Reparation for the Weimar Republic ★★★★☆

Friedrich Ebert, the first president of the Weimar Republic, must have been one of history’s least fortunate statesmen. He came to power under an extremely unfavorable star: after the German defeat in 1918, for which most of his compatriots were mentally unprepared, and a revolution that he, as a true democrat, would not have wanted. In fact, he hated the revolution as ‘sin’ and would rather have seen a constitutional monarchy emerge in Germany than a republic.

Yet, as leader of the largest faction in the Reichstag, the Social Democratic SPD, Ebert has served the unwanted republic to the best of his ability. That meant that he first had to defend himself against the communists, the self-proclaimed implementers of the world revolution whose triumphal march had begun in Russia a year earlier. To this end, Ebert entered into a diabolical pact with representatives of the ancien régime, and with the (predominantly) right-wing nationalist free corps. In doing so, he alienated himself from parts of his own rank and file, strengthened the revolutionary zeal of the communists, but did not gain the loyalty of more conservative Germans.

Ebert was (from 1919 to his death in 1925) a head of state with very few devoted subjects. And during his presidency, the Weimar Republic faced existential threats: coup attempts from the far left and far right (such as Adolf Hitler’s ‘Bierkellerputsch’ in 1923), hundreds of political assassinations, amputations as a result of the disastrous Versailles peace treaty, the occupation of the Ruhr by French (and Belgian) troops, economic disaster and a devastating inflation that the Germans remember to this day. Ebert was unable to reap the sweet fruits of his efforts in the service of the republic: he died in February 1925 at the age of 54, exhausted by the enmity and suspicions that had fallen to him.

Even in 2003, his name was still missing from the list of two hundred ‘greatest Germans of all time’ that the television channel ZDF had compiled after consultation with viewers. In his book The Weimar Republic Patrick Dassen, affiliated with Leiden University, can hardly disguise his surprise at the low appreciation for Ebert. Under lousy circumstances he has finally achieved ‘impressive results’ – first as chairman of the provisional government, later as Reich President. It is partly due to his moderating influence that the November Revolution proceeded relatively peacefully. Only from the turn of the year 1918-1919 did the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum unleash a disastrous spiral of violence. Nevertheless, in the first free elections, in January 1919, the middle parties managed to garner more than 76 percent of the vote – a result they would never match afterwards.

Furthermore, the Council of People’s Commissars (the provisional government) managed to preserve the political unity of Germany, saved the country’s economy from total collapse, and found work again for the majority of the 8 million demobilized soldiers. And when the Weimar Republic had passed its greatest trials, the head of state died. The fact that Ebert is missing from the honors list of the greatest Germans is related to the fact that the Weimar Republic has not received the appreciation it deserves, according to Dassen. According to the common view – which has been firmly propagated by German historians in particular – the Weimar Republic formed a link in the chain of catastrophic events that had to culminate in the Shoah. As part of the German destiny, the Sonderweg, the republic was doomed to failure, and has been reduced in historiography to an interlude between the Empire and Hitler’s dictatorship.

Until recently, it took academic courage to break with that view. It is no coincidence that a much-maligned historian – Ernst Nolte, the instigator of the Historikerstreit – dared in 2006 to revalue the Weimar Republic as the predecessor of the Federal Republic. Like a promising experiment that failed miserably, but could just as well have succeeded. Dassen argues, on almost 800 pages, about the same – although he shows more stylistic panache than Nolte at the time, and he draws on a richer documentation.

Dassen not only cites extenuating circumstances for the failure of the democratic experiment, but also points to the strength and vitality of the Weimar Republic. A modern constitution (which later benefited the founders of the Federal Republic), social legislation, the booming economy in the second half of the 1920s, the rapprochement – ​​led by the long-standing Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann – testified to this. to Germany’s former enemies, the 2.5 million homes built during the fourteen Weimar years, the development of Berlin into the cultural heart of Europe, and the emancipation movements that came to fruition.

Hardly anywhere were so many ‘mixed marriages’, between Jews and non-Jewish Germans, concluded as in the Weimar Republic. There was no indication during the 1920s that the greatest mass murder in history would be German-made. Even Winston Churchill, who usually did not give in to overwrought optimism, saw the contours of a new, peaceful world order in 1929 – not least because of the Franco-German reconciliation.

Even when reactionary politicians like Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher, with the help of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, had taken over the republic, Hitler’s seizure of power could have been avoided. For example, if the communists had recognized that not the Social Democrats – ‘social fascists’, in their jargon – were their greatest enemies, but the National Socialists. Even with the knowledge of that time, an occasional coalition of communists and social democrats would have been obvious. But this logic was withheld from the Weimar Republic at a crucial moment. At the intercession of Moscow.