The Origins of the Weimar Republic

Ten weeks from empire to republic

On 29 September 1918 General Ludendorff, who had run the German war effort for two years, told the Kaiser that the army could not win and that Germany must ask for an armistice at once. He added that a parliamentary government should be formed to do the asking, so that the politicians and not the generals would sign the surrender. Prince Max of Baden became chancellor on 3 October and asked President Wilson for terms. Wilson would not deal with the Kaiser. While the notes went back and forth, the navy ordered the High Seas Fleet out for a last battle, and on 29 October the crews at Wilhelmshaven refused to sail. By 3 November Kiel was in the hands of sailors and workers councils, and by the 8th so was Munich. On 9 November Prince Max announced the abdication before the Kaiser had agreed to it, handed the chancellorship to the socialist Friedrich Ebert, and at two in the afternoon Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from a window of the Reichstag, two hours before Karl Liebknecht proclaimed a socialist one from the balcony of the palace. On 11 November the armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Compiegne by a civilian, Matthias Erzberger. The republic that followed was named for the town of Weimar, where its constitution was written in the spring of 1919 because Berlin was fighting in the streets. The exam asks why the revolution happened, how the republic was set up, and what was strong and weak in the constitution it adopted on 11 August 1919. This module gives you the dated evidence and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a 12-mark answer.

From Ludendorff to Weimar, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Ludendorff tells the Kaiser the war is lost and Prince Max becomes chancellor
• Sailors mutiny at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel and councils spread across Germany
• The Kaiser abdicates, Scheidemann proclaims the republic, and the armistice is signed two days later
• The Spartacist rising in Berlin is crushed by the Freikorps
• Germany elects a National Assembly, which meets at Weimar and makes Ebert president
• Versailles is signed and the Weimar constitution comes into force

Why was there a revolution in November 1918?

Germany had been a stable monarchy for nearly fifty years. Which explanation best accounts for its collapse in ten weeks?

• The war was lost and the generals had said so on 29 September, which destroyed the authority of the Kaiser who had led it; four years of blockade had left Germans hungry, with around 750,000 dead of malnutrition, and the influenza of 1918 on top; the naval order of late October sent sailors to die for the honour of the fleet and they refused, and their mutiny spread as councils to every city; and Wilson would not give an armistice to the Kaiser, so that abdication became the price of peace and Prince Max paid it on 9 November before the Kaiser had agreed.
• The German Communist Party organised a nationwide uprising to seize power.
• Allied armies invaded Germany and overthrew the Kaiser.
• Ebert plotted the revolution to make himself president.

The constitution: strengths and weaknesses

The 16-mark judgement on this bullet asks how far the constitution was to blame for what happened later. Have both columns ready and notice that most of the weaknesses were strengths seen from the other side.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of a poster issued by the Social Democratic Party for the election of 19 January 1919. It shows a woman in a plain dress holding a ballot paper towards the viewer, with a factory and a farm behind her and the rising sun on the horizon. The text reads: Women! Equal rights, equal duties. Vote Social Democrat. Below in smaller print: For the first time you may vote. Vote for peace, bread and freedom. A student infers that the SPD was presenting the new republic as a fresh start for people the empire had excluded. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• The small print says that for the first time women may vote, which was true only because the republic had given them the vote in November 1918.
• The woman wears a plain dress rather than fashionable clothes.
• The rising sun on the horizon behind the factory and the farm presents the new state as a dawn for workers and peasants alike.
• The poster was issued by the SPD, which won 165 seats in the election.
• The poster was printed in large format for walls and hoardings.

Setting up the republic

Select the THREE statements that correctly describe how the republic was set up between November 1918 and August 1919.

• Ebert kept order by deals with the old powers: the army under Groener on 10 November, and the employers under Stinnes on 15 November, who granted the unions an eight-hour day in return for leaving the factories in private hands.
• The election of 19 January 1919 gave the three parties that accepted the republic, the SPD, the Centre and the DDP, 331 of the 423 seats, and the National Assembly met at Weimar on 6 February because Berlin was not safe, choosing Ebert as president on 11 February.
• The Assembly voted to accept the Treaty of Versailles on 22 June 1919 by 237 to 138 because the alternative was invasion, and Scheidemann resigned as chancellor rather than sign it; the constitution followed on 31 July and came into force on 11 August.
• The Kaiser was tried and executed in Berlin.
• The Spartacists won the election and Liebknecht became president.
• The constitution was written in the Reichstag in Berlin.

Two interpretations of the constitution

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The Weimar constitution carried the seeds of its own destruction. Proportional representation guaranteed weak coalitions, Article 48 gave the president the means to bypass them, and together they produced a state that could be governed by decree the moment a president chose. Hitler did not overthrow the constitution; he used it. Interpretation 2. The constitution was among the best of its day and was destroyed by the circumstances it was born into, not by its clauses. Proportional representation produced stable government in the 1920s once the crisis passed, and Article 48 was used by Ebert to save the republic before Hindenburg used it to bury it. What killed Weimar was defeat, Versailles, inflation, depression and an elite that never accepted it; a better constitution would not have survived those either. Question 3(c) asks why they differ. The answer is where each looks for the cause: Interpretation 1 reads the text of the constitution forward to 1933 and finds the mechanism; Interpretation 2 reads the history of the republic and finds the mechanism used only when other things had already gone wrong. This meant that one blames the tool and the other the hands that held it, and the judgement in 3(d) turns on whether the same tool in other hands would have done the same damage.

In the shoes of Ebert, 1918 to 1919

Four decisions in the first months of the republic. Choose what Ebert actually did, and notice what each choice cost.

• 10 November 1918. You are Ebert, chancellor for a day, with councils in every city and Liebknecht calling for a soviet Germany. General Groener telephones from headquarters. What do you agree?
• January 1919. The Spartacists have seized newspaper offices in Berlin and are calling for the overthrow of your government a fortnight before the election. The regular army is unreliable. What do you do?
• June 1919. You are president. The Allies have presented the treaty: Article 231, an army of 100,000, 13 per cent of territory and reparations to be fixed later. The army says it cannot resist an invasion. Scheidemann will resign rather than sign. What do you do?
• Summer 1919. The constitution is being written. The drafters propose a president elected by the people with the power to rule by decree in an emergency. You will be that president. What do you support?

From cause to consequence

Because Ludendorff told the Kaiser on 29 September 1918 that the war was lost and asked for a civilian government to seek terms, the _____ for defeat fell on the politicians and not the generals. Because Wilson would not deal with the Kaiser, abdication became the price of peace and Prince Max announced it on _____ November. Because Ebert needed the army against the Spartacists, he made the pact with _____ that left the old officers in charge. Because the Assembly chose proportional representation, no party ever won a majority and there were _____ governments in fourteen years. And because the constitution and the Treaty of _____ were signed within six weeks of each other, the right blamed the republic for both.

The Weimar coalition

In the election of 19 January 1919 the SPD won 165 seats, the Centre Party 91 and the DDP 75. How many seats did the three pro-republic parties hold between them?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• The main difference is that Interpretation 1 blames the constitution itself, pointing to proportional representation and Article 48 as a mechanism that Hitler used rather than overthrew, whereas Interpretation 2 blames the circumstances of defeat, Versailles, inflation and depression, arguing that the same clauses worked well in the 1920s and that no constitution would have survived what followed.
• Interpretation 1 says Article 48 and proportional representation destroyed the republic.
• I agree with Interpretation 2 because Ebert used Article 48 to save the republic.
• They differ because one is negative about the constitution and the other is positive.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why there was a revolution in Germany in October and November 1918. One reason for the revolution was the mutiny of the navy. At the end of October 1918, with armistice talks already under way, the naval command ordered the High Seas Fleet to sea for a final battle with the British, and the crews at Wilhelmshaven refused to sail on 29 October because they saw no point in dying for the honour of the admirals in a war the generals had already admitted was lost. This meant that when the mutineers were arrested at Kiel their comrades took the town on 3 November, set up councils of sailors and workers on the Russian model, and sent delegations by train to every city in the north, so that by 8 November Munich had declared a republic and the Kaiser had no city left that would obey him. The revolution happened because the refusal of a few thousand sailors showed the whole country that the authority of the empire had already gone. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the order, 29 October, Kiel, 3 November, Munich, 8 November); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the admission of defeat by Ludendorff and the hunger of the blockade, and on the American refusal to deal with the Kaiser, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why there was a revolution in Germany in October and November 1918. You may use the following in your answer: the naval mutiny; the abdication of the Kaiser. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a name or a place
• Causes of your own: the admission of defeat by Ludendorff, the hunger and influenza of 1918, or the American refusal to deal with the Kaiser

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks: How far do you agree with Interpretation 1 that the constitution carried the seeds of its own destruction? Use both interpretations and your own knowledge. A student has written the case FOR Interpretation 1. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The clauses were the same in 1924 and in 1932, yet the republic worked in one year and died in the other: proportional representation produced the pro-republic majority of 1919 and the stable coalitions of the Stresemann years, and Article 48 was used 136 times by Ebert to defend the state against Kapp and the Ruhr, so the mechanism only became fatal when six million were unemployed and a president who despised the republic chose to use it, which means the seeds were in the soil of 1930 rather than the text of 1919, and a judgement should give the constitution the opportunity and the crisis the cause.
• The constitution was very democratic, so it cannot have been bad.
• Ebert was a good president.
• Hitler would have taken power whatever the constitution said.