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The Verbotzeit ("time of prohibition" [the grammatically correct German term is Verbotszeit]) refers to the fifteen-month period between
On 24 June 1922 the German Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, a Jew who was undertaking to carry out Germany's treaty obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, was assassinated by right-wing terrorists belonging to the Organisation Consul while on his way to work. [1] In response, the national government in Berlin, acting through the Reichstag and under the direction of Chancellor Joseph Wirth, promulgated a Law for the Protection of the Republic (LFPR). Wirth gave a stirring and prophetic speech to the Reichstag following the murder of his respected minister in which he pointed to the right-wing delegates of parliament and then famously declared "The danger stands on the right!" [2] The new national law increased the punishments for politically motivated acts of violence and banned organizations that opposed the "constitutional republican form of government" along with their printed matter and meetings. A special court in Leipzig was also constituted by the LFPR, and the court was vested with exclusive jurisdiction over violations of the LFPR. The court consisted of nine members who were appointed by the President of the Republic, which would limit the effects of judicial provincialism and particularism. In a move intended to limit the influence of the Republic's conservative (and often monarchical) judiciary, only three of the nine judges were required to be professional jurists; the others could be lay judges. [3]
The Bavarian Landtag, resistant to the central power and jealous of its own "sovereignty", retaliated by enacting a Bavarian law that claimed to suspend the operation of the national law in Bavaria and to replace the LFPR with its own Bavarian Decree for Protection of the Republic. The Bavarian High Court declared the maneuver to be a legal and effective procedure. The constitutional crisis was resolved by a compromise: the Bavarian Decree was withdrawn, and the national LFPR was amended to provide that a co-equal "southern division" of the new court was established, and that three of the lay judges in that division had to be Bavarian. [3]
By early 1923, the states of Prussia, Saxony, Baden, Thuringia, Schaumburg-Lippe, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hamburg, Bremen and Hesse had banned the Nazi Party under the provisions of the Law for the Protection of the Republic. In March, the German Supreme Court upheld all prohibitions of the party in locations where it had been active in 1922. The Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter was also banned. [3] In the trial of Adolf Hitler for his part in the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, the court refused to apply the provisions of the law to "a man who thinks and feels as German as Hitler". The law would have required that he be deported to Austria as a foreigner convicted of high treason. [4]
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.
Karl Joseph Wirth was a German politician of the Catholic Centre Party who served for one year and six months as the chancellor of Germany from 1921 to 1922, as the finance minister from 1920 to 1921, as acting foreign minister of Germany from 1921 to 1922 and again in 1922, as the minister for the Occupied Territories from 1929 to 1930 and as the minister of the Interior from 1930 to 1931. During the postwar era, he participated in the Soviet and East German Communist-controlled neutralist Alliance of Germans party from 1952 until his death in 1956.
Wilhelm Marx was a German judge, politician and member of the Catholic Centre Party. During the Weimar Republic he was the chancellor of Germany twice, from 1923–1925 and 1926–1928, and served briefly as the minister president of Prussia in 1925. With a total of 3 years and 73 days, he was the longest-serving chancellor during the Weimar Republic.
The Bavarian People's Party was a Catholic political party in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic. After the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, it split away from the national-level Catholic Centre Party and formed the BVP in order to pursue a more conservative and particularist Bavarian course. It consistently had more seats in the Bavarian state parliament than any other party and provided all Bavarian minister presidents from 1920 on. In the national Reichstag it remained a minor player with only about three percent of total votes in all elections. The BVP disbanded shortly after the Nazi seizure of power in early 1933.
Events in the year 1922 in Germany.
The Kampfbund ("Battle-league") was a league of nationalist fighting societies and the German National Socialist Party in Bavaria, Germany, in the 1920s. It included Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party (NSDAP) and its Sturmabteilung (SA), the Oberland League and the Bund Reichskriegsflagge. Hitler was its political leader, while Hermann Kriebel led its militia.
Hermann Esser was an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). A journalist, Esser was the editor of the Nazi paper, Völkischer Beobachter, a Propaganda Leader, and a Vice President of the Reichstag. In the early days of the party, he was a de facto deputy of Adolf Hitler. As one of Hitler's earliest followers and friends, he held influential positions in the party during the Weimar Republic, but increasingly lost influence during the Nazi era.
The Timeline of the Weimar Republic lists in chronological order the major events of the Weimar Republic, beginning with the final month of the German Empire and ending with the Nazi Enabling Act of 1933 that concentrated all power in the hands of Adolf Hitler. A second chronological section lists important cultural, scientific and commercial events during the Weimar era.
The early timeline of Nazism begins with its origins and continues until Hitler's rise to power.
The supreme SA leader, was the titular head of the Nazi Party's paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA).
Joseph Berchtold was an early senior Nazi Party member and a co-founder of both the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS).
Hermann Ehrhardt was a German naval officer in World War I who became an anti-republican and anti-Semitic German nationalist Freikorps leader during the Weimar Republic. As head of the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt, he was among the best-known Freikorps leaders in the immediate postwar years. The Brigade fought against the local soviet republics that arose during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and later was among the key players in the anti-democratic Kapp Putsch of March 1920. After the Brigade's forced disbanding, Ehrhardt used the remnants of his unit to found the Organisation Consul, a secret group that committed numerous politically motivated assassinations. After it was banned in 1922, Ehrhardt formed other less successful groups such as the Bund Viking. Because of his opposition to Adolf Hitler, Ehrhardt was forced to flee Germany in 1934 and lived apolitically in Austria until his death in 1971.
Gustav Ritter von Kahr was a German jurist and right-wing politician. During his career he was district president of Upper Bavaria, Bavarian minister president and, from September 1923 to February 1924, Bavarian state commissioner general with dictatorial powers. In that role he openly opposed the government of the Weimar Republic in several instances, including by ceasing to enforce the Law for the Protection of the Republic. He was also making plans with General Otto von Lossow and Bavarian police commander Hans von Seisser to topple the Reich government in Berlin. In November 1923, before they could act, Adolf Hitler instigated the Beer Hall Putsch. The three turned against Hitler and helped stop the attempted coup. After being forced to resign as state commissioner general in 1924, Kahr served as president of the Bavarian Administrative Court until 1930. Because of his actions during the Beer Hall Putsch, he was murdered during the Nazi purge known as the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934.
Otto Hermann von Lossow was a Bavarian Army and then German Army officer who played a prominent role in the events surrounding the attempted Beer Hall Putsch by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in November 1923.
Organisation Consul (O.C.) was an ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic terrorist organization that operated in the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1922. It was formed by members of the disbanded Freikorps group Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and was responsible for political assassinations that had the ultimate goal of destroying the Republic and replacing it with a right-wing dictatorship. Its two most prominent victims were the former finance minister Matthias Erzberger and Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. The group was banned by the German government in 1922.
Albrecht von Graefe was a German landowner and right-wing politician active both during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. Although never a member of the Nazi Party he was an early associate of Adolf Hitler and for a while appeared a credible rival for the leadership of the overall Völkisch movement.
Wilhelm Henning was a German military officer and right-wing politician.
The second Wirth cabinet, headed by Joseph Wirth of the Centre Party, was the sixth democratically elected government of the Weimar Republic. It assumed office on 26 October 1921 when it replaced the first Wirth cabinet, which resigned in protest after the industrially important eastern part of Upper Silesia was awarded to Poland even though the majority of its inhabitants had voted in a plebiscite to remain part of Germany.
The Bund Bayern und Reich was a right-wing paramilitary organization based in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic. It became the largest of such organizations in Bavaria throughout the 1920s.
The Law for the Protection of the Republic was the name of two laws of the Weimar Republic that banned organisations opposed to the "constitutional republican form of government" along with their printed matter and meetings. Politically motivated acts of violence such as the assassination of members of the government were made subject to more severe punishments, and a special state court was established to enforce the law's provisions.