Chapter Two

"Parliamentary Absolutism” or “Command Democracy” or “Leader Democracy”

in Weimar Germany:

What does “democracy” mean?

When Berthold Stauffenberg was being interrogated by the Gestapo for his role in the

1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, he stoutly reasserted his opposition to Hitler as one whose

incompetence was dragging Germany into an abyss. Yet he reiterated his support for the leader

principle and the Volksgemeinschaft, the (racial) community, which he saw as the alternative to

pluralist democracy, partisan squabbling, and the division of the Volk (German people). His

position reflects interwar Germans’ often passionate demands for a community (a

Volksgemeinschaft) and effective leadership. Those demands generated a conception of politics

that would lead many Weimar Germans to reject liberal democracy, parliaments, and

individualism for a “command democracy” or a “leader democracy.”1

Institutional Framework

On January 19, 1919, as aftershocks of the November 1918 revolution continued to

rumble, Germans elected a National Assembly to write a constitution. The nation-wide

democratic election based on universal suffrage gave that parliament a legitimacy that no

alternatives could challenge. Germany’s new form of government was going to be based on a

parliament, not worker councils or a corporatist assembly. Yet the legitimacy of the constitution

it established would, in the eyes of many citizens, erode over time.2

The Weimar Constitution established universal, direct, secret, equal suffrage for citizens

over 20 years of age, in all elections. This dramatic change from the Empire gave all adult

Germans an effective democratic suffrage for choosing ruling bodies and, indirectly, heads of

government, at all levels. Lowering the voting age to 20 reflected a long-standing SPD

(moderate socialist) demand but also the need to ensure that veterans, who had made painful

sacrifices for the fatherland, would be just as able to vote as war profiteers. Including women

also reflected a long-standing SPD demand but also a recognition of the many sacrifices women

had made during the war. Of course, German women may have had the vote and a formally

equal right to be active politically, but they still faced massive legal restrictions and inequality.

Indeed, the constitution would state not that men and women were “equal citizens” but only that

they were “in principle equal citizens.”3

Weimar elections to the National Assembly and subsequent Reichstags would be by

proportional representation. The imperial government had systematically disenfranchised the

SPD by refusing to redraw parliamentary districts to reflect population changes. So the SPD

insisted on proportional representation, to ensure that future governments did not manipulate

electoral districts at their expense. And some Germans remained committed to proportional

representation because they believed that it most accurately represented the will(s) of the

German people, even if it did make forming stable governments more difficult. It created a

national electorate because voting could matter even if one was a tiny minority of the local

electorate, but it meant that M.P.’s were responsible to the party that ranked them on the

candidate list, not to their voters. It also left parties visibly catering to interest groups by having

representatives of many group on their candidate lists. Many Germans at the time and perhaps

most historians since have seen it as disastrous; they believed it contributed to a fragmentation of

the Reichstag (parliament) and of the electorate that would make governance difficult and

arguably eventually impossible, opening the way for the rise of the Nazi party. Recently, some

scholars have argued that German society was already deeply divided, independent of the

electoral system, and that a first-past-the-post electoral system would in the 1930s have brought

the Nazis to power even more quickly. Yet one can never know how the fragmentation of

Germany society would have played out if citizens knew that voting for splinter parties might

well waste their votes.4

The Weimar Constitution established, in principle, parliamentary government. The

Reichstag would not only have the power to initiate and pass bills for promulgating laws, levying

taxes, and making appropriations. The government would also depend on the support of a

majority in that parliament, as the Chancellor and all ministers only served so long as they had

the confidence of the Reichstag. However, the constitution was not clear on how the parliament

and the president were to interact to create a government with parliamentary confidence, and the

impression grew that the president appointed the government and the parliament could overthrow

it with a vote of no confidence. By the late 1920s conservatives were proposing to amend the

constitution so that the government would no longer require the confidence of the Reichstag but

only of the (elected) president. The constitution did establish a Reichsrat (upper house) to

represent the states, but its role was primarily advisory.5

Crucially, Hugo Preuß, the constitution’s chief drafter, and others feared “parliamentary

absolutism,” that the Reichstag would prove to be an unrestrained power. This fear had

contributed to the resistance to efforts at parliamentarization during the Empire, and in 1919

German elites continued to fear a concentration of power in a body that represented both

(implicitly egoistic) interests articulated through parties and the masses.6

The Constitution hence created a strong presidency with independent legitimacy, as a

counterweight to parliament and an obstacle to any parliamentary absolutism. The legitimacy

lay first of all in the president being popularly elected through universal suffrage—and indeed by

the nation as a whole. He could hence claim a breadth of support that no individual M.P. or

party could. He also could stand above parties, regions, and confessions—could be a key

element in maintaining unity. The president was going to play some, not clearly defined, role in

forming governments, as he was responsible for appointing and dismissing the Chancellor. He

could also dissolve the Reichstag, rather than compromising with it, a power—a threat—he

could use in any dispute with the Reichstag.7

One key constitutional provision was Article 48, which (in)famously provided that the

president could in an emergency “take measures necessary to reestablish public security and

order,” including a right to suspend basic political rights such as freedom of expression,

assembly, and association. He would need the signature of the Chancellor to do so, and the

Reichstag could by majority vote abrogate any measure he took. On one level, the Article sought

to eliminate some of the worst features of the emergency-rule powers the monarchy had

possessed and exercised during World War I. More importantly, it reflected the chaos Germany

faced in the early 1919, amid defeat, demobilization, continued Allied blockade, insurrections,

and near civil war. The Article also reflected doubts about the ability of a democracy or a

parliament to act decisively to maintain order.8

In practice, the president and the government played a much greater role in legislation

than the constitution might seem to suggest. The president would issue numerous crucial decrees

under Article 48, with the first president, Friedrich Ebert (SPD), using his exceptional powers

100 times. In addition, the Reichstag developed the practice early on of promulgating Enabling

Acts that delegated authority to the government to issue decrees with the force of law, to make

hard decisions the parliament was unwilling or unable to make. Formally this was still

“democratic,” in that the popularly-elected parliament passed such Enabling Acts with

constitution-amending majorities and could revoke any decree by majority vote. Yet the

frequent resort to Article 48 and to Enabling Acts, 1919-24, set a precedent that would be used to

supersede parliamentary, and arguably democratic, rule after March 1930.9

The popular election of the president was not the only “plebiscitary” element the

constitution included. The citizens could petition for a referendum on issues, and the president

or the Reichsrat could submit any law the Reichstag had passed to the people in a referendum.

These provisions were intended to serve as another restraint on parliamentary absolutism.

Political organizations did seek referenda, but none ever passed.10

Unlike the 1871 imperial constitution, the Weimar Constitution contained elaborate lists

of rights: civil, political, and social. These rights reflected deep-seated mistrust of parliaments

and fear of parliamentary absolutism, but also desires to ensure for individuals a stable, secure

role in polity and society. A clash developed within the legal community, as many scholars and

judges asserted that the constitution’s social rights were incompatible with traditional liberal

individual rights, so that the Social State and the Rechtsstaat were mutually contradictory. The

ability to exercise those rights would be eroded by violence and the threat of violence after 1929

and would be curtailed by presidential decree in early 1933. Nonetheless, through virtually all of

its existence the Weimar Republic provide for its citizens more rights than the Kaiserreich or,

certainly, the 3rd Reich and had a fundamentally free political life.11

Judicial review can be seen as crucial to democratic constitutionalism (a guarantee of

individual rights against executive or legislative oppression) or as inherently anti-democratic

(rule by unelected judges). Judges in the Empire had believed that their role was simply to

adjudicate cases based solely on the statutes in force. The National Assembly had discussed

judicial review, but the Weimar constitution did not mention it (despite its potential as a bulwark

against parliamentary absolutism). Nonetheless, many in the Weimar legal community argued

for judicial review by any judge who considered a law unconstitutional or otherwise beyond the

pale legally. In addressing the Third Emergency Tax Decree of 1924, the Reichsgericht (the

highest appeals court) accepted the decree’s legitimacy but included an obiter dictum that it

could review the decree’s constitutionality. The government was so pleased to have its vital

decree accepted that it did not object to the broader assertion. Subsequently, Reichsgericht

president Walter Simons wrote to the chancellor asking for a legislative regulation of judicial

review (to prevent confusing rulings from different courts), as a “counterweight to popular

sovereignty.” Unlike in a monarchy, he wrote, “in a parliamentary republic … the danger exists

that without such a counterweight a transitory majority could, under the influence of fleeting

opinions and political passions, introduce disorder and uncertainty into the constitution’s organic

development.” The Reichsgericht then in November 1925 reviewed the constitutionality of the

crucial Revaluation Law but declared it constitutional. As had John Marshall in Marbury vs.

Madison, the court gave the government a substantive victory on the vital issue at hand but

established a precedent for its right to judicial review. The court did in 1929 declare a minor law

unconstitutional. Most post-1929 legislation was in the form of Article 48 decrees from the

revered President Paul von Hindenburg, whom conservative judges were unlikely to challenge.

One can never know how judicial review by a conservative judiciary would have played out if

the Weimar Republic had survived, but if it had proved a “counterweight to popular

sovereignty,” it could well have become an anti-democratic infringement on the people’s rule.12

Who, though, were the “people,” das Volk, from whom, the constitution proclaimed, “all

state authority emanates”? The citizenship law of 1913 remained the basis for formal

citizenship, with naturalization requests processed by the states and reviewed by the Reichsrat.

Formally, all those born on German territory or of German citizen parents or legally naturalized

were German citizens, were “the people.” The Burgfrieden of World War I, the experience of

the battlefront community, and the shared home front misery in the face of the Allied blockade

had all contributed to a myth of national community above class and other divisive elements.

And Weimar-era Germans would appeal repeatedly to the nation and the people as the basis of

legitimacy, without generally defining either too specifically. Moreover, the wartime alliance

with Austria and expansion into eastern European territories with ethnic German populations,

along with the Allied emphasis on self-determination for ethnically defined peoples, broadened

for many Germans the sense of the German people and nation to include all ethnic Germans.

Meanwhile, anti-Semitism and fear of radical masses led Germans increasingly to write Jews and

“Marxists” out of the people’s community, as alien or subversive. This somewhat inchoate mix

of attitudes meant that for most Germans, the (ethnically or racially German) Volk were the

ultimate source of legitimate authority, separate from and only imperfectly represented in the

Weimar Republic, inclusive in some sense of ethnic Germans across central and eastern Europe,

but exclusive of certain disdained groups.13

Crucially, many Germans never fully accepted the Weimar Republic as a legitimate state;

indeed, they often saw the German state as somehow separate from, superior to, its unfortunate

post-revolutionary form. The monarchical principle had already implicitly separated the state, as

embodied in the monarch, from the state form, the constitution that the monarch voluntarily

granted. In the Weimar Republic, many saw the state (as popular will or otherwise) as existing

prior and in some crucial sense superior to the state form the Weimar constitution established.

This perspective would make it much easier for Germans to see the “democratic” Weimar

Republic as in fact not embodying the popular will that truly constituted the state and that for

them stood above the republic, and to reject the Weimar Republic for some alternative.14

The Versailles Treaty was a crucial blow to the Republic’s legitimacy. Many Germans

had supported democracy in 1918/19 in the hope of a better deal in the peace negotiations, as US

President Woodrow Wilson seemed to have promised. Whatever Wilson’s October 1918

intentions, the June 1919 treaty was, from the perspective of virtually all Germans, a crying

injustice. When the new Republic not only could not block draconian peace conditions, but had

to vote to accept them, it came to be identified not only with the defeat of November 1918 but

with the national humiliation and enormous burdens of June 1919.15

Convinced that the Weimar Republic had been incapable of defending itself against

radical opponents, West Germans in 1949 made their new Federal Republic a “democracy

capable of defending itself,” including by a constitutional provision allowing the banning of anti-

democratic organizations. Recently, historians have argued that the Weimar Republic was

indeed capable of defending itself in constitutional terms, so that its failure to do so reflected

fundamental political divisions within the society. The Law for the Protection of the Republic

and other legislation did allow Weimar federal and state governments to ban parties and

associations deemed dangerous to the republic; they did so 37 times, versus only twice in the

Federal Republic. Various laws could also punish and potentially control political violence.

However, states varied in their rigor in applying the laws, and governments could only use these

measures effectively against weak organizations.16

Notably, as various scholars have pointed out, initial lack of legitimacy for a regime does

not mean that it is inevitably doomed. The striking counterexample here is France’s 3rd

Republic. Monarchists dominated the early parliaments of that Republic. Fortunately for its

survival, they were divided into three groups who could not cooperate. As France prospered,

public opinion gradually shifted, so that a growing majority voted for pro-Republic parties; the

3rd Republic eventually secured legitimacy. So the possibility remains that, given more favorable

conditions, the Weimar Republic might also have survived.17

Political Culture

Germany had its first democracy—and most Germans were looking for a pay-off. Most

had supported democracy not from conviction but because they hoped for a better deal in the

peace negotiations or no longer expected anything from the discredited monarchy or hoped a

parliamentary republic would prove an effective barrier against Bolshevization. Hence, many

Germans would only continue supporting democracy if they approved of the outcomes it

generated. In practice, all a democracy can promise is a procedure that allows popular input into,

and a “fair” process for, decision-making. Neither it nor any other system can guarantee

desirable outcomes, overall or for particular groups or individuals. Too many factors influence

outcomes. Nonetheless, most Germans in the interwar period (and perhaps most people

everywhere) focused primarily on outcomes—and the Weimar Republic, given the horrific

burdens it bore, delivered defeat, national humiliation, conflict, hyperinflation, brutal

stabilization, and a great depression. The four or five “good” years of the mid to late 1920s were

insufficient to develop any broad commitment to democracy or to the Republic.18

As in the Empire, most Germans during the Weimar Republic continued to insist that

ideals must trump interests. They believed that interests were inherently corrupt, materialistic,

and egotistical. Even when they supported special-interest parties (e.g., for landlords or creditors

or farmers), they either explained them as a temporary expedient to defend against other, corrupt,

interests or, more frequently, presented their demands in moralistic, not interest-based, terms. As

Peter Fritzsche argues, “Speaking a morally drenched language of corruption, betrayal, and

virtue, they came to identify their own interests and needs with national political renewal.”19

If competing, egotistical interests were illegitimate, what Germany needed instead, many

perhaps most Germans believed, was a political system that would secure representation for the

interests of Germans and Germany as a whole. Fundamental to this assertion was a belief that a

single, overarching interest existed for all Germans, to which any individual interests—if

permissible at all—must be subordinate. Germans repeatedly talked in terms of just such a

Gesamtinteresse, an all-encompassing interest. Society was, then, an organic totality in which

each citizen functioned not as an individual but as an element in a whole. The Gesmatinteresse

was deemed particularly crucial for overcoming the clashing class interests that played out so

bitterly within the Republic. Replacing such clashes would be a harmonious, conflict-free,

unified society. Democracy must reflect not only the Gesamtinteresse but the Volkswille, the

true collective will of the people, not the interest-based opinions of different group and class

representatives. Many Germans implicitly (and a few political theorists explicitly) were calling

for a state based on a Rousseauian general will that existed in some sense prior to political action

and that needed only to be recognized and implemented to establish a “true democracy.”

Notably, support for this idea extended from the far right to some members of the SPD.20

The desire for a society structured and ruled according to its Gesmatinteresse found its

most frequent and vivid expression in repeated calls for a Volksgemeinschaft, a people’s, or

indeed a racial, community. The touchstone for Germans was August 1914 and the storied days

of “universal” national unity against foreign “attack” when, most Germans were convinced, they

had come together comprehensively as a community in mutual support and sacrifice. Even to the

extent Germans had put aside traditional conflicts in 1914, the pressures of war had soon

produced renewed social conflict, over food and peace especially. And defeat had been

accompanied by revolution and violence, from the Left and the Right, as Germans disagreed

fundamentally on the appropriate social order and relations among groups. Germans desperately

wanted to overcome conflict and Zerreisung/Zersetzung (disintegration) in a fully realized,

comprehensive new unity, in the realization of Germans as an organic whole, a true community.

This community would transcend petty differences in a higher whole and would secure freedom

for Germans not as liberal individuals but in the “true democracy” of a living community. Most

closely associated with the Nazis, who promised a true Volksgemeinschaft, this term was in fact

embraced across much of the political spectrum. Some in the Left and center sought to use it as

inclusive. For most Germans, though, it would exclude (Jews, Bolsheviks, et al.) even as it

included all patriotic, ethnically German, citizens, including workers.21

Given the widespread commitment to the Gesamtinteresse and Volksgemeinschaft, most

Weimar Germans continued to reject pluralism and compromise. Pluralism assumes that varying

interests exist within a society, interests that are worthy of being expressed and represented.

Gesamtinteresse and Volksgemeinschaft denied the legitimacy of any particular interest, so that

the expression or representation of such interests constituted an assault on the good of the

community and indeed on Germany’s future. The acceptance of compromise assumes that

varying interests exist, that no single “right” answer to the problems facing a society is

attainable, and that no community without conflict is possible—otherwise compromise would

not be necessary. Believing in a true single interest/community, many Weimar Germans hence

saw compromise as a betrayal of that interest/community in favor of concessions to illegitimate

particular interests, an abandonment of principle.22

Having rejected interests, pluralism, and compromise, many Weimar-era Germans

rejected political parties as well. They saw parties as the representatives of particular interests

and so inherently corrupt. They believed that parties promoted conflict where none need appear

because they promoted special interests at the expense of other Germans. Indeed, for many, the

parties made partisan strife an end in itself. Such strife then paralyzed Germany, weakening it in

the face of its many enemies. So many Germans, including some on the Left, wanted to see the

complete elimination of political parties and their replacement with an apoliticism, a public life

above parties and partisanship. And many Germans were convinced such a public life was

possible—even as they continued to promote their own interests and views.23

Parliaments also came in for abuse. Parliament, many Germans believed, could not

represent a true search for truth because election to the parliament and votes within it were

determined by party leaders, so that deputies were just party hacks. And economic interests

inevitably sought to coopt parties and politicians for their egotistical ends. Parliamentary action

then became a series of tawdry business deals among fundamentally corrupt individuals, a view

only strengthened by periodic press reports of (relatively minor) corruption scandals. These

attacks on parliamentarism have often seemed to be attacks on democracy—and they certainly

could be. Yet, crucially, a number of those who attacked parliament did so in the name of

democracy, insisting that parliament could only represent egotistical interests and could never

represent the Volkswille, the will of the people as a whole. Hence, only by jettisoning the

Weimar Republic’s parliamentary democracy could one proceed to create a “true democracy.”24

One popular alternative to parliamentarianism was a corporatist assembly, in addition to

the Reichstag or in place of it. Even as many Germans execrated parliament as representative

solely of egoistical interests, they still recognized the existence of socioeconomic groups in the

society that deserved to have their voices heard. Yet they often feared that parliament meant the

triumph of economically or numerically superior groups (business and labor) at the expense of

other, equally valuable groups. And indeed protection of minorities is a crucial issue in any

majoritarian system. To many Weimar Germans, a corporatist body promised to represent not

mere numbers or wealth but “organic” groups equally worthy of a voice. This representation

would stand above class, party, and “interests”; it would (somehow) accurately represent German

society. Corporatism could have a democratic thrust against the power of wealth or in favor of

minority rights, but it was often associated with fears of a mass society.25

Fear of the masses was for many Weimar-era Germans a driving political force. Disdain

for the Pöbel, the rabble, strongly influenced German political development. In the Empire,

Germans demanding limited suffrage for the masses often argued in such terms. In the Weimar

Republic, the German bourgeoisie feared a leveling, a collapse of culture, from the rise of the

masses, but even the SPD was ambivalent about them, often continuing to believe that workers

needed SPD tutelage. While very few proposed returning to pre-1918 limited suffrages, many

Germans sought a political system that would ensure that the masses did not actually rule.26

Concern with the masses fed into a concern with order. Germans are proverbially

focused on order (“Ordnung muss sein!), though they are certainly not alone (cf. “law and order”

campaign slogans in 20th-century USA). Wolfgang Hardtwig sees the absence of Ordnung in

Germany, 1900-33, as crucial for the pervasive sense of crisis many Germans felt in those years.

When the Stahlhelm (a major veterans organization) wanted to laud the powerful impression its

marching masses would make, it hastened to add that that would only be the case if they

demonstrated “cohesiveness in strictly structured units.” Kurt Sontheimer emphasizes a

widespread perception that liberal individual freedom equaled anarchy and that what one needed

was order, not freedom from but freedom for something, through bonding with the whole. And

for many, the masses, as a “mob,” seemed threatening because they embodied disorder.27

Closely related to the desire for order was a desire for hierarchy, discipline, and

obedience. Many Germans were convinced that the disorder of the Weimar Republic was a

potentially fatal weakness—for the Republic itself but also for Germany. So Germans needed to

recognize the natural hierarchy, obey their natural leaders, and exercise self-discipline, as leaders

and as followers. Only then could Germany hope to recover from its humiliation and reestablish

its rightful (superior) position, indeed even to defend itself, in a dangerous world. Notably, even

many on the Left shared such concerns. The SPD leadership had long sought to promote

discipline among SPD members. And the Reichsbanner, the pro-Republic paramilitary

organization, included many young people attracted by hierarchy and structure.28

One characteristic of interwar thought that was going to provoke a particular sharp

reaction in West German politics was irrationalism. In late-19th-century Europe, positivism (an

attempt to apply science to society and psychology) had been the predominant intellectual

current. By the 1890s, that rationalistic approach was under attack, both by positivists who

pointed out irrational elements in human actions and by thinkers who attacked reason and

celebrated irrational, or at least a-rational, ideation. By the 1920s, many thinkers on the political

Right were reacting against rationalism by embracing feeling, will, or violence at the expense of

reason. These attitudes seemed to resonate with many Germans and would play a significant role

in the campaigning (with flags, uniforms, and slogans rather than reasoned discourse) and

governance).29

One of the most striking and fateful developments in the Weimar Republic was the

increasing emphasis on leadership and the eventual triumph, in the person of Adolf Hitler, of the

“leader principle.” 19th leadership models had included the monarchy and, especially, Otto von

Bismarck, the unifier of Germany. The military had played a central role in the country’s

unification and in World War I, offering an additional model of the value of leadership. The

election as president of Hindenburg, the World War I military leader, both reflected and

strengthened the model of leadership. Many Germans contrasted the “personalities” they

thought Germany needed in leadership positions with the “party hacks” who dominated in

Weimar parties and parliament. Many argued parliaments were incapable of selecting such

authentic and efficacious “personalities.” Germans concerned with leadership split over what

kind of leadership. Many, even on the Left, spoke of leaders in the plural and seemed to seek not

a dictatorship but a system in which leadership elites would be chosen to rule the country,

benevolently. Increasingly setting the tone, though, were those who sought a single great man

who would literally embody the Volkswille and act with the necessary authority and

determination to address Germany’s pressing problems and restore it to its proper greatness.

Crucially, “dictator” in the early 20th century did not necessarily evoke a brutal thug but could

evoke the temporary absolute ruler the ancient Roman Republic had elected to master a crisis.

Moreover, Germans had experienced in the Empire an authoritarian system that was still a

Rechtsstaat that guaranteed rights for citizens, and few German could imagine before 1933 how

thoroughly the Nazis would sweep away the Rechtsstaat.30

This focus on, for many obsession with, leadership could represent an authoritarian attack

on the Weimar Republic and democracy—but many Germans called for an “autoritäre

Demokratie.” Crucially, autoritäre here should be translated not as “authoritarian” but as

“vested with authority,” “in command,” and hence capable of making and implementing

decisions. Given the often devastating problems Germany faced during the Weimar Republic

and the apparent dysfunctionality of its political system, Germans were rightly concerned that

they secure an efficacious political order. For many perhaps most Germans, this was related to

primacy of outcomes over process in their assessment of political systems. Yet even those who

value democratic process want a process that works. So support for a command democracy,

often implicit but often also explicit, stretched across the political spectrum.31

Parallel to calls for authoritative democracy were increasing calls for a “leader

democracy.” The idea has clear roots in Max Weber and other commentators in the late Empire

and postwar transition period. They did not trust the masses to make political decisions but saw

a need for engaging the masses politically, not least in the event of war. They also sought a

means appropriate to the modern age for Führerauslese (evaluation and selection of the most

suitable leaders). The failure of Weimar parliamentary politics to throw up any charismatic

leaders only strengthened such concerns. Calls for reforms then arose across the political

spectrum to create a system that would generate not just competent but statesmanlike leaders.

Such leaders should also somehow express, perhaps embody, the authentic will of the people.

Proposals for a leader democracy sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, were defining

democracy as a popular role solely in selecting a leader or leaders—providing no substantive

popular role in policy formation or forming the political will.32

The political camps that had characterized the Empire continued into the Weimar

Republic. The camps were neither homogeneous nor immutable, but they did fix significant

numbers of Germans in political organizations structured around 19th-century conflicts. The

camps were organized more along ideological than class lines, with about 1/3rd of SPD votes

coming from non-workers and about 1/3rd of DNVP (conservative) votes coming from workers.

The Marxist camp would split, between MSPD and USPD groups, 1916-1922, and between SPD

and KPD thereafter. The Catholic Party and Bavarian People’s Parties were able to draw

perhaps 50% of Catholic voters into 1933. The Protestant liberal-conservative camp, always less

cohesive than the other two, would splinter in the later twenties, only to re-coalesce within the

Nazi Party after 1928. It would draw many workers as voters. There was a left-of-center

majority on foreign-policy issues and a right-of-center majority on economic issues, so every

time the predominant agenda shifted, the government would tend to fall. The presence of

multiple splinter parties complicated electioneering and coalition formation (with never fewer

than 14 parties in the Reichstag) and contributed to a sense of fragmentation and instability.

Arguably the combination of deep ideological splits and proportional representation would create

a situation in which parties tended to be narrowly focused on congenial voters and relatively

indifferent to appealing broadly, making compromise and governance difficult.33

Germans had been organized in the Kaiserreich, but the number of associations and

members soared in the Weimar Republic, on the order of 50% in the immediate postwar period

and 100% by 1930 according to Peter Fritzsche. A major impetus for organization was

defensive, as the increasing role of unions and of the Social Democrats during war and

revolution spurred a bourgeois response. As vehemently as German burghers could denounce

interests and insist on the preeminence of ideals, they still felt compelled to develop powerful

organizations to defend their own interests until a better day, constitutionally and politically. As

in the Empire, organizations and clubs often divided on class and confessional lines. Leadership

did change, though, as the prewar predominance of notables gave way to a broader leadership

that reflected a new assertiveness by German citizens. In terms of organization, Weimar

Germany was a vibrant space of active social and citizen participation.34

The continued division of organizational life on class and confessional lines reflected a

continuing politics of exclusion in German political culture. Even as they called for an all-

encompassing Volksgemeinschaft, many Germans were determined to expel from that

community those viewed as alien or disreputable. While Volk had simply meant “people” in the

19th century, by the mid-1920s it had acquired for many if not most Germans a distinctly “racial”

meaning, identifying those who were German “by blood” and implicitly excluding those,

including Jewish Germans, who were not, or were not perceived as, ethnically German. In a

broader sense, the goal was a kind of unity and indeed purity, to deal with a confusing world and

to ensure a kind of strength through cohesion. The role of anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic

is difficult to specify. Anti-Semitic attitudes were clearly widespread. They influenced all the

political parties except the DDP and SPD; they were often explicit to virulent in some parties,

such as the DNVP and Nazis and many splinter parties. Those attitudes clearly helped the Nazis

grow, even if they apparently could not win elections (with the Nazis downplaying anti-Semitic

themes in most regions of Germany in the 1930-33 elections because they had little resonance).

To the extent that parliamentary democracy relies on tolerance, of opposing views but also of

those who express them, “racial” exclusions (and especially anti-Semitism) reflected at best the

absence of, and in many cases an often vehement attack on, key values for a democratic polity.35

Objects of particularly virulent hatred for many Germans were the so-called November

criminals, who had revolted against the Empire in 1918, and their “treason-based” state, the

Weimar Republic. After 4 years of brutal war and officials’ admission of defeat, the Empire by

November 1918 suffered from widespread opposition and minimal support. Yet in retrospect

many Germans came to look on the November Revolution as a crime. With the “stab-in-the-

back legend,” the army and conservatives claimed that Germany had never been defeated in the

field but had been treacherously attacked from the home front; it was a gross misrepresentation

of the facts, but it was widely believed. If true it would have meant that those who overthrew the

Empire had betrayed the German Army and the German people. Such traitors, many believed,

needed to be excluded from the body politic and their corrupt offspring must be destroyed.36

Many Germans felt deep anxiety at the influence of “Marxists,” whether SPD or KPD, in

German society and in the Weimar Republic. While many burghers had seen the November

Revolution as a welcome end to a disastrous war and even as an opportunity for necessary

reforms, the waves of worker activism during and after the revolution soon terrified most of

them. Periodic Communist uprisings seemed particularly threatening, as did the attempt by some

workers to use the general strike against the 1920 Kapp Putsch to attain socialist goals. Almost

all Germans now recognized that workers needed to be integrated into the Volksgemeinschaft,

but most burghers were convinced those workers needed to know their place. And they must not

threaten the underlying social order. The consequence was a continuing antipathy to worker

activism, especially strikes, and to the Weimar Republic that allowed workers a substantive

political role—even allowed for an SPD president and SPD chancellors! Moreover, even

Germans could not unify politically around any positive partisan position, they could, and on the

local level often did, unify negatively—against the socialist/Bolshevik threat.37

Civil society did not create a democratic system in the Empire and proved inadequate to

defend democracy in the Weimar Republic, indeed may have contributed to its demise. The

number of organizations and their membership soared. Popular activism of various sorts also

soared (see below). A realm of social and political activism between family/business/self on the

one hand and the political system on the other had blossomed. Yet that activity did not reconcile

many Germans to the Weimar Republic and its institutions. And some have argued that all those

organizations proved for the Nazis a pathway to political influence, or at least a recruiting ground

for activists. Suggesting that civil society somehow made dictatorship more likely, as political

scientist Sheri Berman does, goes too far. Nonetheless, civil society is not automatically a

guarantor of democracy, or at least of parliamentary democracy.38

While German women had in 1918/19 attained the vote and equal citizenship “in

principle,” their political role in Germany remained constrained. Women increased their

participation in many organizations, created organizations of their own, and were members of

women’s auxiliaries of male-dominated organizations. Women’s political activism and even

voting did decline after 1919, though women’s voting did increase after 1929. Yet there were

always politically active women. And arguably the New Woman of the 1920s (like the flapper

in Britain and the USA) embodied a new degree of social activism and opportunity for women,

though it would come under pressure in the depression of the 1930s, even before the Nazi seizure

of power. One key constraint on women’s activism and political role was the widely shared

assumption among Weimar-era German women that women were equal to men but different in

key ways, with women seen as maternal, caring, and emotional. That assumption made it easier

for men and women to see women’s role as primarily in the domestic sphere or, to the extent that

women did participate politically, to restrict them to “feminine” issues such as motherhood, child

care, et al. It also fed into efforts to constrain women’s roles by casting them as emotional,

rather than possessing the cool rationality necessary for objective decision-making. In addition,

a widely respected pseudo-science of crowd psychology dismissed the crowd as, among other

things, feminine—and hence irrational, suggestible, and not to be taken seriously.39

Germany experienced a masculinity crisis after 1918. Germans had lost the war, after

having invested enormously in the (masculine) glories of their soldiers’ victories. The country

was then humiliated by the Versailles Treaty. Political participation in Weimar Germany came

to be, increasingly, a form of masculine self-assertion. The most notable expression of this

would be the paramilitary organizations, most famously the Nazi SA, but masculine self-

assertiveness would be a theme in German politics more generally. This assertiveness tended to

marginalize women, leaving them at best as binders of wounds. It also contributed to the

violence that characterized German politics in the immediate postwar years and early 1930s,

which served to terrify many German voters, undercut the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic,

and bolster the Nazis as self-proclaimed paladins against the waves of violence they were

themselves driving.40

The Weimar Republic’s political culture proved incompatible with liberal democracy.

We have no opinion polls for Weimar Germany, but available sources suggest broad and deep

opposition to parties and parliaments and to pluralism and compromise, rooted in a demand for

ideals over interests and for a political system that would reflect and support the Gesamtinteresse

of the Volksgemeinschaft. Crucially, despite wide variations on specific political matters, by

1930 few Germans would vote for pro-parliamentary democracy parties. And even the SPD, the

only party still committed to the Weimar constitution, had activists pushing for an “autoritäre

democracy.” Concerns with Gesamtinteresse, Volksgemeinschaft, Volkswille, and effective

leadership were all widely shared, across the political spectrum. Nonetheless, while some

Weimar Germans did use democratic rhetoric and rights to undermine Germany’s first

democracy, we cannot simply dismiss as anti-democratic the views of those who questioned how

democratic the existing system was and who claimed to be seeking a “true democracy.”41

Political Citizenship

The Weimar Republic was rife with extra-parliamentary activism. Before World War I,

going to the streets was something that only workers did, as strikers or as SPD demonstrators.

The 1918 experience of revolution, though, taught Germans that if they wanted to have a

political impact, they needed to be willing to express themselves in the streets. From 1918 to

1933, across the political spectrum, citizens would engage in demonstrations and at least threaten

strikes and boycotts to express their political views and even to pressure the political system.

Participation could be accompanied by contempt for “the masses” and a simultaneous assertion

of democratic rights for oneself and denial of them for others, but the strikingly broadened

participation was real. In the Weimar Republic, political citizenship, democratic and anti-

democratic, was activist citizenship for a significantly higher proportion of the population than at

any time before the 1970s.42

Some Weimar Germans were willing to reject extra-parliamentary action. Their doubts

about the masses were sufficient that they did not trust them to act autonomously, so citizen

political activity was to be through voting or through parties and parliament. However, broad

rejections of extra-parliamentary action were not as obvious in the Weimar Republic as they

would be in the early Federal Republic, presumably because so many groups and their members

were taking to the streets—in opposition to as well as in support of the Weimar Republic.43

If extra-parliamentary action was not considered legitimate, then the citizen’s political

task would tend to be confined to voting—and certainly one conception of democratic

citizenship is that it consists of legitimating the elites who will rule. The most prominent

proponent of this view for the Weimar era was Max Weber. He did not think a parliament of

political parties and professional politicians was any longer capable of the free rational debates

leading to the most rational policy decisions, which had been the 19th-century model. And

although he recognized the indispensability of popular engagement, especially in time of war, he

did not really trust the masses. So he saw citizens’ task as acclaiming their leaders by voting

periodically, and on the basis not of policy promises but of the candidate’s formal leadership

qualities. His view had many supporters.44

Germans took advantage of the right of petition they had long enjoyed. Even in the

Middle Ages, individuals could petition their ruler for redress of grievances. And the Weimar

Constitution’s Art. 126 guaranteed to every German the right to petition the authorities or elected

representatives. Petitions are a relatively low-cost form of political action, and the authorities

and representatives know this. So while petitioning was apparently not unusual, the evidence

does not suggest it was particularly efficacious.45

The most common form of extra-parliamentary action in Weimar Germany was a

traditional one, the Versammlung, or indoor meeting. Under the Empire, Germans had

occasionally attended meetings of various sizes, as members of a specific group or to listen to

campaign speeches. Weimar Germans, across the political spectrum, embraced public meetings

as an acceptable form of citizen action, so their number seems to have increased substantially

after 1918, and especially after the Nazis began inundating German cities, towns, and even

villages with events after 1929. Such flurries of political activity constituted an assertion of a

citizen role between and during elections. It was still a relatively passive role, as most citizens

simply sat and listened. Moreover, Dieter Ohr has argued that such assemblies were better

attended when they included a “non-political”, often entertainment, component.46

Germans were already worried about the role of reason in politics. The 19th-century

liberal ideal had been to establish parliament as a realm of reasoned discourse among educated

men. Concern with the lack of education and maturity of the masses had been a powerful

obstacle to democratization. In the Weimar Republic, many Germans continued to emphasize

the importance of reason and prudence, especially in public demonstrations. Contrasted with this

was the inappropriateness of emotion. The latter was associated with the crowd, but it could also

be used to characterize, implicitly negatively, the new female political citizens. Reasoned

discourse was not yet the central trope for democratic citizenship that it would become for post-

3rd Reich Germans, but it was already an issue.47

Many on the radical Left were unwilling to rely on reasoned discourse, and they turned to

insurrection to secure a socialist Germany. The Weimar Republic had come into existence as the

result of insurrection against the Kaiserreich. The legitimacy of the new order was shaky from

the beginning, and as its moderate Leftist leaders sought to secure some stable democratic order,

they alienated those who wanted socialism now. Even before the Weimar Republic had been

formally established, a series of Left-wing insurrections sought to complete the revolution by

overthrowing all vestiges of the power of old elites and establishing a new socialist order.

Spartacists in January 1919 and Communists in Spring 1919 rebelled in various cities. The SPD

government turned to the “Freikorps,” right-wing groups of demobilized soldiers who were

willing to fight against the Left (unlike most moderate Leftists, who just wanted to escape all

things military and go home). The Freikorps did succeed in crushing the rebellions, and with the

Reichswehr (the army) they would succeed in crushing subsequent Communist uprisings, 1920-

1923. The Leftist insurrectionists sought to create a dictatorship of the proletariat as a means,

ultimately, to a comprehensive political, economic, and social democracy. They rejected the

parliamentary democracy that the SPD sought to establish through negotiated arrangements with

elites, seeing it as a corrupt mask for continued elite, capitalist, rule. They could see their

uprising as, in effect, extra-parliamentary democratic action, though it was against the republic.48

Right-wing extremists also resorted to violence in attempts to overthrow the Weimar

Republic. The most striking example of this was the Kapp Putsch of March 1920. Wolfgang

Kapp had been a mid-level civil servant. During World War I he had co-founded the Fatherland

Party, an attempt to mobilize public opinion, under elite control, to demand an unconditional

German victory, an annexationist peace, and continued monarchical government. On March 13,

1920, he and General Walther von Lüttwitz sought to seize power in Berlin, hoping to overthrow

the Weimar Republic and establish a new authoritarian order. Government leaders called for a

general strike to break the putsch. Millions of workers across Germany supported the strike and

the Republic. And even many civil servants in Berlin refused to cooperate with the putschists.

The putsch embodied two kinds of political activism: Its supporters were asserting a right to

political activism that hardly seems to constitute political and especially not democratic

citizenship, as it was not only outside of but against the civis, the constitutional, democratic

order, and in favor of a not clearly defined authoritarian alternative. The putsch’s opponents

were asserting a right and a duty to go beyond voting, to engage actively, and potentially at some

risk to themselves, to defend the existing democratic political order. Their actions constituted

the broadest, but certainly not the only, public activism in defense of the Weimar Republic.49

Another aspect of Right-wing violence in the early Republic was murder. The Freikorps

had helped put down worker insurrections—and peaceful strikes. They had also sought to

defend Germans in areas of the East outside Germany (e.g., the Baltic states) or that had been

German but had been lost in the Versailles Treaty. If the groups, as self-proclaimed defenders of

Germandom, identified a group member as a “traitor” for some reason, they executed him. Their

violence then extended to Weimar politicians, most famously Matthias Erzberger (Center party),

a negotiator of the 1918 Armistice, and Walther Rathenau (Foreign Minister), who was Jewish

and a symbol to the radical Right of the hated Weimar system. Their assassinations were

intended to provoke a communist uprising that could be used as an excuse to overthrow the

Weimar Republic. While these murders represented political activism, they hardly seem a form

of political citizenship, as they too involved voluntarily stepping outside the political order with

aim of overthrowing it entirely.50

The Beer-Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923 was a watershed. It also involved extra-

parliamentary political activism, by a group of radical Right individuals, to overthrow the

existing political order. Led by Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff, it sought to seize power in

Munich to lay the basis for a march on Berlin to seize power nationally. The putsch failed

miserably. It did mark the end of attempts to overthrow the Weimar Republic violently and

marked for the Nazis an explicit if grudging acceptance that they could only come to power

“legally.” It did not end the resort to violence. And, crucially, the putsch attempt, its “martyrs,”

and Hitler’s dramatic performance at trial laid the basis for Hitler’s charismatic leadership of the

Nazi Party and the radical Right and hence of his ultimate seizure of power.51

Peaceful demonstrations were now legally permitted, in a way they had not been under

the Empire, and they were now an acceptable practice across the political spectrum. As Peter

Fritzsche notes, “Public activism had lost its malodorous and proletarian connotations.” Yet

what forms of demonstration did various Germans consider legitimate, and to what ends?

Pro-Weimar Republic groups and individuals demonstrated frequently during the Weimar

Republic. Election campaigns were lively affairs, with numerous party meetings and public

parades or demonstrations. The Republic organized Constitution Day celebrations that attracted

some popular support—though tellingly the Reichstag never mustered a majority to make it a

national holiday, so it was less an integrative than a divisive event. After 1924, the Reichsbanner

organized many of the popular demonstrations on behalf of the Republic, thousands of them

during the early 1930s. It adopted many elements from right-wing paramilitaries, such as

uniforms, flags, and slogans, but it remained committed to parliamentary democracy. The

Reichsbanner was a paramilitary group, so its own units were all-male, to emphasize their ability

to fight, literally, for democracy. Yet it often organized its parades and demonstrations to

include women, children, disabled veterans, and the unemployed, so the group was

acknowledging a political role for all citizens.52

Significantly, burgher, often anti-Weimar, activism was very often defensive. Fear of

Bolshevism and of workers was clearly a driving force for many Germans. Given Germans’

ideological and partisan divisions, it was easier to unite against than for something. The

November Revolution and the subsequent Communist insurrections, 1919-23, had terrified many

Germans. The aggressive Nazi Storm Troopers drove most of the street violence that swept

Germany after 1929, but they successfully pinned the blame on the Communists. Groups such as

the SA, the Stahlhelm, and other rightist paramilitaries could easily secure support and recruits as

putative bulwarks against a Communist threat. In addition, individual Germans who felt

threatened by others, whether worker strikes in 1919 or mortgage foreclosures in 1930, could

resort to various tactics in defense of their interests (albeit, ones characterized not as egotistical

interests but rather as moral claims).53

Various groups, usually paramilitary, often staged parades. The spectators were passive,

though their presence could be interpreted as support for the marchers and their views. The

marchers were in motion and were expressing quite publicly their support for an organization

and its principles. The disciplined image a parade presented was clearly crucial for many

organizers and marchers. They felt best about their project, and expected to make the best

impression, by offering a structured, orderly, self-controlled exercise. Weimar-era parades

tended to have an acclamatory thrust. They did not, apparently, so much protest any particular

policy or push any particular alternative as express an identity and support for a movement or

group. Political citizenship then meant not the exercise of individual judgment and active efforts

to push one’s personal views, but rather support for a group or leader or an abstraction such as

the “spirit of the front soldier.”54

One of the more striking developments in Weimar political citizenship was the number

and scope of public demonstrations across Germany. The SPD and unions had occasionally

demonstrated under the Kaiserreich, and continued to do so in the Weimar Republic. However,

during the Weimar Republic members of the working and of the middle classes swept into the

streets in enormous numbers at key moments. The signing of the Versailles Treaty brought out

crowds in despair to denounce the cruel and unjust “dictate” of the Allies, the Ruhr Occupation

by the French spurred outraged protests, and Hindenburg’s election as president, and his

birthdays, brought out perhaps bigger crowds in joy. The demonstrators often sought to pursue

goals beyond the parliament they disdained, indeed often to argue for the overthrow of the

Weimar “system” and its replacement by some new political and some fairer economic order.

Often, though, as with the Hindenburg demonstrations, they sought to affirm an identity and a

political ideology, rather than to influence specific policy outcomes. Indeed, the Stahlhelm

announced in its Handbook that they did not pursue quotidian politics but “common work above

particular issues, purely patriotic (vaterländische) goals.” The repeated waves of demonstrations

constituted a dramatic expansion of political citizenship, but different demonstrations implied

different degrees of popular activism.55

Given the reality of increased middle-class public demonstrations, the frequent middle-

class expressions of disdain or fear at the notion of “taking politics to the streets” is striking.

Clearly, the major target of such expressions was not protests against the Versailles Treaty or

Stahlhelm parades or celebrations of Hindenburg’s election or birthdays. The target were strikes

by proletarians, parades by the Reichsbanner, or Social Democratic or Communist public

demonstrations. As Peter Fritzsche wrote, in those contexts the middle classes rejected “bowing

to the ‘voice of the streets’”—even if they expected people to listen if they went into the streets.

The new middle-class protest movement was not then an embrace of the autonomous, activist

democratic citizen but a reflection of the defensiveness the burgher felt in the face of a political

system that provided new and broader opportunities for democratic influence by fellow citizens

whom the middle classes feared.56

Some Germans promoted direct action in the form of strikes or boycotts, albeit the calls

outnumbered the actual strikes and boycotts. These calls originally developed, Bieber argues, in

the immediate aftermath of the revolution as a reaction to and adoption of worker tactics.

Groups as diverse as farmers, doctors, and civil servants proposed going “on strike,” refusing to

deliver goods or services, in pursuit of their goals, and some actually did. Some proposed a

“general strike” by all burgher, in defense against worker radicalism and for other political ends,

and one broke out in Bremen in 1919. During the inflation, in the face of inadequate access to

food, food riots were a common tactic, as during the war. Most such rhetoric and actions

disappeared after the end of the inflation (though food riots did recur occasionally during the

depression). More strikingly, farmers resorted to aggressive direct action in the late 1920s, most

famously but not only in Schleswig-Holstein. Most common were threats of tax strikes by

farmers threatened with bankruptcy and attempts to block foreclosures by intimidating would-be

buyers at foreclosure auctions. In a few cases bombs were set off, destroying property. These

actions were certainly extra-parliamentary political action, and they did, as Gerhard Stoltenberg

wrote in his dissertation, mean “leaving the basis of law.” (Ironically, Stoltenberg, as Minister-

President of Schleswig-Holstein would later grapple with occasionally violent demonstrations at

and nonviolent occupations and blockades of a nuclear-power site.) They reflected a

determination by minorities to use direct action to get the democratic system to address their just

concerns. They seemed to reflect more a repudiation of the system than an attempt to hold the

system to its own principles, but they were the acts of autonomous individual citizens.57

One of the most striking elements in Weimar politics was the rise of paramilitary groups.

The most famous are the Nazi’s SA or Storm Troopers, but several other groups, including the

Stahlhelm (a right-wing, nationalist, organization), the Reichsbanner (pro-Weimar Republic),

and the Rote Frontkämpferbund and successor organizations (communist) were influential. The

Stahlhelm began as a veterans organization but eventually expanded to include non-veterans who

embraced its “spirit of the front.” It sought to stand above parties and somehow to transform

German politics to exclude partisanship. The other groups were usually founded to protect a

party’s political meetings from attempted disruption by political opponents. They soon

expanded to present a public face for their political movement and often became involved in

clashes with opposing paramilitaries. They all emphasized uniforms and flags, obedience and

hierarchy, strong leadership, youth, and action. Arguably, their hierarchy and obedience made

threatening masses into welcome, disciplined troops—at least to potential supporters. They

claimed to act only in self-defense but could be deliberately provocative, especially the SA.

Crucially, they also emphasized masculinity, and in some ways represented a reassertion of

German manhood after the humiliations of defeat and Versailles. In the process, they tended to

marginalize women as political citizens, even as they often had women’s auxiliaries.58

Crucially, the paramilitaries promoted violence. After 1929, their clashes, especially

between the Nazis and Communists, meant that the Weimar Republic did not possess that

monopoly on the use of force that historians have identified as one of the key characteristics of

the modern state and that Weimar Germans clearly expected. The brutalization and violence that

World War I had brought certainly played a role in the rise of political violence within Weimar

Germany. Nonetheless, Germans made choices in responding to their war experience, most were

not violent, and most members of early 1930s paramilitaries were too young to have fought.

Fear of civil war was widespread in the early 1930s, as Nazis and Communists clashed

repeatedly and as the Reichsbanner and even the Stahlhelm occasionally were drawn into public

brawling. The Nazis did not seek to seize power by violence but to discredit the Weimar

Republic by revealing its inability to maintain order. They knew they could not win a civil war

on Germany’s streets, and they were careful to retreat whenever the state pushed back. One key

problem was that the authorities—and the burghers—saw the Nazis as a valuable bulwark

against a perceived Communist threat, so they were all too willing to let the Nazis get away with

violence, and occasionally murder. The Nazis hence managed to pull off a difficult balancing act

in which they were primarily responsible for the violence that was undermining the Weimar

Republic while they succeeded in shifting the blame for most of the violence to the Communists,

who were usually only acting in self-defense. Ultimately, Bernd Weisbrod argues, many in the

bourgeoisie were willing to accept violent struggle as the price for changing the Weimar system.

The violence that took place was, Eva Rosenhaft argues, a kind of political action, with a logic in

the minds of its perpetrators. For the Reichsbanner it was about defending the Weimar Republic

and its democracy, but for both the Nazis and the Communists it was ultimately about

overthrowing that democracy and replacing it with their respective versions of dictatorship.59

Germans in the Weimar Republic developed activist notions of political citizenship. Not

only did they join political groups and attend political meetings in unprecedented numbers, they

also engaged in public, extra-parliamentary, assertive actions on an unprecedented scale. Large

numbers of them certainly acted as though they believed they had a right to participate in public

life beyond voting. Nonetheless, they seemed to participate primarily to support a particular

political group or leader, or to defend or attack the existing constitutional order, rather than to

express an opinion on specific issues. And they often supported political movements and notions

of autoritäre Demokratie and leader democracy that would prove deeply problematic in practice.

Searching for Authority in a Democratic Regime

The Weimar Republic was a parliamentary democracy—within limits. The constitution

established universal, equal suffrage at all levels of government. And it formally established

parliamentary government, with the Chancellor and ministers formally dependent on Reichstag,

not on the head of state. It granted the Reichstag substantive power over all aspects of policy. It

granted citizens a range of civil and political rights, with independent courts to protect them.

However, its drafters’ fear of “parliamentary absolutism” and of popular disorder led them to

establish a popularly elected presidency as a “counterweight” to parliament. Various

constitutional provisions then created a situation in which a president could appoint a chancellor

and rule more or less independently of parliament, as happened after March 1930.

The Republic lacked a consensus political culture that was democratic. Certainly many

Weimar Germans supported democracy and the Weimar constitution. They could recognize that

the political system could not be expected to guarantee desired outcomes and could accept

pluralism and compromise. However, the prevailing political culture included elements that

undercut support for parliamentary democracy and the Weimar Republic. Many, perhaps most

Germans continued to believe that politics should be about ideals, not interests. They also

believed that a Gesamtinteresse existed that all Germans shared and that could be expressed

through a Volksgemeinschaft. Reflecting these beliefs, many Germans vehemently rejected

political parties as corrupt assemblages of private interests incapable of acting responsibly for the

whole. They continued to dismiss parliament as a realm of tawdry horse-trading, and they often

asserted that parliament must inevitably represent only private interests and could never

represent the Gesamtinteresse or the will of the people as a whole.

Many Germans seemed driven by fear in the interwar years. Fear of the “masses” was

certainly widespread, masses who were associated with leveling and with disorder. Fear of

Bolshevism and of socialism was also widespread, driven by long-standing fears of social

disruption that the Russian Revolution and violent Leftist uprisings only exacerbated. The Nazis

were primarily responsible for the resumption of violence in the early 1930s, but they

successfully blamed the Communists by playing on and exacerbating pre-existing burgher fears.

Hyperinflation and depression added economic fears. These fears and experiences only

strengthened the existing desire for order, discipline, and hierarchy.

What Germans wanted instead is difficult to specify. No opinion polls are available to

determine how many held which views. Clearly for many Germans, outcomes were crucial. If

the system could not protect them from impoverishment or the country from “humiliation” at the

hands of foreigners, it did not deserve their support. Closely related to this was a widespread

belief that a governmental system needed to be capable of exercising authority and doing so

effectively. The revolving-door cabinets and parliamentary wrangling of the Weimar era seemed

to many Germans proof that parliamentary democracy was incapable of doing so. Many of them

wanted an autoritäre democracy, one that could exercise authority. Or they wanted a “true

democracy” that would represent the will of the people and not merely divisive and corrupt

private interests. Many hence began talking about a leader democracy, one that could choose

“personalities” or a leader who would be statesmanlike representatives of that will of the people.

Was this “democratic”? It certainly proved to be at odds with parliamentary democracy.

Attempts to implement more efficacious governance led to the appointment of Hitler as

Chancellor and to a brutal dictatorship. And one can certainly argue that their vision of a

democratic dictator, ruling temporarily and able to reflect the true will of the people in pursuit of

a putative Gesamtinteresse, was a delusion. Yet we need to take seriously the concerns and

desires Weimar Germans expressed. Post-World War II opinion polling in various countries

does strongly suggest that in many specific instances the majority of elected representatives in a

parliament holds a different position than the majority of citizens. So Weimar Germans certainly

had reason to doubt whether the Reichstag represented all the interests in Germany or any

coherent national interest. Given recent experience, it hardly seemed capable of functioning

effectively. And many of them had reason to worry that a purely majoritarian system could

never address their vital but distinctly minority interests. Moreover, many Germans shared the

(elitist?) belief that “democracy” was about choosing effective leaders, not popular participation

in policy-making. Weimar Germans’ decisions to support autoritäre and leader democracy

proved disastrous in practice and would be repudiated in many ways by post-1945 Germans, but

they reflected real and perceived problems and often sincerely held values.

Yet even as they supported notions of democracy that seemed to limit democratic

citizenship to legitimating leaders, Germans engaged in a range of extra-electoral, extra-

parliamentary political actions. They joined associations in enormous numbers; they attended

public meetings, during and outside electoral campaigns; they spilled into the streets in parades

and demonstrations; they engaged in tax strikes and boycotts. Occasionally, as with protests

against the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, they were asserting the right to a voice on specific

policy issues. Usually, though, they were acting on behalf of a political group or leader, so that

their political citizenship was more acclamatory. They also often used tactics they had adapted

from the labor movement in order to fight for a new order that would integrate workers—but in a

hierarchy in which individuals would know their place and which would exclude “subversives”

and Jews. German supporters of democracy complained, with justice, that many Weimar

Germans used democratic means to authoritarian ends. Yet in many cases they seemed to be

using democratic means to attain what they considered democratic ends—but in ways that

ultimately threatened others’ democratic rights.

German elites wanted control, as they sought to eliminate Weimar parliamentary

democracy and establish some autoritäre government—but they also needed a mass base. Kurt

von Schleicher’s efforts most obviously reflect the problem. Like the Prussian/German officer

corps after the disastrous early years of the Napoleonic wars and again in the experience of

World War I, he recognized the need for broad popular participation. Germany could not secure

political stability or successfully fight a war against the mass of the population—indeed could

not do either without the cooperation of the mass of the population. Whatever their doubts about

democracy and parliamentarism, elites had to find some way to legitimate governance in the eyes

of the mass of the population, to secure their active support. They had not yet figured out a way

to do that, in the 20th century, without giving citizens (some sense of) a role. To get a mass base

and legitimacy, elites ultimately chose to grant Hitler the chancellorship, assuming they could

“tame” him. Instead, he tamed them. But how would a Nazi dictatorship, once burdened with

the responsibilities of power, secure mass support?

1 Michael Wildt, “Volksgemeinschaft und Führererwartung in der Weimarer Republik,“ Ute Daniel (ed.), Politische

Kultur und Medienwirklichkeit in den 1920er Jahren (München: Oldenbourg, 2010, p. 200.

2 Jorg-Detlef Kühne, “Demokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Verfassungsdiskussion—Hugo Preuß und die

Nationalversammlung,“ Christoph Gusy (ed.), Demokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Baden-Baden:

Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000), 122-23.

3 “Weimar Constitution of 1919,” Elmar Hucko (ed.), The Democratic Tradition. Four German Constitutions (Oxford:

Berg Publishers, 1987), Art. 17, 109; Bernd Weisbrod, “Die Politik der Repräsentation. Das Erbe des ersten

Weltkrieges und der Formwandel der Politik in Europa,“ Hans Mommsen (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg und die

europäische Neuordnung (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), pp. 17-18, Roß, Partizipation, pp. 41, 214-15; Geof Eley,

“General Thoughts,“ idem/J. Palmowski (eds.), Citizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany

(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2008), p. 243; Kathleen Canning, “Claiming Citizenship. Suffrage and Subjectivity in

Germany after the First World War,” Idem, Gender History in Practice. Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and

Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Pr., 2006), pp. 218, 228-29; Kristin McGuire. “Feminist Politics beyond the

Reichstag. Helen Stöcker and Visions of Reform,” Kathleen Canning et al. (eds.), Weimar Politics/Weimar Subjects.

Rethinking the political culture of Germany in the 1920s (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), p. 138.

4 Richard Bessel, “The Formation and Dissolution of a German National Electorate from Kaiserreich to 3rd Reich,”

Larry Jones/James Retallack (eds.), Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany (Cambridge:

Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 407-08; Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik.

Politische Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und öffentliche Meinung im Reichstag (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag,

2002), pp. 404-06; Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, p. 478.

5 “Weimar Constitution of 1919,” Art. 54; Bernd Hoppe, Von der parlamentarischen Demokratie zum Präsidialstaat.

Verfassungsentwicklung am Beispiel der Kabinettsbildung in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,

1998), pp. 14-15, 202, passim; Gusy, Reichsverfassung, pp. 131-33; Mergel, Kultur, pp. 406-07; Mommsen, Weimar

Democracy, pp. 253-54.

6 Thomas Mergel, “Dictatorship and Democracy, 1918-1939,” Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of

Modern German History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), p. 427; Kühne, “Demokratisches Denken,“ pp. 124-25;

Christoph Möllers, “Das parlamentarische Gesetz als demokratische Entscheidungsform---Ein Beitrag zur

Institutionenwahrnehmung in der Weimarer Republik,“ Gusy (ed.), Denken, p. 434; Horst Möller, “Zwei Wege des

deutschen Parlamentarismus: Preußen und Reich,” Adolf Birke/Kurt Kluxen (eds.), Deutscher und Britischer

Parlamentarismus (München: K.G. Saur, 1985), p. 136.

7 Ibid., pp. 136-38; Gusy, Reichsverfassung, pp. 64-65, 98-103; McElligott, Rethinking, pp. 184-85; Wildt,

“Volksgemeinschaft und Führererwartung,“ p. 187.

8 Achim Kurz, Demokratische Diktatur? Auslegung und Handhabung der Weimarer Verfassung 1919-1925 (Berlin:

Duncker & Humblot, 1992), pp. 22-24, 27-30, 44-46.

9 Achim Kurz, Demokratische Diktatur? Auslegung und Handhabung der Weimarer Verfassung 1919-1925, pp. 13, 25,

47, 108-09, 146, 157, 188, passim; Gusy, Reichsverfassung, pp. 110-11; Gusy, Denken, p. 429-31, 455.

10 Möllers, “Das parlamentarische Gesetz,“ pp. 434-35.

11 Peter C. Caldwell/William E. Scheuermann (eds.) From Liberal Democracy to Fascism (Boston: Humanities Press,

2000), pp. 7-8, 137-38; ; Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen

Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, 2d ed. (München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung,

1964), p. 110.

12 Michael L. Hughes, Paying for the German Inflation (Chapel Hill: Univ. of No. Carolina Pr, 1988), pp. 56-57, 66-67,

159-62; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 91-92

13 Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizenship. The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2007), pp.

119, 133; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 317-18; Roger Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (NY”

St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 77; Wolfram Pyta, “Hindenburg and the German Right,” Larry Eugene Jones (ed.), The

German Right in the Weimar Republic. Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Anti-

Semitism (NY: Berghahn Books, 2014), p. 27.

14 Gusy, Die Lehre vom Parteienstaat in der Weimarer Republik (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993), pp.

60-61, 68-70, 77-78; McElligott, Rethinking, p. 116; Mergel, Kultur, p. 263, 324-25; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 33, 266;

Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 387-88; Heinrich

August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik

1918-1924 (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz Nachf., 1984), p. 322.

15 Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, p. 75, 87; McElligott, Rethinking, pp. 37, 40-43; Jürgen Bergmann/Klaus Megerle,

„Gesellschaftliche Mobilisierung und negative Partizipation,“ Peter Steinbach (ed.), Probleme politischer Partizipation

in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1982), p. 413.

16 Sontheimer, Denken, p. 230; Michael Dreyer, “Weimar als wehrhafte Demokratie—ein unterschätztes Vorbild,“

Sebatian Lasch (ed.), Die Weimarer Verfassung—Wert und Wirkung für die Demokratie (Erfurt: n.p., 2009), pp. 163-

67; Gusy, Lehre, pp. 38-41, 45,

17 Thomas Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine. Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in der Weimarer

Republik und dem Nationalsozialismus,“ Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit

1918-1939 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), pp. 91-92; Jürgen Bergmann, „‘Das Land steht rechts!‘ Das

‚agrarische Milieu,‘“ Detlef Lehnert/Klaus Megerle (eds.), Politische Identität und national Gedenktage. Zur

politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Opladen: Westdeutsche Verlag, 1989), pp. 205-06.

18 Bieber, Bürgertum, p. 271; Richard Bessel, “The Formation and Dissolution of a German National Electorate from

Kaiserreich to Third Reich,” James/Retallack (eds.), Elections, pp. 416-18; Martin Vogt, „Das ‚Versagen‘ der

politischen Parteien in der Weimarer Republik,“ Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Die nationalsozialistsiche Machtergreifung

(Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984), p. 71; Dietmar Schirmer, “Politisch-kulturelle Deutungsmuster: Vorstellungen von der

Welt der Politik in der Weimarer Republik,“ Lehnert/Megerle, Gedenktage, pp. 48-49; Mergel, Kultur, pp. 385-87;

Gerhard Stoltenburg, Politische Strömungen im Schleswig-Holstein Landvolk 1918-1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag,

1962), pp.95, 120-21, 169-69

19 Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, pp. 119, 181-82, 198; Elizabeth Harvey, “Serving the Volk, Saving the Nation:

Women in the Youth Movement and the Public Sphere in Weimar Germany,” Jones/Retallack (eds.), Elections, p. 212;

Jürgen Bergmann, “Politische Anschauungen und politische Kultur des Handwerks in der Weimarer Republik im

Spannungsverhältnis vom Tradition, Ideologie und materiellen Interessen,“ Detlef Lehnert/Klaus Megerle (eds.),

Pluralismus als Verfassungs- und Gesellschaftsmodell. Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Opladen:

Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993), pp. 173, 193-95; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 150, 152-53, 182, 224, 342, 350.

20 Peter C. Caldwell, “The Citizen and the Republic in Germany, 1918-1935,” Eley/Palmowski (eds.), Citizenship, pp.

50-53; Christoph Gusy, ”Fragen an das ‘demokratische Denken’ in der Weimarer Republik,” idem. (ed.) Denken, pp.

648-53; Jürgen Bergmann, „Politische Anschauungen und politische Kultur des Handwerks in der Weimarer Republik,“

Lehnert/Megerle (eds.), Pluralismus, pp. 191-94; Hoppe, Demokratie, pp. 233, 257; Stefan Jonsson, Crowds and

Democracy. The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 2013), pp.

215, 251; Horst Müller, „Verwaltungsstaat und parlamentarische Demokratie: Preußen 1919-1932,“ Ritter (ed.),

Regierung, p. 149; Jerry Z. Miller, The Other God that Failed. Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German

Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1987), pp. 10-11, 59-60, 63-64, 203-04; Wolfram Pyta, „Hindenburg and

the German Right,“ Larry Eugene Jones (ed.), The German Right in the Weimar Republic (New York: Berghahn Books,

2014), pp. 34-36; Michael Wildt, „Die Ungleichheit des Volkes,“ Frank Bajohr/idem (eds.), Volksgemeinschaft. Neue

Forschung zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt/M: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 2009), p. 27; Stefan

Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus und Soziale Demokratie. Die sozialdemokratische Junge Rechte 1918-1945 (Bonn: Dietz

Verlag, 2006), pp. 212, 216, passim.

21 James Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in Weimar Germany (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr, 1977), pp. 211-15; Rudolf

Heberle, From Democracy to Nazism. A Regional Case Study on Political Parties in Germany (New York: Grosset &

Dunlap, 1970), p. 88; Gusy, Lehre, pp. 87, 94; Mergel, “Dictatorship,” pp. 424-25, 433, 447; David Imhoof, Becoming

a Nazi Town. Culture and Politics in Göttingen between the World Wars (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 2013), pp.

5-6, 15, 43-44, 47-48; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 121-22, 308, 315-16, passim; Roger Woods, The Conservative

Revolution in the Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 1-2, 12-13, 64, 111; Michael Wildt,

“Volksgemeinschaft. A Modern Perspective on National Socialist Society,“ Martina Steber/Bernhard Gotto (eds.),

Visions of Community in Nazi Germany. Social Engineering and Private Lives (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2014), pp.

44-47; Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus, pp. 82, 84, 184; Gerhard Hirschfeld, “Die Attraktion des Ersten Weltkrieges für

die Nazi-Bewegung,” Brockhaus, Attraktion, p. 77.

22 Bieber, Bürgertum, p. 363; Christoph Schöneberger, “Demokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik,“ Gusy

(ed.), Denken, pp.664-66, Mergel, ”Führer,“ pp. 97, 105; Jürgen Bergmann, „‘Das Land steht rechts!‘ Das ‚agrarische

Milieu,‘“ Lehnert/Megerle (eds.), Identität, pp. 192, 205.

23 Diehl, Paramilitary Politics, pp. 8, 56-58, 225, 265; Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism. Populism and Political

Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1990), pp. 83, 111; Imhoof, Nazi Town, pp. 1, 14, 48,

54; Gusy, Lehre, pp. 66, 75, 87; Frank Bösch, “Militante Geselligkeit. Formierungsformen der bürgerlichen

Vereinswelt zwischen Revolution und Nationalsozialismus,” Hardtwig, Kulturgeschichte, pp. 155-58, 170-71;

McElligott, Rethinking, pp. 193-95, 198-99, 213; Ernst Müller-Meiningen, Parlamentarismus. Betrachtungen, Lehren

und Erinnerungen aus deutschen Parlamenten (Berlin/Leipzig: Verlag Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1926), pp. 3, 33, 52-

54, 59-61; Curt Hotzel, „Die großen Frontsoldatentage,“ Franz Seldte, Der Stahlhelm, Bd. 1 (Berlin: Stahlhelm Verlag,

1932-33), pp. 124, 126; Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, pp. 192-93, passim; Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus, p. 219,

320.

24 Vogt, „‘Versagen,‘“ pp. 60-61, 63, 65, 70; Heinrich Hildebrandt/Walter Kettner (eds.), Stahlhelm-Handbuch (Berlin:

Stahlhelm Verlag, 1931), pp. 24, 50, 58; Schirmer, „Deutungsmuster,“ p. 44; William L. Patch, Jr. Heinrich Brüning

and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998, p. 19; Mergel, Kultur, pp. 370,

375-79; Heinrich August Winkler, Mittelstand, Demokratie und Nationalsozialismus. Die politische Entwicklung von

Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Weimarer Republik (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1972), pp. 77-78, 115-16;

Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 109, 188-89, 226-28; John P. McCormick, „Feudalism, Fascism, and Fordism: Weimar

Theories of Representation and Their Legacy in the Bonn Republic,“ Caldwell/Scheuerman (eds.), Liberal Democracy,

pp. 58-62; Caldwell, “Citizen,” pp. 40-41; Marcus Llanque, “Massendemokratie zwischen Kaiserreich und westlicher

Demokratie,” Gusy, Denken, p. 42; Gusy, Reichsverfassung, pp. 457-58.

25 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 225-26; Caldwell, “ Citizen,“ pp. 48-49; Winkler, Mittelstand, pp. 111-16; Muller, God that

Failed, pp. 176-77; Bergmann, „Anschauungen,“ pp. 175-76, 181, 185-86; Stoltenburg, Strömungen, pp. 195-96.

26 Llanque, “Massendemokratie,” pp. 45-56, 60-62; Hardtwig, “Einleitung,” idem (ed.), Kulturgeschichte, p. 19;

Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 190-91, 251, 325; Sabine Hake, Topographies of Class. Modern Architecture and Mass

Society in Weimar Berlin (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 2008), pp. 88-90; Jonsson, Crowds, pp. xvi, 7, 51-53, 62-

66, 92, 141, 209-11; ; Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. II, Trsl. by Chris Turner (Minneapolis: Univ. of

Minnesota Pr., 1987), pp. 3-6, passim.

27 Wolfgang Hardtwig, “Einleitung,” idem (ed.), Ordnungen in der Krise. Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte

Deutschlands 1900-1933 (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007), p. 12; Hildebrandt/Kettner (eds.), Handbuch, p.

177; Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 337-39; Jonsson, Crowds, p. 251, passim.

28 Dirk Berg-Schlosser/Jakob Schissler, “Einführung. Politische Kultur in Deutschland,“ idem/idem (eds.), Politische

Kultur in Deutschland. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987), p. 22; Richard

Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism. The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925-1934 (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 47, 75; Schöneberger, “Denken,” Gusy (ed.), Denken, p. 666; Hildebrandt/Kettner,

Handbuch, pp. 3, 102; Bergmann, „Anschauungen,“ pp.207-08; Müller-Meiningen, Parlamentarismus, pp. 43,48;

Hotzel, „Frontsoldatentage,“ pp. 104, 111; Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold. Ein Beitrag zur

Geschichte und Struktur der politischen Kampfverbände zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag,

1966), pp. 96, 98, 104-07, 410-11.

29 For pre-1914, see, still, H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society. The Reorientation of European Social

Thought 1890-1930 (New York: Vintage Books, 1958); Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 45-46, 51-52, 61-68, 72, 326-27; Kurt

Sontheimer, “Die politische Kultur der Weimarer Republik,“ Karl Dietrich Bracher et al (eds.) Die Weimarer Republik

1918-1933. Politik Wirtschaft Gesellschaft (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1987), pp. 463-64; Mommsen, Weimar

Democracy, pp. 305, 457; Muller, God that Failed, pp. 14-16, 42-43, 167-68.

30 Wolfgang Hardtwig, „Der Bismarck Mythos. Gestalt und Funktion zwischen politische Öffentlichkeit und

Wissenschaft, idem (ed.), Kulturgeschichte, pp. 74-78, 88; Mergel, „Führer,“ pp. 105-06, 108-10; McGuire, „Feminist

Politics,“ pp. 140-41, 148; Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus, pp.225, 227, 331-34; Gerhard Hoch, Das Scheitern der

Demokratie im ländlichen Raum. Das Beispiel der Region Kaltenkirchen Henstedt-Ulzburg 1870-1933 (Kiel: Neuer

Malik Verlag, 1988), pp. 173-74 Llanque, “Massendemokratie,” pp. 56-58, 64-66; Oliver Lepsius, “Staatstheorie und

Demokratiebegriff in der Weimarer Republik,“ Gusy, Denken, pp.447-48; Gusy, „Fragen,“ pp. 656-58; Wolfgang

Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920, Trsl. by Michael L. Steinberg (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr.,

1984), pp. 394-96, 402; Müller-Meiningen, Parlamentarismus, pp. 3, 37, 54; Hoppe, Demokratie,, p. 258; Sontheimer,

Denken, passim; Woods, Revolution, p. 106; Heberle, From Democracy, pp. 51, 86, 88, 123.

31 Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus, pp. 213, 218, 306-07, 334; Diehl, Paramilitary Politics, p. 62; Joris Gijsenbergh, “The

Semantics of ‘Democracy’ in Social Democratic Parties. Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, 1917-1939,” Archiv für

Sozialgeschichte 53 (2013), p. 168; Gusy, Reichsverfassung, pp. 451-53, 457-58; Hans Klueting,

„‘Vernunftrepublikanismus‘ und ‚Vertrauensdiktatur‘: Friedrich Meinecke in der Weimarer Republik,“ Historische

Zeitschrift 242:1 (Feb. 1986), pp. 81, 85-89, 98; McElligott, Rethinking, pp. 182-86, 190, 192, 196; Sontheimer,

Denken, pp. 241-42, 244, 330; Woods, Conservative Revolution, p. 95; Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, p. 303.

32 Llanque, ”Massendemokratie,” pp. 64-67; Gusy, Lehre, pp. 86, 88, 98-100, 106; Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus, pp.

225-30, 331-34; Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur pp. 70, 339, 368-71; Klueting, „‘Vernunftrepublikanismus,‘“ pp. 86,

88, 91, 95; Mommsen, Weber, pp. 394-96, 402.

33 Jürgen Falter, “Social Bases of Cleavages in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933,” Jones/Retallack (eds.), Elections, pp.

372-73, 393; Detlef Lehnert, “Von der politisch-kulturellen Fragmentierung zur demokratischen Sammlung?”

idem/Megerle, Pluralismus, pp. 77-79, 94-95, 112-13; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 4

(München: C.H. Beck, 2003), pp. 358-59.

34 Fritzsche, Germans, pp. 132-33; Imhoof, Nazi Town, pp. 25-39, 77; Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 38-41, 82-84, 144, 272;

Fritzsche, Rehearsals, pp. 42-43, 75, 168-69; Frank Bösch, „Militante Geselligkeit,“ pp. 153-54, passim; Oded

Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside. A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany

(Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 1998), pp. 171-73.

35 Sontheimer, Denken, pp. 165-66, 313-14; Woods, Conservative Revolution, pp. 77, 80-81; Rudy Koshar, Social Life,

Local Politics, and Nazism. Marburg, 1880-1935 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1986), pp. 63-70, 182-83;

Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 4, pp. 501-11, passim; Mommsen, Weimar Democracy, pp. 303-05, passim.

36 Schirmer, “Deutungsmuster,” pp. 40-43; Robert Waite, Vanguard of Nazism. The Free Corps Movement in Postwar

German 1918-1923 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1952), pp. 55, 134, 136, 187, 248; Hoch, Scheitern, pp. 173-74.

37 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 242-43, 259, 287-88, 364; Winkler, Von der Revolution, pp. 309-10, 322-35; Fritzsche,

Rehearsals, pp. 26-27, 55-56, 69-70, 75-79; Dirk Schumann, „Einheitssucht und Gewaltakkeptanz. Politische

Grundpositionen des deutschen Bürgertums nach 1918,“ Mommsen, Weltkrieg, pp. 88, 100-01; Woods, Conservative

Revolution, pp. 63, 80-81; Heilbronner, Catholicism, pp. 146-48, 178, 181, 193, 224-25, 236.

38 Sheri Berman, “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” World Politics 49:3 (Apr 1997), pp. 401-29;

Heilbronner, “Catholicism,” pp. 190-91.

39 Julia Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes. Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany (Chapel Hill: Univ. of No.

Carolina Pr., 2002), pp. 2, 9, 43-44, 68, 78-79, 81-84, 274; Canning, „Claiming Citizenship, pp. 221, 223, 236-37;

Imhoof, Nazi Town, pp. 12-13, 24, 43-44, 47; Müller-Meiningen, Parlamentarismus, pp. 42-43; Bösch, “Militante

Geselligkeit,” pp. 167-70; Harvey, “Serving the Volk,“ pp. 201, 209-13; Jonsson, Crowds, pp. 9, 11, 22-23, 62-66, 179-

81.

40 Dirk Schumann, “Political Violence, Contested Public Space, and Reasserted Masculinity in Weimar Germany,”

Canning et al. (eds.), Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects, pp. 236-49; Sven Reichert, “Gewalt, Körper, Politik.

Paradoxen in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit,“ Hardtwig (ed.), Kulturgeschichte, pp. 220-22,

225-27; McElligott, Rethinking, p. 203-04; Weisbrod, “Politik der Repräsentation,“ Mommsen, Erste Weltkrieg, pp. 24-

26, 34; Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. I-II, passim; Moritz Föllmer, Individuality and Modernity in Berlin. Self and

Society from Weimar to the Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2013), pp. 92, 95; Sneeringer, Women’s Votes, pp.

67-68, 172, 276-77.

41 Sontheimer, Denken, p. 14.

42 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 49-51, 175-89, 205-06, 220-24, 282-84, 381-82, 393; Fritzsche, Rehearsals, pp. 14-15, 32-33,

39, 42-44, 62-63, 171-72, 189,210-11, 216-18; Eva Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and

Political Violence 1929-1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1983), pp. 53-54, 58; Ute Planert, „Kulturkritik und

Geschlechterverhältnis. Zur Krise der Geschlechterordnung zwischen Jahrhundertwende und ‚Dritten Reich,‘“

Hardtwig (ed.), Ordnungen, pp. 219-20, 222-23; Hotzel, “Frontsoldatentage,” pp. 104, 109.

43 Biebert, Bürgertum, pp. 341-42; Harvey, “Serving the Volk,” pp. 211, 213-14; Mommsen, Weber, p. 395.

44 Mommsen, Weber, pp. 394-99,401-02; Llanque, “Massendemokratie,” pp. 57-61, 64-66; Stefan Korioth, „Rettung

oder Überwindung der Demokratie—Die Weimarer Staatslehrer im Verfassungsnotstand 1932/33,“ Gusy, Denken, pp.

656-57; Mergel, „Führer,“ p. 106; Müller-Meiningen, Parlamentarismus, pp. 12-13.

45 “Weimar Constitution,” Art. 126; Stoltenberg, Strömungen, pp. 121, 131, 174; Bieber, Bürgertum, p. 283.

46 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 334-37, 369, 380-82, 393; Fritzsche, Rehearsals, pp. 12, 32-33, 91-92, 156, 171, 210-15;

Dieter Ohr, Nationalsozialistische Propaganda und Weimarer Wahlen. Empirische Analyse zur Wirkung von NSDAP

Versammlungen (Opaladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), pp. 142-52, 224-33.

47 Diehl, Paramilitary, pp. 190-91, 197; Llanque, “Massendemokratie,” pp. 42, 46-47; Gusy, Lehre, pp. 21, 81-82;

Schirmer, „Deutungsmuster,“ pp. 39-40, 49; Stoltenburg, Strömungen, p. 126; Sneeringer, Women’s Votes, pp. 68, 75,

78, 282; Rohe, Reichsbanner, pp. 98, 404-05, 409.

48 Waite, Vanguard, pp. 58-93; Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic. The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trsl. by

Richard Deveson (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), pp. 32-33; Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic, Trsl. by P. S.

Falla (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 16, 20.

49 Breitman, German Socialism, pp. 51-56; Gotthard Jasper, Der Schutz der Republik. Studien zur staatlichen

Sicherung der Demokratie in der Weimarer Republik 1922-1930 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1963), pp. 26-29; Johannes

Erger, Der Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Innenpolitik 1919/1920 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag,

1967), passim; Winkler, Von der Revolution, pp. 300-11, passim.

50 Waite, Vanguard, pp. 212-27; Jasper, Schutz, pp. 34-91; Shulamit Volkov, „On the Primacy of Political Violence—

The Case of the Weimar Republic,” José Brunner et al. (eds.), Politische Gewalt in Deutschland. Ursprünge—

Ausprägungen—Konsequenzen (Göttingen” Wallstein Verlag, 2014), pp. 61-62.

51 Joachim Fest, Hitler, Trsl. by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), pp. 182-96; Ian

Kershaw, Hitler. 1889-1936: Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999), pp. 205-12, 214-19.

52 Manuela Achilles, „With a Passion for Reason: Celebrating the Constitution in Weimar Germany,“ Central European

History 43:4 (Dec. 2010), pp. 672-89; Ralf Poscher, “Einführung,” idem (ed.) Der Verfassungstag (Baden-Baden:

Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999), pp. 13-22; Nadine Rossol, ”Performing the Nation: Sports, Spectacles, and

Aesthetics in Germany, 1926-1936,” Central European History 43:4 (Dec. 2010), pp. 617, 619-20, passim; Rohe,

Reichsbanner, pp. 96, 98, 104-07, 224-26, 260-63, 365, 392-93, 405-07, 417-19; Donna Harsch, German Social

Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill: Univ. of No. Carolina Pr., 1993), pp. 104-05, 171-73, 176.

53 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 175-76, 360, 364; Stoltenberg, Strömungen, pp. 51-52, 124, 128-30; Diehl, Paramilitary, pp.

21, 109, 137; Hildebrand/Kettner, Handbuch,, pp. 10, 49.

54 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 283-84, 382; Diehl, Paramilitary, pp. 40-41, 194; Hotzel, „Frontsoldatentage,“ pp. 104, 111,

passim.

55 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 49-50, 282-84; Diehl Paramilitary, pp. 119, 192; Fritzsche, Rehearsals, pp. 12, 62-68 114-18,

156-58; Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? pp. 50, 58, 118; Stoltenberg, Strömungen, pp. 111-14, passim;

Hildebrandt/Kettner (eds.) Handbuch, p.25.

56 Fritzsche, Rehearsals, pp. 67, 83-84; Hoppe, Demokratie, p. 258; Bergmann/Megerle, „Mobilisierung,“ pp. 392, 394,

406-09.

57 Bieber, Bürgertum, pp. 175-76, 182-87, 205-08, 220-24, 293-94, 33-34, 391-92; Schumann, „Einheitssuche,“ p. 95;

Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? pp. 53-54; Bergmann/Megerle, „Mobilisierung,“ pp. 402, 411; Heberle, Democracy, p.

78; Hoch, Scheitern, pp. 171-72; Stoltenberg, Strömungen, pp. 49, 124-25, 128-30, 132-34, 172-78.

58 Bessel, Political Violence, pp. 45, 47-48, 153-54; Diehl, Paramilitary, p. 137, passim; Planert, „Kulturkritik,“ pp.

212-14; Reichert, “Gewalt,“ pp. 219-22, 225-27; Hildebrandt/Kettner, Handbuch, pp. 3-4, 10; Hotzel,

„Frontsoldatentage,“ pp. 105, 108, 111; Volker Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm. Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918-1935

(Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1966), 113, 169, passim; Rohe, Reichsbanner, pp. 49-54, 98-99, 104-08, passim.

59 Bessel, Political Violence, pp. 1-2, 75, 81-82, 90-92, 96, passim; Volkov, „Primacy,“ pp. 58 65; Diehl, Paramilitary,

pp. 196-97, passim; Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? pp. ix, 1-2, 18-19, 81-84; Schumann, „Einheitssucht,“ pp. 83-105;

Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. II, pp. 3-4; Reichert, “Gewalt,“ pp. 393, 396-99; Bernd Weisbrod, „Gewalt in der

Politik. Zur politischen Kultur in Deutschland zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen,“ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und

Unterricht 43 (1992), pp. 392, 395, 399-400, 403.