Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic was the parliamentary republic created on August 11, 1919, in Germany, by the Weimar Constitution. This German political and legal charter had been hammered out by the German National Assembly right after the 1918 November Revolution. The Weimer Republic replaced the imperial government which fell at the end of World War I. However, this liberal republic would not last long, for it was replaced by the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler in 1933. It was named after the city of Weimar where the Constitutional National Assembly convened.

Many past-rooted problems gnawed the credibility of the German people in the Weimar Republic and paved the way for new extreme ideologies, such as Nazism and communism. Hyperinflation, unemployment, poverty, the permanent hostility of France towards Germany, and, above all, the unfair discriminatory stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles (or the treaty of revenge) foreboded its extinction. The Weimar Republic had only two presidents: Friedrich Ebert (1919-1925), and Paul von Hindenburg (1925-1934), who was a World War I hero.

Below, Paul von Hindenburg, WW1 hero and the second president of the Weimar Republic. Although he was a nationalist, he knew how to cooperate and negotiate political agreements with Social Democrats and the Catholic center party. He made one mistake, though, apointing Adolf Hitler as Chancellor before he died.



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