The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic. The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" not commonly used until the 1930s. The Weimar Republic had a semi-presidential system.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German playwright, poet, philosopher and historian. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright.
Walther Rathenau was a German industrialist, writer and politician who served as foreign minister of Germany from February to June 1922.
The German People's Party was a conservative-liberal political party during the Weimar Republic that was the successor to the National Liberal Party of the German Empire. Along with the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), it represented political liberalism in Germany between 1918 and 1933.
The German Democratic Party was a liberal political party in the Weimar Republic, considered centrist or centre-left. Along with the right-liberal German People's Party, it represented political liberalism in Germany between 1918 and 1933. It was formed in 1918 from the Progressive People's Party and the liberal wing of the National Liberal Party, both of which had been active in the German Empire.
Reichswehr was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Third Reich. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army was dissolved in order to be reshaped into a peacetime army. From it a provisional Reichswehr was formed in March 1919. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the rebuilt German Army was subject to severe limitations in size, structure and armament. The official formation of the Reichswehr took place on 1 January 1921 after the limitations had been met. The German armed forces kept the name Reichswehr until Adolf Hitler's 1935 proclamation of the "restoration of military sovereignty", at which point it became part of the new Wehrmacht.
Hermann Müller was a German Social Democratic politician who served as foreign minister (1919–1920) and was twice chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
The German revolution of 1918–1919, also known as the November Revolution, was an uprising started by workers and soldiers in the final days of World War I. It quickly and almost bloodlessly brought down the German Empire, then, in its more violent second stage, the supporters of a parliamentary republic were victorious over those who wanted a Soviet-style council republic. The defeat of the forces of the far left cleared the way for the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The key factors leading to the revolution were the extreme burdens suffered by the German people during the war, the economic and psychological impacts of the Empire's defeat, and the social tensions between the general populace and the aristocratic and bourgeois elite.
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was a German state, created as a duchy in 1809 by the merger of the Ernestine duchies of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach, which had been in personal union since 1741. It was raised to a grand duchy in 1815 by resolution of the Congress of Vienna. In 1903, it officially changed its name to the Grand Duchy of Saxony, but this name was rarely used. The grand duchy came to an end in the German Revolution of 1918–19 with the other monarchies of the German Empire. It was succeeded by the Free State of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, which was merged into the new Free State of Thuringia two years later.
Austrian Nazism or Austrian National Socialism was a pan-German movement that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement took a concrete form on 15 November 1903 when the German Worker's Party (DAP) was established in Austria with its secretariat stationed in the town of Aussig. It was suppressed under the rule of Engelbert Dollfuss (1932–34), with its political organization, the DNSAP banned in early 1933, but was revived and made part of the German Nazi Party after the German annexation of Austria in 1938.
The Young Communist League of Germany was a political youth organization in Germany.
Presidential elections were held in Germany on 13 March 1932, with a runoff on 10 April. Independent incumbent Paul von Hindenburg won a second seven-year term against Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Communist Party (KPD) leader Ernst Thälmann also ran and received more than ten percent of the vote in the runoff. Theodor Duesterberg, the deputy leader of the World War I veterans' organization Der Stahlhelm, ran in the first round but dropped out of the runoff. This was the second and final direct election to the office of President of the Reich, Germany's head of state under the Weimar Republic.
The Kreuzzeitung was a national daily newspaper published between 1848 and 1939 in the Kingdom of Prussia and then during the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and into the first part of the Third Reich. The paper was a voice of the conservative upper class, although it was never associated with any political party and never had more than 10,000 subscribers. Its target readership was the nobility, military officers, high-ranking officials, industrialists and diplomats. Because its readers were among the elite, the Kreuzzeitung was often quoted and at times very influential. It had connections to officials in the highest levels of government and business and was especially known for its foreign reporting. Most of its content consisted of carefully researched foreign and domestic news reported without commentary.
Paul Gustav Emil Löbe was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a member and president of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic, and member of the Bundestag of West Germany. He died in Bonn in 1967.
The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, more commonly known as the Black Front, was a political group formed by Otto Strasser in 1930 after he resigned from the Nazi Party (NSDAP) to avoid being expelled.
Ricarda Huch was a pioneering German intellectual. Trained as a historian, and the author of many works of European history, she also wrote novels, poems, and a play. Asteroid 879 Ricarda is named in her honour.
Weimar Classicism was a German literary and cultural movement, whose practitioners established a new humanism from the synthesis of ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment. It was named after the city of Weimar, Germany, because the leading authors of Weimar Classicism lived there.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German polymath, who is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. A poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic, his works include plays, poetry and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and color.
The 1929 German Referendum was an attempt during the Weimar Republic to use popular legislation to annul the agreement in the Young Plan between the German government and the World War I opponents of the German Reich regarding the amount and conditions of reparations payments. The referendum was the result of the initiative "Against the Enslavement of the German People " launched in 1929 by right-wing parties and organizations. It called for an overall revision of the Treaty of Versailles and stipulated that government officials who accepted new reparation obligations would be committing treason.
The Spartacist uprising, also known as the January uprising or, more rarely, Bloody Week, was an armed uprising that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the German revolution that broke out just before the end of World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the supporters of the provisional government led by Friedrich Ebert of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), which favored a social democracy, and those who backed the position of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a council republic similar to the one established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The government's forces were victorious in the fighting.
