As a direct reaction the Basic Law provided for a weaker President by a “strengthening of the role of the Chancellor”. Glaessner writes that the Basic Law “showed the Federal Republic’s constitutional readiness to learn from the experiences of national socialism”. Article 63 of the Basic Law states that the “federal Chancellor shall be elected…by the Bundestag” as opposed to being appointed by the President as was the case in the Weimar Republic. Another provision for the decrease in Presidential power in the Federal Republic has been the ability of the Chancellor to “determine…general policy guidelines” as stated in Article 65, a power that was invested in the President in the Weimar Constitution.
There are considerable constraints put on the Federal Chancellor in order to prevent a repetition of the President’s position in Weimar. Coalitions in government are the ‚norm’ in German politics; it is very rare for the Chancellor to have an absolute majority in parliament. This resricts the Chancellor to a degree, as he has to accomodate all views of the governong coalition. The Bundesrat is also a formof contraint on the Chancellor. The representatives in the Bundesrat often put the interests of their Lander first, usually above any party loyalty they may have. The need for agreement between the Bundesrat and the Bundestag reduces the Chancellor’s ability to influence political decision-making. The fact that the Chancellor is subject to parliament also reduces his scope. An independent central bank in Germany, which pursues “independent monetary policy”, is an incredible check on the Chancellor’s powers. Recently, EU law has become another means to restrict the Chancellor, but this was obviously not the case in 1949. The Basic Law’s “main aim” can be seen as a wanting to “eliminate the potential for the creation of a ‘totalitarian’ system”, shown in the constitutional constraints put on the President and Chancellor alike in the Federal Republic.
Another of the problems that originated from the Weimar constitution was that of the political parties of the Republic. There were few limits placed on parties and the electoral system of proportional representation led to multiple representations in the Reichstag. There was no way of eliminating the smallest parties. According to Stephen Lee there were “30 or more parties contesting each election” in the Weimar Republic, which made a legislative majority virtually impossible.
In the Federal Republic there is constitutional control over the political parties under Article 21 of the Basic Law, which is in stark contrast to the Weimar Republic. There has been “officialisation” of German political parties. Parties in the Federal Republic have to be democratic and legal, which is undoubtedly a direct reaction to the failure of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic. A 5% threshold has been put in place in order to reduce the number of parties in the Bundestag. Although this has not eradicated coalition governments, the ‘first past the post’ system has greatly reduced the fractious nature of the parliament.
The writers of the Basic Law were determined to avoid the constitutional errors of Weimar and in wanting to do so they decided to limit the powers of government through federalism. This meant the “sharing of tasks and responsibilities between federal government, Lander and the local authorities”. The balance between the centre and periphery was vital in the eyes of the creators of the Basic Law, in order to prevent the concentration of power in the centre, as was the case in the Weimar republic. Rechsstaat, or the rule of law, which has a long tradition in German political and popular thinking, seemed to disappear during the Weimar Republic, and the restoration of this was deemed a vital condition for the political order of the Federal Republic. This was facilitated for in the Basic Law.
The most important institution established by the Basic Law of Federal Germany was the Constitutional Court. As a reaction to the breakdown of democracy in the Weimar Republic the Constitutional Court was introduced to safeguard democracy in the Federal republic. Conradt describes the Constitutional Court as an “independent guardian of the democratic constitution, a protector of human rights, and an adjudicator of German Federalism”, all needed to prevent a repetition of the collapse of Weimar and the rise of fascism which ensued. The position of judiciary was unclear in the Weimar Republic; the Constitutional Court is in response to this. It was designed to check and balance governmental authority and has made rulings to ensure the government of Germany acts constitutionally. The Constitutional Court has banned two parties which it considered were challenging the democracy of the Federal Republic: the Socialist Reichs Party in 1952 and the Communist Party, which was declared illegal in 1956. The Weimar Republic was hampered by its leaders interpreting the Constitution however they saw fit, with no institutional body to prevent them from acting unconstitutionally. In the Federal Republic the Constitutional Court is considered to be the “authoritative interpreter of the Basic Law” and it is “ultimately more powerful than the federal parliament, the Bundesrat, the federal government and the federal president combined”.
According to Giles Radice “the Weimar Republic faced a number of handicaps which were far more serious than any constitutional weaknesses”. In the 15 years of the Weimar Republic it faced two crises, the second one brought about the collapse of the Republic and the rise to power of the Nazis. From the beginning, the leaders of Weimar were burdened with the blame of acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles and with it the crippling reparations that Germany was ordered to pay, they also had to deal with the public outrage of 1923 when hyperinflation wiped out savings and investments of the German people, in particular the middle classes. 1929 brought the Wall Street crash and the resulting Great Depression, and also the death of Gustav Stresemann, who had done so much to bring stability to Germany in the mid 1920’s. Germany was worse hit by the depression; its reliance on American loans left it in economic crisis when the loans were recalled. “Some increase in right wing extremism was certain” as a result of the crisis. The actual result was incredible, in September 1928, Hitler’s Nazi Party polled just 810,000 votes, in 1930 this had risen to 6,500,000 and by July 1932 they had 13,745,000 votes and 230 seats in the Reichstag. The crisis of 1920/21 showed disheartened Germans to be voting for anti-republican and therefore anti-democratic parties. By the 1930’s, the Nazis, as the fascist party in Germany, had won the support of the broad middle classes and had become a mass party. After the collapse of the ‘grand coalition’ in 1930, the consequent Chancellors: Bruning, Papen and Schleicher under the Presidency of Paul von Hidenburg, saw an increase in the use of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. This was necessary in order for the government to be able to make any decisions. In this respect the conversion to dictatorship under the fascist Nazi party was made possible by the Weimar Constitution, which ultimately led to Hitler being invited into the position of Chancellor.
The Constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed the President to be powerful, and provided for the use of emergency powers, these both helped to undermine the democracy of Weimar and contributed towards the rise of fascism. The way in which the Basic Law has been most evident in providing political stability in the Federal Republic, has been seen particularly in the demotion of the President to a mere formal institution. The 15 years of the Weimar Republic saw 16 Chancellors, in stark contrast to this, the Federal Republic has had only 7 since its establishment over 50 years ago. The stability provided by Article 63 of the Basic Law was deemed necessary in order for the disaster of Weimar not to be repeated. The Basic Law most definitely tries to correct the wrongs of the Weimar Constitution in its providing for a weak president with a stronger chancellor and the controls over the political parties, but in particular with the establishment of the Constitutional Court which has the job of safeguarding democracy in Federal Republic Germany. Whether the constitutional weakness of Weimar was exclusively the reason for the rise of fascism is debatable. There can be little doubt that they contributed to some degree but the situation in Germany was dire, economically especially, and embittered Germans turned to both extremes of the political spectrum in order to voice there disapproval of the Republic. Conradt makes an interesting point: if fascism and Nazism was the “logical result of German historical development and political culture”, then the rise of fascism could not have been avoided regardless of Weimar and its failings. On the other hand, a view taken by most German scholars is that there was “nothing inevitable about Nazism” and the rise of fascism in Germany; so constitutional weaknesses in the Republic must be to blame for allowing the emergence of fascism in a supposedly democratic Republic. Martin Broszat claims that the collapse of Weimar and the rise of fascism came about “due to the collaboration between conservative opposition to democracy and the National Socialist movement”.
There were certainly flaws in the Weimar Constitution, and the Basic Law made a concerted effort to rectify these and eradicate the possibility of them being repeated. As Paterson says, the Weimar Republic with its failings both constitutional and otherwise “became a yardstick, a negative benchmark against which to measure the new democracy”.
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