Reichstag (Weimar Republic)

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The Reichstag of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was after the Weimar Constitution of 1919, the Parliament and one of the supreme bodies of the German Reich . The Reichstag met for the first time on June 24, 1920. He took over from the Weimar National Assembly , which had served as parliament from February 1919 to May 1920. The Reichstag met in the Berlin Reichstag building and was elected using proportional representation. One party received one seat for every 60,000 votes.

General

Reichstag session, 1932

According to the Weimar Constitution of 1919, the Reichstag was elected every four years in a general, equal, secret and direct election based on proportional representation. The Reichstag decided the imperial laws and was responsible for the decision on the budget , deciding on war and peace as well as confirmation of individual treaties . He was also responsible for overseeing the Reich government : he could force individual ministers or the entire government to resign with a vote of no confidence , and he could also repeal emergency decrees of the Reich President under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution at any time. The Reich President could dissolve the Reichstag under Article 25 of the Constitution, but only once for the same reason.

The combination of these two constitutional articles made the so-called presidential cabinets possible from 1930 , when the Reich President and the Reich Government largely dealt with legislation instead of the Reichstag. This was reinforced by the electoral successes of the anti-republican parties NSDAP and KPD , which together had the arithmetical majority in the Reichstag since the Reichstag election of July 31, 1932 . In 1933, the National Socialists used these constitutional articles as well as the opportunity to transfer legislation from the Reichstag to the government through an enabling law to establish their dictatorship (see seizure of power ). With the ban on left-wing parties and the forced self-dissolution of the center and right-wing parties in the spring of 1933, the Reichstag became a one-party pseudo-parliament dominated by the NSDAP. Its last meeting took place on April 26, 1942.

Responsibilities

Announcement of the rules of procedure for the Reichstag ( Reichsgesetzblatt 1931 Part II, p. 221)

The rights, duties and responsibilities of the Reichstag were as follows:

  • He passed the imperial laws ( legislation )
  • Decision of the budget laws (Art. 85 WRV)
  • Taking out extraordinary loans (Art. 87 WRV)
  • Handling of petitions (Art. 126 WRV)
  • The Reichstag declared war and made peace (Art. 45 II WRV). Alliances and treaties with foreign states required approval if they related to subjects of Reich legislation (Art. 45 III WRV).
  • The promulgation of a law could be postponed for two months if a third of the Reichstag demanded it. In return, the majority could declare it urgent, so that the Reich President could proclaim the law regardless of the request for suspension (Art. 72 WRV).
  • The Reichstag had the right to self-government, it gave itself its own rules of procedure .
  • The Reichstag could address interpellations and small inquiries as well as written requests for information to the Reich governments (§§ 55-62, 67 rules of procedure).
  • The Reichstag and its committees could demand the presence of any member of the cabinet (Art. 33 WRV).
  • The finance minister had to give an account to the Reichstag for the use of the Reich revenues (Art. 86 WRV).
  • The Reichstag was able to force the resignation of the government through a vote of no confidence (Art. 54 WRV).
  • He was also able to bring charges against the Reich Chancellor , the Reich Ministers and the Reich President for culpably violating the Reich Constitution or a Reich law (Art. 59 WRV).
  • The Reich President could be deposed by referendum by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag on application (Art. 43 II WRV).
  • The Reichstag could override measures of the state of siege (Art. 48 III, IV).
  • He could set up committees of inquiry (Art. 35 I WRV).
  • He formed a standing committee that exercised the rights of the people's representation vis-à-vis the Reich government for the time outside of the meetings and after the end of an electoral period; this committee had the rights of a committee of inquiry (Art. 35 II and III WRV).
  • He also formed a permanent, non-public committee for foreign affairs, also with the rights of a committee of inquiry (Art. 35 I and III WRV; § 34 I Rules of Procedure).
  • At the Reichstag, the electoral review court was formed from members of the Reichstag and judges from the Reich Administrative Court (Art. 31 WRV).

Reichstag building

With the term Reichstag also is Parliament building by Paul Wallot in Berlin called, inaugurated 1894th However, it was only able to perform this function for 39 years, until the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933. Who was the author of the arson could never be completely clarified and is still controversial today. The beneficiaries of the fire were the National Socialists, who on the following day abolished basic rights by means of an emergency ordinance issued by the Reich President . From then on, Parliament met in the Kroll Opera House .

The Reichstag building was also partially destroyed in the hail of bombs during World War II. After several phases of reconstruction in the post-war period, it was not fundamentally rebuilt until the 1990s and crowned with a new dome. Since 1999 it has been the seat of the German Bundestag .

Electoral system

1924 election campaign : distribution of leaflets from trucks at the Brandenburg Gate

Each voter had one vote that he could put on a constituency list. The number of seats was determined according to proportional representation. The number of seats in the Reichstag fluctuated because the total number of seats was dependent on the total number of votes: There was one seat for 60,000 votes. In 1919 the National Assembly consisted of 421 members, and in 1933 the last Reichstag consisted of 647 members.

The empire was divided into 35 constituencies . These were grouped into 16 constituency associations. With the exception of East Prussia, the constituency associations consisted of two or three constituencies. The parties drew up a list of candidates for each constituency (in which they ran) and an additional list of candidates.

A constituency nomination received one seat for a full 60,000 votes in each constituency. The remaining votes were transferred to the constituency association level. There you counted the remaining votes from the affiliated constituencies; with a full 60,000 votes there was another seat, from the constituency list that had contributed the most remaining votes. Remaining votes were taken to the Reich level. There one party again got one seat (from the Reichsliste) for every 60,000 votes.

A few additional rules were added to this basic scheme. The most important was that a party could only get seats if it had received at least 30,000 votes in at least one constituency. Furthermore, an imperial list was only allowed to provide as many seats as the party had already received overall at the lower levels. These provisions put disadvantaged small parties without a regional focus.

The distribution of the remaining votes resulted in not insignificant differences between the proportion of votes and mandate, so it is not purely proportional representation. Strictly speaking (as in many electoral systems) the equality of the success value of the vote was not guaranteed .

Gender distribution

The active and passive right to vote for women in Germany, as in most other countries, was only introduced with the democratic reorientation after the First World War . Germany, like Austria, belonged to the European avant-garde of women's suffrage after a number of Scandinavian and Baltic states . On February 19, 1919, Marie Juchacz (SPD) gave the first speech by a female MP in a German national parliament.

At the beginning of the Weimar Republic, the National Assembly and the First Reichstag still had a female membership of eight to nine percent, but in the following six electoral periods it leveled off at around six to seven percent. After the Reichstag election in March 1933 , which followed the National Socialists' seizure of power , the proportion of women fell to just under four percent. After the other elections during the Nazi era ( November 1933 , 1936 and 1938 ) no more women entered the Reichstag .

Gender distribution figures from the beginning of the parliamentary term. Members of the National Assembly and the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.

Germany from 1919 to 1933:
the Weimar Republic 		Election year Percentage of
women		 Number of
women		 Percentage of
men		 Number of
men		 Total number
Weimar National Assembly 1919 8.7 37 91.3 386 423
1st Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1920 8.0 37 92.0 426 463
2nd Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1924 5.7 27 94.3 445 472
3rd Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1924 [2]6.7 33 93.3 460 493
4th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1928 6.7 [2]33 93.3 457 490
5th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1930 6.8 [2]39 93.2 538 577
6th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1932 5.6 34 94.4 574 608
7th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1932 [3]6.0 35 94.0 547 582
8th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 1933 3.8 21 96.2 537 558
Germany from 1919 to 1933:

The Weimar Republic

National Assembly 1919 1st Reichstag, 1920 2nd Reichstag May 1924 3rd Reichstag Dec. 1924 4th Reichstag 1928 5th Reichstag, 1930 6th Reichstag July 1932 7th Reichstag Nov. 1932 8th Reichstag 1933
Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women 		Percentage of
women		 Number of
women
NSDAP - - - - 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
SPD 11.7% 19th 19.4% 22nd 9% 9 11.4% 15th 13% 20th 9.0% 13th 8.2% 11 9% 11 9.1% 11
USDP 13.6% 3 9.8% 8th - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KPD - - 13.3% 2 6.4% 4th 8.8% 4th 7.4% 4th 16.8% 13th 13.5% 12th 13% 13th 11.1% 9
center 6.6% 6th 2.9% 2 4.6% 3 8.1% 4th 4.9% 3 7.3% 5 8th % 6th 5.7% 4th 6.8% 5
DNVP 6.8% 3 4.5% 3 3.8% 4th 3.6% 4th 1.2% 1 7.3% 3 7.8% 3 5.7% 3 3.8% 2
BVP - - 5% 1 6.2% 1 5.2% 1 5.8% 1 3.3% 1 4.5% 1 5% 1 5.2% 1
DVP 5.3% 1 4.6% 3 2.2% 1 3.9% 2 2.2% 1 0% 1 14% 1 9% 1 0% 0
DDP 6.7% 5 8.8% 4th 7.1% 2 6.2% 2 12% 3 - - - - - - - -
DStP - - - - - - - - - - 7.1% 1 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
CSVD - - - - - - 0% 0 0% 0 4.7% 1 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
Left communists - - - - - - - - 15.3% 2 - - - - - - - -

President of the Reichstag and Council of Elders

Presidents of the German Reichstag were:

The President and his deputies were elected by the MPs at the beginning of the legislative period. In accordance with parliamentary practice in Germany, a representative of the strongest parliamentary group was usually elected as president.

The presidium was supported by the council of elders . The previous senior citizens' convention was renamed the Council of Elders in the course of the new rules of procedure of the Reichstag from 1922. The body now consisted of the President of the Reichstag, the Deputy President and a total of twenty-one members appointed by the parliamentary groups. As a rule, these included the chairmen of the political groups. The council of elders was chaired and convened by the president or his deputy. The body was responsible in particular for agreeing the political groups on agendas and work plans. However, these agreements were not legally binding. Deviations were basically possible for the parliamentary groups. The council of elders also determined the chairmen of the committees and their deputies and some other organizational matters. Despite the limited competencies, the council of elders was of considerable importance for the functioning of parliament. In essence, the tasks were comparable to those of the Council of Elders in the German Bundestag .

Sound recordings of Reichstag sessions

Since December 3, 1930, longer parts of Reichstag sessions have been recorded by radio . Although Reichstag President Paul Löbe advocated live broadcasts, the Reichstag's Council of Elders initially refused. An approximately 80-minute speech by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning on February 25, 1932 is the first full length Reichstag speech subsequently broadcast on the radio. The first live broadcast of a session of the Reichstag took place on March 23, 1933 on the occasion of the passage of the Enabling Act . In total, more than 20 hours of original sound recordings from Reichstag sessions have survived during the Weimar Republic. The originals of the sound recordings that have been preserved are now in the British Library Sound Archive ; copies are available at the German Broadcasting Archive in Frankfurt . In March 2018, the SWR2 archive radio broadcast for the first time the complete recording of almost all the sessions received up to Hitler's rise to power, most of which had previously remained unpublished.

See also

literature

  • Philipp Austermann: The Weimar Reichstag: The creeping elimination, disempowerment and destruction of a parliament . 1st edition, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2020, ISBN 9783412519858
  • Martin Döring: Parliamentary arm of the movement - The National Socialists in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-7700-5237-4 .
  • Thomas Mergel : Parliamentary Culture in the Weimar Republic. Political communication, symbolic politics and the public in the Reichstag. Droste, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-7700-5249-8 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. 2nd edition, Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, ISBN 3-7700-5169-6 .

Web links

Commons : Reichstag (Weimar Republic)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First speech by a woman in the Reichstag on February 19, 1919. bundestag.de , February 13, 2014, accessed on February 24, 2019 .
  2. ↑ The membership numbers are taken from the table in Mechtild Fülles, Women in Party and Parliament , Verlag für Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1969, p. 122. Cf. also Rosemarie Nemitz, The woman in the German parliaments , in: trade union monthly magazines , vol. 9, 1958, issue 4, here 239–244, p. 242 and Gabriele Bremme, The political role of women in Germany. A study of the influence of women in elections and their participation in party and parliament , Göttingen 1956, p. 131.
  3. ↑ a b All percentages have been recalculated, the marked values ​​deviate minimally from Fülles' table.
  4. ↑ a b Hannelore Mabry , Weeds in Parliament. The importance of female parliamentary work for the emancipation of women , 2nd edition, Verlag Andreas Achenbach, Lollar / Giessen 1974, p. 262 refers to Fülles, but in their table 1928 32 and 1930 35 female members, which corresponds to 6, 5 percent (1928) and 6.1 percent (1930) lead.
  5. ^ Harald Franke: From the Seniors' Convention to the Council of Elders of the Bundestag. Berlin, 1987 pp. 71-73.
Elections in the Weimar Republic
Reichstag elections

National Assembly 1919  • 1920  • May 1924  • Dec. 1924  • 1928  • 1930  • July 1932  • Nov. 1932  • March 1933

Flag of Germany
Referendums

Referendum "Expropriation of Princely Assets" (1926) • Referendum "Armored Cruiser Ban" (1928) • Referendum against the Young Plan (1929)

Reich presidential elections

1919  • 1925  • 1932