Was the Weimar constitution flawed?

Josh Igoe – History – 29th September 2003

Was the Weimar Constitution flawed?

“There must be no government without a majority in the Reichstag; no Reichstag majority without the majority in the nation...”

This extract taken from the German historian Mann, in 1996, shows was the national assembly had finally agreed to set into motion, in August 1919, to convert the former authoritarian rule of the Kaiser into a system that had tight democratic controls.
The absence of the Kaiser would certainly undermine, if not weaken, the new constitutional assembly. The new provisional government under Ebert took over from where Prince Max von Baden and the Kaiser had been forced to leave.

The main task of this provisional government was to organise elections to the new Reichstag. Hugo Preuss was ordered on development of a new constitution. Here we can see an immediate flaw, as this was simply a “provisional” government and still in “development”. This shows that the democratic constitution of Germany had already started on a poor note, with shabby planning and makeshift leaders. Elections were set for the 6th Feb 1919 and the new Germany was set for change.

The first assembly met in Weimar, as Berlin was considered too insecure due to the Spartacist uprising. This was considered a good move by some, as Weimar was, and still is, renowned as the literacy centre of Germany, thus an apparent good foundation for the rebuilding of a country in its new made economic infancy.
According to Feuchtwanger (1995), the new constitution was built upon four main pillars:

Federal Structure
Presidential System
Nationally Elected Reichstag
Rights for the People

As you will see in the following paragraphs, these four pillars were certainly not set in absolute black and white, a lot of unforeseen grey areas were to arise in the early years which would have no doubt set the confidence of the people in the Weimar constitution into disillusionment.

The Federal System

The centralisation of power through a new constitution devised and developed by Hugo Preuss had its good and bad points. By breaking up the nation into smaller sections ...

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Federal Structure
Presidential System
Nationally Elected Reichstag
Rights for the People

The Federal System

The centralisation of power through a new constitution devised and developed by Hugo Preuss had its good and bad points. By breaking up the nation into smaller sections Preuss hoped than power would be given to regional and local governments. Therefore Germany would be transformed into a unitary state - the states, due to their separation would be more reliant upon the centre. However, Preuss was not successful in getting the support from the Assembly for this proposal, and there showing the main flaw in the Weimar republic. Laws and proposals had to be debated in the Reichstag by all parties, and where only a majority vote would see it successfully passed, with so many conflicting views from the right and the left, little progress could easily be made.

Finally a revised version of this proposal was accepted - voting in favour by 262 votes to 75.

The Lander, the regions, did lose some power, privileges, rights against taxation, rail and postal services. And for the first time, the army was under direct Reichstag control, rather than being control by the states.

Presidential Structure

The President was now the highest position in the land. He was given a 7 year term of office and served to maintain certain roles:

Command of the Armed Forces
Appointment and dismissal of the Chancellor
Dissolve the parliament and order new elections
Order referendums
Article 48 - gave the president the right of absolute control to dissolve parliament and its suspension in a time of national crisis.

Therefore, the President was simply a replacement Kaiser, in that he could have absolute control, could dismiss whoever whenever, in light of objection from the Reichstag they could be dismissed replaced and ignored. Certainly the period 1930-33 was ruled almost exclusively by invoking Article 48.

So, under the new constitution had anything really changed?

Nationally Elected Reichstag
Under the new constitution, all men and women above the age of 20 were allowed to vote. Elections to the Reichstag had the system of proportional representation. According to Feuchtwanger, Germany was divided into 35 districts for voting, with parties putting up candidates in these districts. For every 60,000 votes that a party won, one member of that party was to be elected. Hereditary political offices were removed and, apart from the judiciary, key government appointments were made by the elected officials. So, the elected President would appoint the Chancellor and the Chancellor would in turn appoint the Cabinet from the other elected members of the Reichstag. Normally, the parties won one seat per 60,000 votes. As a result of this, the total number of seats available in the Reichstag would vary according to the number of people voting. Thus causing the loss of some valuable ministers in the event of a low vote turnover.
Proportional representation adopted by the Weimar republic has been criticised on two main grounds. First, under the British ‘first-past-the-post’ system used today (non-proportional) it is extremely difficult for small, extremist parties to gain election to Parliament since, to do so, they must win more votes in a constituency than any other party. Second, it is criticised because it made coalition government almost unavoidable, as no single party could gain enough votes for an overall majority.
In a region the size of the electoral regions in Weimar Germany (which would be able to contain many British constituencies) and using the first-past-the-post system, an extremist party might win 30,001 votes, but that would not guarantee it representation in Parliament. It did so under the Weimar system, however, Any party winning 30,001 votes in a region automatically gained a seat in the Reichstag. Therefore small extremist parties were able to gain representation. If a different electoral system had been used, it is claimed, the Nazis would not have been able to be able to build mass support and set in motion the eventual election of Adolph Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

Rights for the People and Conclusion
However, its not all doom and gloom for the constitution. Under the Weimar republic a special section was outlined of the basic rights that were to be enjoyed by all German citizens – the first time such rights had been guaranteed. This guaranteed a permanent civil service, protected religious denominations and gave the basic structure of the education system. It included declarations for the benefits of families, as well as the rights of illegitimate children to be equal to the rights of legitimate children. Nationalisation was set into motion, with the proposed take-over of private companies into public ownership. Safety measures for workers, welfare insurance, job centres (labour exchanges), unemployment benefits and the right to join trade unions. These things in the Weimar constitution were certainly positive. However, they are far out measured by the weight of an irritating democracy where nothing ever seemed to get done, and the eventual take-over of an extremist party, of which many could argue, should have never been able to get a single seat in the Reichstag in the first place.

Josh Igoe – History – 29th