Germany had an elected parliament, but divided parties and growing use of emergency decrees weakened it.
The Weimar Republic was Germany's democracy after the First World War. The emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, lost power in 1918. The 1919 constitution set the rules for how Germany was governed and what rights people had. Under it, men and women elected the Reichstag, Germany's parliament.
Seats were shared by proportional representation: a party's share of seats roughly matched its share of votes. So many parties won seats, and governments were usually coalitions, groups of parties agreeing to govern together. If the partners fell out, the government lost the support it needed to act. Sharing power was not a failure in itself. The problem grew when parties refused to cooperate or rejected democracy altogether.
Article 48 let the president take emergency measures. An emergency decree was an order that became law without the usual vote in parliament. From 1930, governments relied on these decrees more and more, because they had no stable majority in the Reichstag. This weakened parliament's power to hold the government to account.
The republic also faced hostility from the start. Many nationalists blamed democratic politicians for Germany's defeat and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. Communists wanted a revolution to replace capitalism with shared ownership, and conservatives feared that revolution.
Democracy allows parties to compete and lets elected representatives limit the government. Authoritarian rule puts power in few hands and bans opposition. Germans disagreed about which answer to their problems was best. The constitution alone could not decide which would win.
- Reichstag
- Germany's elected parliament.
- Proportional representation
- Seats match vote share, so coalitions are common.
- Article 48
- Let the president rule by emergency decree.
Worked example: Same rules, different results
Germany used proportional representation in both the good years of the mid-1920s and the crisis after 1929.
- In the good years, parties could still agree and form governments.
- After 1929, the crisis made agreement much harder, so governments relied on the president.
- So the crisis and political choices, not the voting rules alone, broke the system.
Watch out for this
Article 48 elected Hitler and made him dictator at once.
Article 48 was an emergency power. Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 and built his dictatorship in stages.
Check your understanding
Why did Weimar governments rely on Article 48 after 1930?
- The constitution had banned elections.
- They lacked a stable majority in the Reichstag.
- Hitler had already become dictator.