Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Weimar Constitution
- Germany lost WW1
- Forced to accept blame
- Pay £6.6billion of reparations
- November 1918
- Violent unrest in Berlin
- Forced Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate
- Dictatorship
- No elections
- Monarchs
- Early 1919
- A new government was formed
- Wasn't invited to the peace conference
- Ebert refused to sign the Treaty
- But eventually did
- Germany couldn't afford another conflict
- Too weak
- Made Germany a democracy
- Led by the SDP
- Social Democrat Party
- Moderate group of socialist
- Friedrich Ebert - 1st German President
- Schekemann - 1st chancellor
- Discontent
- 1000s of Germans were poor and starving
- Influenza epidemic killed thousands
- Germans denied they lost the war
- "November Criminals"
- Signed Armistice and TofV
- Nickname
- Blamed Communists, Jews and the Government
- For loss of war
- Government seen as weak and ineffective
- Treaty of Versailles made living conditions worse
- Government structure
- Reichsrat
- Could delay law passing from Reichstag
- Like the House of Lords
- Reichstag
- Like Houses of Parliament
- German parliament
- Proportional Representation
- Number of seats a party wins is worked as a proportion of the total number of votes they receive
- President
- Elected every 7 years
- Appoints own chancellor
- Problems
- Difficult to make decisions
- Lots of Reichstag parties
- Hard to pick chancellor
- Had to have support from Reichstag
- Had to accept Treaty of Versailles
- Made the government hated
- Loss of land
- eg Ruhr - Germanys industrial area
- the "war guilt" clause
- Took the blame
- Freikorps
- Because of troubles in Germany
- Cultural Achievements
- Berlin
- Centre for Culture
- Advances
- Art
- Architecture
- Music
- Literature
- Film
- "Metropolis"
- Bold and new developments
- Bauhaus School of design
- Berholt Brecht
- Critical Thinking
- Not everyone approved
- Everything changed..
- Nazis...