What were the roles of (i) the Chancellor and (ii) the President under the Weimar Constitution? [4]
(b) Why was Ebert able to defeat left and right-wing threats to the Weimar Republic in 1919–20? [6]
Answers
Answer:
(I) and (2)The Weimar-era Constitution was closer to the modern French constitution than to the current Grundgesetz. It was a semi-presidential parliamentary republic, with a powerful, almost monarchical Reichspräsident.
The Reichspräsident (President) was essentially a replacement constitutional monarch. He had the power to dissolve Parliament and appoint the Reichskanzler (Chancellor) and ask him to form a government.
The Reichspräsident was head of state, again analogous to a monarch. The office was somewhat similar to that of the Queen in the United Kingdom, albeit arguably more powerful. The President had expansive emergency powers that were used so often that they really became nothing unusual. By 1933, presidents could rule by decree and dismiss governments almost at will — and did.
The Reichskanzler (Chancellor) was head of government, formed and chaired the Cabinet, and directed policy and legislation. He was analogous to the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. However, as time went on and the Reichspräsident became more powerful through the use of emergency powers, the Chancellor had relatively little direct power.
B)With Ebert’s active cooperation, a new government, headed by Maximilian, the Prince of Baden, and supported by the three parties of the Black–Red–Gold coalition, was organized in October 1918 through a sweeping constitutional reform that in essential respects foreshadowed the Weimar Constitution. Because Ebert was convinced that Germany did not need a revolution to achieve parliamentary democratic reform, he did everything he could to prevent such a revolution from occurring. “I hate the revolution like sin,” he later said to Chancellor Maximilian. But the revolution of November 1918 was not made by Germans to bring about the advent of the republic, democracy, or even socialism.