "Jewish Question"

Jews had exercised full rights as citizens since the creation of the Kaiserreich, and Article 135 of the constitution ended all religious-based restrictions. The general process of assimilation and acculturation, well under way in the nineteenth century, accelerated under the Republic. The success of Jewish Germans spoke for itself. Out of nine German Nobel Prize winners, five, including Albert Einstein, were Jews.

But cultural biases ran deep. Christian churches had long promoted hostility toward Jews, and German culture, like most of Western culture, simply updated medieval anti-Jewish tropes to fit the modern era. The most significant change in anti-Jewish attitudes was its fusion with a racialized social Darwinism after 1880 to create antisemitism—the belief that Jews were a racially distinct and destructive group rather than a religious or cultural group.

The Growth of Antisemitism

The growth of antisemitism, especially among the nationalist and völkisch parties, challenged the status of Jews, which had been improving since the French Revolution. Since earlier bigotry had targeted Jews as religiously or culturally different, conversion or assimilation could end their discrimination. But antisemites regarded Jews as a separate race who could never be German. Indeed, the Kaiserreich had even seen the rise of antisemitism as a political platform in a number of parties, some built primarily around the issue.

Politicians in every party except the Marxists and DDP (and even in those parties, on occasion) regularly resorted to anti-Jewish and increasingly antisemitic rhetoric—some, such as the Centre, subtly, others, such as the NSDAP and DNVP, blatantly. The Reichswehr had an unofficial policy of not admitting Jews, even though Jews had served Germany loyally in the war. Ultimately, an almost casual prejudice against Jews permeated society—Jews were simply regarded as different, not fully German, regardless whether by religion, culture, or race.

Legal Battles: Jews Fight Back

The resulting conflict over Jews' Germanness was fought not just in public propaganda but also in the courts, where Jews successfully prosecuted antisemites using antidefamation laws. For example:

• Joseph Goebbels (NSDAP) was twice sentenced for religious-based attacks on the vice president of the Berlin police force, Bernhard Weiss (a Jew and DDP member)
• Julius Streicher, NSDAP publicist, scandalmonger, and conspiracy theorist, was repeatedly taken to court for religious libel and incitement to violence for his antisemitic harangues and cartoons in Der Stürmer (The Attacker)

The Reality: Jews in Germany

For all the talk, though, Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population—only 564,000 Jewish Germans out of a total population of sixty million. Although many organized in Jewish cultural and religious organizations, they were patriotic, thoroughly assimilated, largely secular, and thought of themselves almost exclusively as Germans.

Censorship and All Quiet on the Western Front

Article 118 of the constitution was explicit: "Censorship is forbidden." However, the Republic faced regular skirmishes over calls for censorship and charges of blasphemy. Most famously, the international best seller All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque incited a sustained press war that ended in physical violence.

Published in 1929, it sold 1.5 million copies in Germany alone. A highly anticipated film version that included the new technology of sound was being made in the United States, to be released in Germany in 1930, but demands for its censorship were made even before its release.

In short, Germans read All Quiet through their preexisting political filters. Culture, as with every other aspect of Weimar, was always interpreted politically. Not surprising, then, that many called for the book's suppression.

Industrial Relations

Unemployment Insurance, Deflation, and Austerity

Regardless of the numerous pressures, the Republic took proactive steps to look after its more vulnerable citizens. After all, the primary force behind the revolution had been workers and those most vulnerable to the consequences of the war. They remained mobilized in trade unions, cultural associations, and political parties, especially the SPD and KPD, which combined polled from 33 to 45 percent nationally. Democracy required mass support, and mass support depended on satisfying this urban constituency.

The Austerity Debate

In line with contemporary economic theory, liberals and most conservatives supported deflation as the correct response to an economic crisis. The goal was to prevent a return to the devastating hyperinflation of 1923, which had been caused when the state simply printed more money to cover expenses, even though less money was coming in.

Instead of that approach, which was universally considered a disaster, the state proposed austerity—drastically cutting state expenditures, most importantly on social services and the new unemployment benefits. But austerity would also mean no spending on other additional budget items, including armored cruisers, farmers' relief, and public work projects.

Nationalization and Aryanization

Some argued that the state needed to do more than facilitate capitalism; they wanted it to guarantee national prosperity, good social relations, affordable living standards, and employment. The Socialization Law of 1919 promised just that. Nationalization—having the state take over an industry—had strong roots going back to the Kaiserreich, with the state running the post office and railways. In addition, private firms organized as cartels with government encouragement to increase international competitiveness.

During the war, the demands of "total war" led the state to play an even more decisive economic role. The War Ministry regulated essential raw materials, enforced agreements between workers and owners, converted consumer industries to war production, rationed industries and consumers, prioritized use of rail freight, set prices, and even closed theaters to save energy.

While other countries also engaged in the nationalization of industry, the Soviet Union went much farther. It eliminated private ownership in all large industries. For many, nationalization was therefore associated with Bolshevism. For others, it was simply an essential part of modernity where the state took on the responsibility for safeguarding the economic security of its people (as required by the constitution) and military viability in an era of industrial warfare. Many therefore called for nationalization, especially of the banks, to provide economic stability.

Agricultural Affairs

Bailing Out the Junker Elite

Under the Republic, the large landowners demanded state protection, including high tariffs. These agrarian tariffs from the Kaiserreich really only applied to grain, which was mostly produced on large estates, and thus the tariffs benefited only the Junkers. In fact, tariffs led to substantial price increases on imported food and agricultural products, increasing the cost of living for urban workers. Liberals argued that tariffs also violated free trade, undermined long-term prosperity and efficiency, and decreased industrial profits since businesses had to raise wages to keep up with workers' higher costs of living.

But for the Junkers, the question of indebted large estates was existential. Due to the postwar collapse in grain prices, a failure to modernize, and the cutting off of East Prussia from Germany, the Junker estates were not profitable and had been retained only with massive private loans. Now, these estates were drowning in debt and beginning to default on their loans.

Junkers found an ideological means to rally mass support for this one-sided advantaging of their self-interests by linking grain tariffs to anti-Versailles patriotism, militarism, and antisemitism. The war had exposed the dangers of Germany's low agrarian productivity when the country failed to feed its population during the British blockade. The resulting starvation was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the home front.

Nationalists now argued that grain tariffs were essential to autarky, which itself was the key to national survival. High tariffs would force Germans to rely on German production by making agrarian imports too expensive, thus stimulating domestic production. Germany would be freed from the international market, which was controlled, they frequently argued, by Jewish bankers. The trick would be to make German agriculture more productive to keep food prices down—either through more intensive methods or through acquisition of new farmland.

The Small Farmer's Plight

In reality, small farmers were largely incapable of modernizing and becoming competitive. Hyperinflation had destroyed their capital reserves, and tight credit prevented them from borrowing to purchase modern equipment and imported fertilizers and feed. Much of the credit was in the hands of U.S. banks as short-term loans with relatively high interest rates. Paying off this debt was undermined by inexpensive agricultural imports and rising taxes.

In addition, the global economic recession, punctuated by the New York stock market crash in 1929, led to a national decline in demand for agrarian products as German city dwellers tightened their belts, which led to further drops in food prices.

What Small Farmers Want

What did small farmers want, specifically? Some—any—form of relief for small farmers. Many looked for:

• Debt relief, including state loans or forgiveness of debt for small farmers facing foreclosure
• Protection from foreclosure
• Higher food prices (but urban workers want lower food prices)
• Lower taxes (but the state needs revenue)
• Cheaper credit (but banks set interest rates)

Unfortunately, the government was already unable to balance its books. Furthermore, liberals viewed debt relief as a form of agrarian communism—a violation of free market principles.

The Land Reform Debate

Even more controversially, many demanded land reform. This meant redistributing indebted or unproductive lands of large estates to smaller farmers and allowing some form of subsidized settlement in the East.

As early as 1919 the National Assembly passed a Settlement Law intended to do just that. It walked a political tightrope:

• Appease the Left by confiscating and redistributing land from Junker estates
• Appease farmers by opening more land
• Appease völkisch conservatives by moving urban youth to Germanize the rural East

The constitution clearly granted the right of public domain to the Reichstag, particularly in regard to land. Taking such action, however, pitted vested interests against each other:

Rural Radicalization

Unable to implement meaningful reform and facing economic uncertainty, small farmers were susceptible to radical solutions. They already harbored distrust toward the Republic:

• The parliamentary culture of the Reichstag had little to do with the corporatist practices of rural life
• The association of the Republic with urban Germany—especially Berlin, with its bewildering modern culture—remained alien to life in the countryside
• Sexual liberation, cultural influences from Africa and America, coalition cabinets and parliamentary procedures—none of these made much sense
• Moreover, many farmers, struggling with large debts and difficult banks, were receptive to the antisemitic propaganda about Jewish bankers
• The stereotype of the Kuhjude (cow Jew), who made small loans at usurious rates and then took the family cow when the farmer defaulted, was already ingrained in the rural imagination—it offered a simple answer to a complex issue

The Rural People's Movement

Indeed, finding no support for their demands among their traditional leaders in the Junker class, small farmers launched local riots, protests, and even terrorist attacks beginning in 1928. Though localized, this Rural People's Movement engendered sympathy from the millions of Germans living in the small towns. Most of these efforts were too localized to have any national influence.

The Green Front (1929)

To overcome these divisions, and recognizing the mobilizing potential of the movement, in February 1929 a coalition of agrarian leaders formed the Green Front to bring together the various agricultural special interest groups. They hoped that a united organization, one that might grow into a single national party, would finally allow farmers to have a powerful voice.

The Green Front leader, Martin Schiele, defected from the Junker-dominated DNVP to lead the National Christian Farmers League (CNBP). Schiele attempted to persuade future governments that only a cabinet that:

• Excluded socialists
• Addressed the needs of smaller farmers
• Made accommodations to large farmers
• Implemented austerity
• Made cabinet members independent of their parties

...would have his support. In effect, while expressing rural needs, he also aimed at undermining the parliamentary system dominated by the SPD.

Where Does the Republic Find Itself Now?

Now, in 1929, the revolutionary wave that overthrew the Kaiserreich has long since crested. Despite strains, the economy has recovered. Germany stands poised to reassert its rightful place as the leading nation of the European continent.

International Success

Internationally, Germany is slowly but surely reintegrating into world politics through a series of small but significant concessions:

• Germany, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Italy signed the Treaty of Locarno in 1925, which recognized Germany's borders with France and Belgium and effectively normalized diplomatic relations in the West
• In 1926 the League of Nations admitted Germany
• The Dawes Plan lowered reparations in 1924; the final amount is no longer linked to Allied demands but Germany's ability to pay
• The Young Plan, if passed, will lower payments yet again

Economic Recovery

Economically, the introduction of a new currency and other economic reforms have led to improvements:

• Industrial production has regained prewar levels
• Trade is strong, driven by Germany's continued dominance in engineering, chemicals, optics, and steel
• Reparations, though insulting, have proven no real burden to the economy
• True, agriculture lags behind, but farm efficiency is increasing
• Global economic depression has heightened tensions between workers and owners, but once the economy gets back on track, the rising tide should lift all boats

Intellectual Leadership

Intellectually, Germany leads the world in the sciences:

• German recipients dominate the Nobel prizes, especially in physics
• Chemistry, likewise, relies on German professors and researchers at the great chemical concerns such as BASF and Bayer
• Carl Benz rivals Henry Ford as the inventor of the automobile, and German engineering innovation is the envy of the world
• The German university system, especially its graduate seminar model, is institutionalizing itself internationally
• Little wonder that, on average, ten thousand U.S. students travel to Germany every year to attend its prestigious universities

Cultural Renaissance

Culturally, writers such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Bertolt Brecht have unrivaled international stature:

• German historians have redefined the academic discipline
• Oswald Spengler has found international fame with his The Decline of the West and its portrayal of the inevitable decay of Western civilization
• In philosophy, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, and the Frankfurt School influence intellectuals around the world
• The visual and performing arts, including such new forms as cinematography, are not just innovative but commercially successful internationally

Social Modernity

Socially, Berlin rivals Paris and New York as a center of nightlife:

• A libertine sensibility dominates the image of the capital, with its lascivious cabarets, African American jazz music, and open gay scene
• Indeed, Germany has become the center of the entirely new field of sexology
• Women have full legal equality, and laws on abortion and homosexuality have been liberalized

Political Stability?

Politically, even though the presidential election of 1925 brought the monarchist von Hindenburg to office, many liberals and socialists voted for him out of a sense of national loyalty. Indeed, von Hindenburg has shown himself willing to tolerate the Republic and lend his unsurpassed credibility to the state, despite his regularly expressed sympathies for the DNVP and hostility to the Versailles system.

Political violence seems a thing of the past. Radical parties such as the NSDAP and the KPD find few supporters. The last coup attempt, in 1923 by Adolf Hitler's regionally marginal NSDAP, has laughingly been labeled the Beer Hall Putsch, more theater than threat.

The Reichstag Election of 1928: A Democratic Mandate

The Reichstag election of 1928 has validated this new sense of confidence and stability. The SPD remains the largest party after winning 153 of the 491 seats—almost a third of the votes in an election contested by over forty parties.

Figure 4: 1928 Election Results by District - Shaded according to the party with the largest share of the vote. The SPD's victory (red) is concentrated in urban areas, industrial regions, and Prussia, while conservative parties (blue/purple) dominate rural agricultural regions. Notice the NSDAP's near-total absence—they won only 12 seats nationally.

Voter turnout was 75.6 percent, providing the pro-Republic coalition led by the SPD with a solid mandate. Indeed, the only other party to gain significantly was the KPD. True, the two main Marxist parties may loathe each other, but their combined electoral victories (totaling 42 percent of Reichstag mandates) represent a significant turn away from the right-wing policies of the early 1920s. Radical right-wing parties have been marginalized; the NSDAP won only twelve seats, and the DNVP lost thirty seats. Prussia, by far the largest state in Germany, is an even stronger SPD stronghold ruled by an SPD-led coalition.

Figure 5: Composition of the Reichstag, 1920–1928 - The shifting balance of power across five elections. The SPD (red) reached its peak in 1928. The DNVP (dark blue) declined significantly from its 1924 high. The Centre Party (black) remained relatively stable. The NSDAP (bottom, barely visible) remains marginal with only 12 seats in 1928—seemingly a spent force.

Continuity with the Kaiserreich

Despite the abdication of the kaiser, the November Revolution, and the creation of a new constitution, the Republic must also cope with a great number of continuities from the Kaiserreich.

• Neither the agrarian nor the industrial economy has undergone a deep restructuring, despite a series of reforms that supposedly protect workers and peasants
• The Reichstag largely continues the same parliamentary party alliances as before
• The position of the Reich president is consciously viewed as a substitute for the kaiser
• The old elite insist on the maintenance of their social and cultural distinctions

Further, all of the leading politicians grew up under and were shaped by the Kaiserreich and its aristocratic, authoritarian militarism. In the ten years since the collapse of the Kaiserreich, there has been surprisingly little change in personnel in any of the key institutions. The same people continue to dominate the schools and universities, the Reichswehr, and the judiciary. Almost all of the civil servants served in those institutions before the revolution.

Individuals who had been at the top of the socioeconomic ladder under the Kaiserreich remain ensconced and unwilling to share that status:

• Bourgeois employers persist in their implacable hostility to unions
• Aristocrats look down on the bourgeoisie
• Protestants doubt the loyalty of Catholics
• The military opposes any reform of its officer corps
• Antisemitism thrives in all but the Marxist and left-liberal parties
• Junkers demand and receive special preference for their estates, even as smaller farms struggle

In fact, much of one's attitudes toward the Republic depends on whether one was a winner or a loser in the Kaiserreich; the old elites resent the changes and express a corresponding hostility to the Republic. They look nostalgically to the past.

On the other hand, newly empowered groups—workers, women, Jews, socialists, bourgeoisie—place their hopes in the Republic. In short, the Republic is based as much on continuity with an authoritarian past as on hopes for a democratic future.

Late 1929: Dancing on a Volcano

And now we find ourselves in the autumn of 1929. President von Hindenburg began the year with the traditional New Year's message, a custom dating back to the kaiser. His tone expressed the sullen resentment of many, especially regarding the Treaty of Versailles:

The entire German people greets today the beginning of the new year with deep bitterness, because a great part of our land is denied the freedom to which we have just claim—just in God's eyes and in man's eyes. We have long hoped for its attainment. And we still want to hope, despite harsh disappointment, that in the new year the German people will be given back its full right of self-determination.

Since then, new crises have wracked the Republic:

• The stock market crash on Wall Street has produced a global shock wave
• Foreign creditors have begun withdrawing loans, threatening insolvency in German companies, national default on reparation payments, and soaring unemployment
• In late 1928, Stresemann warned, "The economic position is only flourishing on the surface. Germany is in fact dancing on a volcano. If the short-term credits are called in, a large section of our economy would collapse."

The Grand Coalition partners have been attempting to agree on the best way to deal with the growing economic crisis, which is exacerbating differences on matters from foreign policy to cultural policy. The anti-Republic parties of the Left and Right (the KPD, NSDAP, and the DNVP) seem to be gaining strength. Stresemann's death at this critical moment accentuates the sense of parliamentary crisis.