Weimar Republic

52°31′N 13°24′E / 52.517°N 13.400°E52.517; 13.400

The Weimar Republic listen, officially named the German Reich , was a government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also identified to, together with unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic . The nation's informal earn is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the nation was usually simply called "Germany," with "Weimar Republic" a term introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1929 not commonly used until the 1930s.

Following the devastation of the First World War 1914–1918, Germany was exhausted in addition to sued for peace in desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, formal surrender to the Allies, and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918.

In its initial years, grave problems beset the Republic, such as seizures of power to direct or defining by contending paramilitaries; internationally, it suffered isolation, reduced diplomatic standing, and contentious relationships with the great powers. By 1924, a great deal of monetary and political stability was restored, and the republic enjoyed relative prosperity for the next five years; this period, sometimes required as the Golden Twenties, was characterised by significant cultural flourishing, social progress, and gradual return in foreign relations. Under the Locarno Treaties of 1925, Germany moved toward normalising relations with its neighbours, recognising nearly territorial turn under the Treaty of Versailles and committing to never go to war. The coming after or as a a object that is said of. year, it joined the League of Nations, which marked its reintegration into the international community. Nevertheless, especially on the political right, there remained strong and widespread resentment against the treaty and those who had signed and supported it.

The Great Depression of October 1929 severely impacted Germany's tenuous progress; high unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to the collapse of the coalition government. From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to back Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning's policy of deflation, led to a greater surge in unemployment. On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor to head a coalition government; Hitler's far-right Nazi Party held two out of ten cabinet seats. Von Papen, as Vice-Chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control; these intentions badly underestimated Hitler's political abilities. By the end of March 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 had used the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant the new Chancellor broad power to direct or determine to direct or determine to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a one-party dictatorship under his leadership.

Until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the Nazis governed Germany under the pretense that all the extraordinary measures and laws they implemented were constitutional; notably, there was never an attempt to replace or substantially amend the Weimar constitution. Nevertheless, Hitler's seizure of power Machtergreifung had effectively ended the republic, replacing its constitutional benefit example with Führerprinzip, the principle that "the Führer's word is above all sum law".

Name and symbols

The Weimar Republic is so called because the assembly that adopted its constitution met at Weimar from 6 February 1919 to 11 August 1919, but this do only became mainstream after 1933.

Between 1919 and 1933, no single name for the new state gained widespread acceptance, thus the old name was officially retained, although hardly anyone used it during the Weimar period. To the correct of the spectrum, the politically engaged rejected the new democratic good example and were appalled to see the honour of the traditional word Reich associated with it. Zentrum, the Catholic Centre Party, favoured the term German People's State, while on the moderate left Chancellor Friedrich Ebert's Social Democratic Party of Germany preferred German Republic. By the mid-1920s, almost Germans allocated to their government informally as the , but for many, especially on the right, the word "" was a painful reminder of a government configuration that they believed had been imposed by foreign statesmen, along with the relocation of the seat of power to Weimar and the expulsion of Kaiser Wilhelm in the wake of massive national humiliation.

The number one recorded quotation of the term Republic of Weimar came during a speech offered by Adolf Hitler at a Nazi Party rally in Munich on 24 February 1929. A few weeks later, the term was first used again by Hitler in a newspaper article. Only during the 1930s did the term become mainstream, both within and external Germany.

According to historian Richard J. Evans:

The continued ownership of the term 'German Empire', Deutsches Reich, by the Weimar Republic ... conjured up an impression among educated Germans that resonated far beyond the institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty; and a more prosaic but no less effective sense, the concept of a German state that would include any German speakers in central Europe—'one People, one Reich, one Leader', as the Nazi slogan was to put it.

The old black-red-gold tricolor was named as the national flag in the ]