Weimar Republic

“ The Germans of the 1920’s were a frustrated and baffled people as a result of defeat and the disintegration of their traditional government. The democratic elements, which were trying to govern Germany through the new and feeble machinery of the Weimar Republic, got inadequate support from the democratic forces of the rest of the world. ”

“ Organization and Functions of the Reich Section I: The Reich and the States Article 1. The German Reich is a Republic.
The political power emanates from the people.
Article 2. The territory of the Reich consists of the territories of the German states. Other territories may be incorporated in the Reich by a national law, if their populations so desire by virtue of the right of self-determination. ”

“ Has the Constitution of Weimar resistance enough to withstand all the inevitable assaults which will be aimed at it, and can it guarantee to the German people a well-ordered public life and a stable government? ”

“ No one who has followed attentively the work of the constitution-makers in Weimar can have overlooked their readiness to adopt and assimilate the positive elements of a movement which was essentially destructive. In this respect they displayed a remarkable degree of open-mindedness and receptivity. They showed themselves avid of every contribution which they could glean from any source to the work of national reorganization, and even in Teutonized Bolshevism they apparently found helpful hints of timely innovations. ”

“ To any one who loves Nature in her gentle aspects, who delights in the checkered shade on a summer morning, and in a walk on the corn-clad upland at sunset, within sight of a little town nestled among the trees below, I say—come to Weimar. And if you are weary of English unrest, of that society of "eels in a jar," where each is trying to get his head above the other, the somewhat stupid well-being of the Weimarians will not be an unwelcome contrast, for a short time at least. ”

“ Self-seeking “representatives of the people,” frock-tailed bureaucrats, scurrying correspondents from the four comers of the earth and the flocks of hangers-on which these unavoidable appendages of modern society inevitably bring in their train, had all fled Berlinward. Weimar had been restored to her own simple people, except that one of her squares swarmed with the Jews of Leipzig, who had set up here their booths for an annual fair and awakened all the surrounding echoes with their strident bargainings. ”

“ This period, too, was filled with Independent Socialist and Spartacan intrigues and armed opposition to the government, culminating in the brief but bloody reign of the Communists in Munich in April. Strikes continued to paralyze industry. No food supplies of any importance were received. The National Assembly at Weimar continued to demonstrate the philosophic tendencies, academic learning and [pg 267] political immaturity of the German people. Distinct left wings came into being in both the Majority Socialist and Democratic parties. ”

“ In vain did the Government profess its intention of pushing through the two Bills approving, in principle, nationalisation of coal mines and potash deposits; for no one wanted nationalisation except as a step to socialisation. The workmen felt that the Government was, as one put it to me, "a revolution profiteer." It had perverted the purposes and pocketed the profits of the revolution. They felt that Weimar, as another [66] one expressed it, was only a "soviet of profiteers" and would produce no socialist legislation. ”

“ In the shock from this he was sensible that he had not seen any woman-and-dog teams for some time, and he wondered by what civic or ethnic influences their distribution was so controlled that they should have abounded in Hamburg, Leipsic, and Carlsbad, and wholly ceased in Nuremberg, Ansbach, and Wurzburg, to reappear again in Weimar, though they seemed as characteristic of all Germany as the ugly denkmals to her victories over France. ”

“ The failure of Weimar is the failure of German Liberalism. German Liberalism always has failed Germany, and to this may be attributed the periodic catastrophes of Germany and the calamities they have brought upon Europe. German Liberalism fell an easy prey to French Imperialism in the Napoleonic epoch and to Prussian Imperialism in the Bismarckian epoch ”

“ And listening to a deputy in the Tribune reading a treatise on Constitutional niceties as to federation and free-state-rights, I think of the previous afternoon, when I was listening to a street orator in Halle shouting very nasty and unconstitutional tirades about food and freedom to an armed party of soldiers and workmen about to attack the Government troops. And then, again, I think of an afternoon in the Weimar [41] Theatre a quarter of a century ago. ”

“ That law has as its main contents—I can almost say with a little exaggeration—the elimination of the division of powers. Three provisions or groups of provisions of the Weimar constitution are excepted, but for the rest the government could now promulgate laws even if that meant changing the constitution of the Reich; for the normal life of the people, legislators, and supreme administrators are one and the same thing. ”

“ But personally I find a Weimar "Full Session" about as entertaining and enlightening as was Weimar Grand Opera. A stout elderly gentleman advances to the centre of the stage and reads steadily and stolidly through a pile of typewritten recitative. The Independents, who go in for bravura and even gag a little, are now nearly always away on tour in the provinces. So the Assembly can continue daily from three [30] to six digesting a pleasantly conservative Constitution and a pleasingly liberal lunch. For Weimar is an oasis of peace and plenty in a land swept by famine and fighting. ”

“ The Weimar Parliament is so dead that only civil war can galvanise it to action. If reinforced by a Council system, the Weimar Party Government and the Preuss Federal [197] Constitution would perhaps have steam enough to work.
The Councils are as essential to Germany to-day as the Commons were to us a century ago. Indeed, our insistence on the supremacy of the Weimar Assembly as a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, can be paralleled by our insistence a century ago on the maintenance of Upper Houses in the constitutions of the States revolutionised from France. ”

“ Germany was to have the most liberal of constitutions and that was to be enough for the realisation of the German revolution and for the reconciliation of the enemies of Germany. It was only as the weeks and months passed and it became evident that German Liberalism, whether expressed in the diplomatic ideals or the democratic institutions of Weimar, was doing nothing either for the revolution or the reconciliation, that the German workmen began to pass over to the revolutionaries. ”

“ This policy made it almost impossible for a German to hold any middle position between extreme nationalism and extreme internationalism. Weimar lost its best chance of acceptance when the German parliamentary State was excluded from the League of Nations.
And yet Weimar and German Liberalism had everything in its favour in the autumn of 1918. The reactionary factors that had so little difficulty in stultifying the Liberalism of Bethmann-Hollweg, von Kühlmann, and their predecessors were cancelled for the time being. ”

“ Of all the German principalities, there is none that makes us feel so much as Weimar the advantages of a small state, of which the sovereign is a man of strong understanding, and who is capable of endeavoring to please all orders of his subjects, without losing anything in their obedience. ”

“ The modern spirit, the spirit of scoffing and fast travelling, has been so much diffused, even over Germany, though accepted only in a limited sense as regards speed on railways and still resisted by eilwagen, that few towns retain that idyllic aspect we are accustomed to call German. No town, to me, retains it so completely as Weimar; and it is fit that simplicity, which lingers last with great men, should plant its extrema vestigia on their long abode and resting-place. ”

“ However, after relating a scene which took place at Weimar, he adds, 'Whatever we may say or think of her, her visit was certainly followed by very important results. Her work upon Germany, which owed its rise to social conversations, is to be regarded as a mighty engine which at once made a wide breach in that Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices, which divided us from France; so that the people across the Rhine, and afterwards those across the channel, at length came to a nearer knowledge of us; whence we may look to obtain a living influence over the distant west. ”

“ There is no civil government in a Germany dragooned by Prussia. There is no law in Germany but military law. There is no obligation in Germany except to the army. It is not Germany the democracy or Germany the state, it is Germany the army, that is to be crushed for its own good no less than for that of civilisation."
The United States entered the war at the psychological and critical moment. ”

“ Years ago a swarm of noisy wasps hovered about the gentle paralytic of Weimar, and when a ray of light made their wings gleam they said that they had been turned to gold, that the world had been turned upside down, that man had stolen the keys of the earthly paradise, and that heaven had come down to hell. ”

“ If the Allies meet with reverses and victory shall crown the arms of the Germans and Austrians, German militarism will undoubtedly dominate the European Continent and extend southward and eastward to other parts of the world. Should such a state of affairs happen to take place the consequences resulting therefrom will be indeed great and extensive. On this account we must devote our most serious attention to the subject. If, on the other hand, the Germans and Austrians should be crushed by the Allies, Germany will be deprived of her present status as a Federated State under a Kaiser. ”

“ After the rule of the Kaiser had been overthrown, the German people wanted to give themselves a new constitution on a democratic basis and then hoped to be able to work their way up again by industry and perseverance. In this, the confidence in the far-sightedness of the victor powers of that time, and especially in the 14 points of Wilson, played a great part. But when the Treaty of Versailles utterly frustrated these hopes, the Weimar democracy fell into a serious crisis from which it was not to recover. ”

“ These German-Americans, co-operating with some of the Americans in Berlin, kept informing the Foreign Office, the army and navy as well as influential Reichstag members that the real power behind the government over here was not the press and public opinion but the nine million Americans who were directly or indirectly related to Germany. ”

“ Leaving the nation and its statesmen to fight out their freedom, he hurried away to Weimar, and thence to the quiet Thuringian town of Rudolstadt, where in the inn "Zum Ritter," out of sight of soldier and sound of drum, he wrote, helped by books from the Weimar library, his essay for the degree of doctor in philosophy. ”

“ The Constituent Assembly has determined the Constitutional future of Germany, but the fate of Germany has not been decided there. The struggle between revolution and repression has not been fought out between the stalls and the stage of the Weimar Theatre, but in Berlin and the other big towns where the Government speaks with minenwerfer and machine-guns, and the Opposition obstruct with barricades. ”

“ Obviously the question was one of neither the existence nor the freedom of Germany, but a shameful adventure of the Austrian war party; not a question of self-defense, national protection and a holy war forced upon us in the name of freedom, but a bold provocation, an abominable threat against foreign, Servian, independence and liberty. ”

“ In Weimar and Berlin the Treaty was termed the death-sentence of Germany, not only as an empire, but as an independent political community. Henceforward her economic efforts, beyond a certain limit, will be struck with barrenness, her industry will be hindered from outstripping or overtaking that of the neighboring countries, and her population will be indirectly kept within definite bounds. For, instead of exporting manufactures, she will be obliged to export human beings, whose intellect and skill will be utilized by such rivals of her own race as vouchsafe to admit them. ”

“ There was a regular airplane mail service between Weimar and Berlin, three times a day in each direction, with room for a passenger or two on each trip. The German may not forgive his enemies, but he is quite ready to do business with them, to clothe them or to fly them, to meet any demand of a possible customer, whatever his origin. He still tempers his manners to outward appearances, however, for the great leaden god of caste sits heavily upon him, in spite of his sudden conversion to democracy. ”

“ The hereditary dominions of the Empire, Austria, Silesia, Moravia, with Bohemia, Hungary, and the Tyrol, must soon be his; their conquest was certain. Then would come the division of the spoil. The House of Weimar, which had suffered more in the Protestant cause than any other princely house of Germany, which had resigned for its sake the Electoral throne and the rights of primogeniture, must stand foremost for reward.
'And which kingdom shall you choose?' my lady asked, with a twinkle in her eye which belied her gravity. 'Bohemia or Hungary? ”

“ The outbreaks in Munich and the south were outside the political orbit in which the Government was moving. If the spread of the general strike from the west to Saxony, which broke Germany in two and cut Berlin off from Weimar, was more serious, yet the Maerker column soon succeeded, in removing any danger to Weimar and in reopening communications with Berlin. These outbreaks were not formidable enough to force the Government to depart from its policy of suppressing not only revolts, but the revolution. ”