Monarchism in the Weimar Republic

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MONARCHISM IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

by

WALTER H. KAUFMANN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

INTRODUCTION—THE POLITICAL SCENE IN GERMANY ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR I 7

PART ONE—MONARCHISM AS OPPOSITION AGAINST THE REPUBLIC (1918-1923) 20

CHAPTER ONE—THE BACKGROUND AND OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 20

CHAPTER TWO—THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE REPUBLIC 38

CHAPTER THREE—NON-PARLIAMENTARY MONARCHISM 57

PART TWO—MONARCHISM AS OPPOSITION IN THE REPUBLIC (1924-1933) 90

CHAPTER FOUR—THE MONARCHISTS ACCEPT THE REPUBLIC 90

CHAPTER FIVE—A PYRRHIC VICTORY (1925) 108

CHAPTER SIX—THE MONARCHISTS’ DILEMMA 119

CHAPTER SEVEN—DEFEAT 138

PART THREE—SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 176

APPENDIX—THE DEMOCRATIC ARGUMENT FOR MONARCHY 185

BIBLIOGRAPHY 197

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 205

DEDICATION

TO

BRIGITTE AND MONICA

PREFACE

The present essay is a pragmatic study of monarchism as a political factor in Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic. It seeks to illuminate the history of that period by concentrating on the most powerful opposing force with which the democratic republic in Germany was confronted during the major part of its existence. It also aims at an answer to the question why the fall of the Weimar Republic did not bring about a restoration of the monarchy but, on the contrary, destroyed monarchism together with democracy.

In tracing monarchism during the Weimar Republic, we shall distinguish two main periods. During the first, until 1923, monarchism was the core of a violent rightist opposition to the republican form of government. During the second, from 1923 to 1933, monarchism adopted a more moderate policy. It became an oppositional movement in the republican state in whose government it participated at various times, while it gradually became outflanked by a non-monarchistic rightist movement—National Socialism.

A short explanation should be given concerning the sources used in this study. Aside from the official German governmental and party publications, there exists a vast amount of private literature dealing with the various phases of the Weimar Republic. Most of these books, pamphlets and articles have been written during the Weimar era, others engage in retrospective analysis. With few exceptions, all present a partisan view or try to furnish an alibi for alleged personal or party mistakes and shortcomings. Although a critical evaluation of the various sources has, as a rule, been omitted in the text of the essay, I have, of course, carefully scrutinized the authenticity of the available material and weighed personal claims and opinions against the historical evidence. Autobiographies and diaries, especially vulnerable to the charge of not being fully reliable, have been used with particular caution. It is indeed difficult to prove the truth of statements made in a diary—and published long after the event—especially if the persons concerned are no longer alive. Such sources, therefore, have only been utilized where their entries furnish interesting close-up details of facts generally corroborated by other sources.

I have also sought the advice of persons who once were active in the government of the Weimar Republic. In this respect, I want to express my gratitude foremost to Professor Arnold Brecht of the New School for Social Research, formerly an official of the Reich and Prussian governments, with whose invaluable advice and criticism this essay was written. In addition to his own prolific publications dealing with various aspects of the Weimar Republic, Dr. Brecht has made available to me information based upon personal experiences, which sometimes had not been previously published. In many cases information by Dr. Brecht (and in one case by ex-chancellor Dr. Brüning) has been used to check the authentic nature of data presented or used in various publications.

All translations are by this writer, except where otherwise indicated.

W. H. K.

January 15, 1953

INTRODUCTION—THE POLITICAL SCENE IN GERMANY ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR I

1. Monarchism in Germany

Monarchism ran its course in German history as elsewhere through various phases, including a feudal phase, a phase of absolutism and a phase of constitutionalism. Yet it never reached the phase of a democratic monarchy as in Great Britain, the Low Countries and the Scandinavian countries.{1}

Monarchic tradition in Germany, therefore, has always been antidemocratic. Apart from this negative characteristic, however, it is hardly possible to define the monarchic idea in Germany in precise terms, because feudal, absolutist and constitutional elements predominated in the thoughts of its adherents.

The phase of constitutional monarchism, prevailing in Germany during the period of the Empire (1871-1918), was characterized by the dualism of power which is typical of every constitutional monarchy that has not reached the democratic stage. The German Emperor by no means had all the powers of an absolute king or of a totalitarian dictator. No federal law could be enacted, no federal financial measure could be taken, without the consent of the German Reichstag, which was elected on the basis of general male franchise in one-man constituencies by direct and secret vote with run-off elections between the two top candidates, if no candidate had won the absolute majority of votes. Furthermore, most of the clauses usually found in democratic bills of rights limited the power of the executive branch of government in imperial Germany, both in federal and state affairs, because such clauses had been incorporated in statutes which, except in the rare cases of a state of siege, could not be suspended unilaterally by the monarch. The Rechtsstaat idea, i.e., the rule of law, under which courts free from interference by the executive branch watched over the legality of the administration, was fairly well-established. In all these respects, the German Empire was markedly different from the Hitler regime.

However, the Emperor had retained the important right, uncontrolled by the Reichstag, to appoint the federal Chancellor, the heads of the federal departments, and all federal employees with a few exceptions, where he needed the consent, not of the Reichstag, but of the Bundesrat. Furthermore, the Reichstag had no powers to legislate in affairs reserved to the individual states, and the state legislatures, whose consent was required, were generally elected under reactionary franchise, especially in Prussia, where the three class franchise discriminated heavily against the great masses of the people and relegated them to an insignificant political role.{2} The right to appoint all officials in the Reich and in Prussia and the power as commander-in-chief of the army gave the German Emperor and King of Prussia almost exclusive power, especially over foreign and military affairs, within the limits of the budgets of the Reich and of Prussia.

The monarchic idea in Germany was curiously complicated, furthermore, by the fact that twenty-two of the German states within the Empire were monarchies themselves and that, therefore, there was not only one but twenty-two monarchs, all of whom claimed allegiance from their several peoples. The monarchic structure of the several states, in turn, determined the character of the Federal upper chamber, the Bundesrat. As the organ of the states federated in the Empire, the Bundesrat, and not the Reichstag, embodied the sovereignty of the Reich. The states were represented by delegates appointed by their governments, excepting the three city republics, Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, either directly or indirectly, by the monarchs; and the delegates received their instructions from their governments, thus acting as a permanent council of ambassadors, rather than an elective legislative body. Federal legislation required the consent of the Bundesrat, as well as that of the Reichstag; it was in this manner that monarchical consent was granted or refused. For several reasons, however, the Bundesrat was more important and influential than the Reichstag. Government sponsored bills originated exclusively in the upper house and were first passed there. While the Reichstag was limited to legislative functions, the Bundesrat possessed a threefold—legislative, administrative and judicial—authority. It issued all regulations to implement federal legislation. It acted in cases of controversies between the Reich and its constituent states and in the case of constitutional conflicts within a state. It ratified treaties with foreign countries, and its consent, not that of the Reichstag, was required to declare war.{3}

Although endowed with only 17 out of 58 votes, the Prussian monarchy dominated within the Bundesrat. Since no change in the constitution could be made against an opposition of fourteen votes, Prussia had, in particular, absolute veto power in all constitutional matters. Changes in military matters likewise could be vetoed by Prussia. The Reich Chancellor, as a rule identical with the Prussian Minister President, or his deputy, presided over the sessions. Because of Prussia’s predominance the Bundesrat has been branded as the constitutional fig-leaf for Prussia’s rule over the Reich.{4} Through the Bundesrat the Prussian monarchy could exercise supremacy in a federation of apparently equal states, but even outside Prussia’s influence the Bundesrat, by its composition, remained the strong constitutional rampart of monarchic forces within the German Empire. As such, it constituted the "ruhende Pol in der Erscheinungen Flucht" a stable factor in the changing pattern of politics.

2. The Reichstag of 1912

In order to study the revival of the monarchic idea during the republican period, it is necessary first to examine the position regarding the monarchy taken by the various parties during the imperial era. At the election in 1912, approximately a dozen political parties competed for the 397 seats{5} of the Reichstag. Eligible to vote were all male citizens of the age of twenty-five and over. Of approximately 65 million inhabitants, 14,500,000 were eligible voters, of which 85% went to the polls.{6} The final returns{7} distributed the available mandates as follows:

German Conservative Party—43

German Reich Party (Free Conservatives)—14

National Liberals—45

Progressive Party—42

Centrists—91

Poles—18

Social Democrats—110

Anti-Semites (German Reform Party, Christian Socials, etc.)—3

Welfen—5

Alsace-Lorrainians—9

Others, and independent deputies—16

In general—with the exception of the nationalities groups and, to a certain extent, the center—the character of the German parliamentary parties was determined by economic and sociological factors. The membership to an economic class influenced almost exclusively political affiliations. Hardly in any other country was the position of an individual toward and in the state as strongly guided by his position in society. The social circle to which one belonged took care, in most cases, of the elaboration and choice of a political philosophy. Financial status, professional interests and solidarity found its arithmetical expression in almost every election, and therewith in the Parliamentary representation. Thus, between 1871 and 1918, the Reichstag was, to a large extent, a corporative diet. The political program of the parties and their strategy in the Parliament centered chiefly around economic and social questions.

There existed a guarded criticism of, but no serious opposition to, the monarchical form of government. In general, the parties from the Right to the Left tapered off in the degree of rejection or acceptance of a democratic modification of the monarchy. Only the Social Democrats were programmatically pledged to a republican form of government. But even they treated this delicate point with utmost restraint. No revolutionary postulates regarding the overthrow of the monarch were officially propagated by this large party.{8} The protesters, the representatives of national minorities, who often stood in opposition to the government, did not oppose the monarchical form of government as such. In the Reichstag of 1912, they formed together with the Socialists an oppositional block that represented almost 40% of the electorate.{9} But in no way did this line-up present an immediate threat to the well-entrenched monarchy, because changes in the constitutional system required the consent of the Bundesrat, and hence of the monarchs themselves, and both police and army stood ready to quell any unconstitutional upheaval.

3. The German Conservative Party

The main pillar and protagonist of the monarchic idea was the conservative group, which included the anti-Semites, and the right-wing liberals. The German Conservative Party defended authority against majority. Their conservatism did not only aim at the preservation of the monarchic state but, in a wider sense, stood for the "preservation of the spiritual-cultural concatenation, of the super-individual state-unity (überindividuelle Staatseinheit)" {10} The Conservatives cultivated the memory and tradition of the Prussian-German history and always emphasized the proud heritage which had been handed down to them through many generations. The ancestral was considered good, and cultivation of the ancestral, virtue. They saw in the Hohenzollern rule the realization of Hegel’s organic state. In keeping with such a philosophy, they sought in divine Providence the basis of their political theories. "God (was) taken down from heaven and pressed into the service of the monarchic dungeon (Zwingburg) as constitutional mainstay—the kingdom by the Grace of God. {11} In the eyes of the Conservatives, this kingdom by the Grace of God assumed the proportions of a holy service, not a personal claim, for him who serves and…for those that are served. {12} The Monarch by the Grace of God remained therefore independent of and untouched by the arbitrary action (Willkür) of the people or their representatives, because he had not received his reign from them; monarchy grew out of the will of Providence and was therefore born with him. {13} Inspired by this philosophy, the Conservatives claimed for themselves to be conservative in a higher sense and on a higher level than other parties" {14} because the Gottesgnadentum was for them a dogma of religious intensity. They considered themselves in the role of priests serving at the altar of a state religion.

Such outlook and attitude qualified the Conservatives in the eyes of the monarch for the main supporting role in the drama of the state. They became the leading elements in the monarchy’s two-pronged brace of army and bureaucracy. Loyalty and reward, in constant intergeneration, created a privileged caste which was permitted to reap the choicest fruits of the patrimonial state. The union between Conservatives and the Crown (was) closer than other political alliances usually are. As the Conservatives knew how to supply most of the higher civil servants and as they were represented predominantly in the Officers’ Corps of the German and especially the Prussian Army, the Crown (had) to rely more upon the conservative aristocracy than upon any other class. {15}

In defense of privileges against the menace of democracy, conservatism in Germany had been active a long time before a political party entered the scene which bore the name of its philosophy. It had made its appearance as an automatic reaction against democratic pressure and republican trends, especially in the post-Napoleonic era. Its chief interest had been the preservation of the status quo, the absolute monarchy; where the democratic spirit had achieved certain reforms, it stood as an impeding block in the path of progress, ready to crush the meager achievements of the democrats.

In the stormy year of 1848, the Conservatives had ample opportunity to fight for their king’s challenged position. But there was no Conservative Party, as such, represented in the Paul’s Church Parliament in Frankfurt and in the Prussian National Assembly in Berlin. In Frankfurt one used for them the vague, imprecise designation of the Right, while in Berlin the Conservatives were given the sobriquets of Ultras or Stockpreussen (Prussian Diehards).{16}

The brothers Ludwig and Leopold von Gerlach, and especially Professor Friedrich Julius Stahl, transformed the conservative philosophy into a concrete political program. The first design of a conservative program was published under the title Principles of the Political Right in the "Neue Preussische Zeitung"—the predecessor of the ultraconservative "Neue Preussische Kreuzzeitung"—in June 1848.{17} It opposed the rising democratic and republican sentiment with the demand of preservation of the Monarchy by the Grace of God, but was ready to grant a greater degree of self-administration to the Prussian provinces and municipalities.

Subsequently, a number of political organizations were formed, none of which as yet adopted the term conservative for their name, but which styled themselves as patriotic clubs under such names as Vaterlandsverein, Preussenverein, Verein für König und Vaterland, etc. In September 1861, one of these clubs, the Preussische Volksverein (Prussian Peoples Club) published a political program which later became the basis for the Conservative Party in the Imperial Reichstag. In a slogan-like fashion it demanded; Unity for our German Fatherland through unity of its rulers and people, and through adherence to authority and law. No denial of our Prussian Fatherland and of its glorious history; no submergence into the mire of a German republic; no rape of the Crown and defraudation of nationality….We shall not break with our past, we shall not do away with the Christian foundation and the historically confirmed elements of our state.…No change of our position in the European constellation through the weakening of our army. No parliamentarism and no constitutional responsibility of ministers. Kingdom by the Grace of God and not by the grace of the people’s will. {18}

The Volksverein existed on this basis until in 1872 its program and task were taken over by the then loosely organized conservative faction of the first Imperial Reichstag. It was not before the summer of 1876 that the German Conservative Party came into existence. The early program of this party mirrored faithfully the postulations of the Volksverein, but emphasized in greater detail the federative structure of the Reich. It demanded full exercise of the justified autonomy of the individual states. Self-administration of the provinces and municipalities was not to be based upon an equal electoral system, but should grow out of a consideration of the natural groupings and organic structure of our people. {19}

The so-called Tivoli Program{20} formulated in 1892 and named after the locale of the party convention, became the final expression of the Conservative Party’s aims and views, which guided it for the rest of its existence. In it, the Party’s monarchistic and Christian-nationalistic character was given the final formulation: We want to preserve without restrictions and limitations the monarchy by the Grace of God, and we shall oppose any attempt to infringe upon the monarchy in favor of a parliamentaristic regime. Reverence of the Christian ways, of monarchism and fatherland were held the noblest ideals and virtues. There was, for the first time, a strong anti-Semitic element in this program of a party whose ideological father was the baptized Jew Julius Stahl.{21} In this addition one might recognize a concession to the increased activities of the anti-Semitic groups,{22} which will be discussed below.

4. The Free Conservatives

If we may consider the anti-Semites as dissidents from the conservative camp, they were not the first ones to split away from the regular party organization. We find the first split among the conservatives in the establishment of the so-called Wochenblattpartei, named after its weekly publication, the "Berliner Wochenblatt" in the early fifties. A small group of moderates drew away from the Kreuzzeitung-Conservatives" and entered into a working alliance with right-wing liberal elements in the Prussian diet.{23}

After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, another and stronger faction than the Wochenblatt-dissenters left the conservative majority in opposition to the Prussian annexations. The new faction in the North German Reichstag called itself at first Freikonservative Vereinigung (free conservative union) and later more simply the Free Conservative Party. In the first Imperial Reichstag they adopted the name of German Reich Party, in order to demonstrate that they did not want any part in particularistic tendencies {24} which furthered the Prussian hegemony in the Reich and were therefore adopted by the Prussian Conservatives.

The Reichspartei supported without reservations the home and foreign policy of Bismarck, while the Conservatives often proved to be uncooperative toward his plans.{25}

A formal program{26} which was published in 1907, placed the Reichspartei somewhat to the left of the conservative diehards and showed imperialistic but definitely anti-reactionary, and almost liberal, tendencies. "The Reich-and-Free-Conservative Party is a constitutional center party which always attempted to unite all patriots in a common front (Abwehr) against socialistic, radical, and reactionary aims. As finally and decidedly as the party defends the monarchy and the privileges of the Crown, it considers equally holy and inviolable the constitutional freedom and rights of the people. Wont to support Bismarck’s grandiose (grosszügige) policies, we fight as a patriotic party for the unity and the might of the German Empire and demand an impressive strength of our army and navy. Possession and economic development of our colonies constitute in the eyes of the party the conditio sine qua non for a respected position in the world."

5. The Anti-Semitic Parties

The question whether the appearance of the various anti-Semitic movements, too, could be considered a split of the Conservative Party defies a clear-cut answer. As has been mentioned above, the anti-Semitic clauses of the Tivoli program have been diagnosed as a concession toward political anti-Semitism. There were many instances, especially in Hesse, where anti-Semitic candidates opposed the Conservatives. In equally frequent instances, anti-Semites and Conservatives supported each other’s candidacies, especially where they met strong left-wing opposition. The emergence of political anti-Semitism in Germany must have been prompted by stronger reasons than the comparative complacency of the Conservatives towards the Jewish question. For, anti-Semitism as a sole political aim and motive, did not supply an adequate platform for political activities. No important political question can be settled solely from an anti-Semitic viewpoint.{27} In recognition of this fact, and in compliance with the necessities for political appeal, the anti-Semites adopted platforms and programs, which followed in general the sociological pattern of the party system.

The first step toward the organization of an anti-Semitic party occurred in 1878, when the court-preacher Stoecker, himself a conservative Reichstag deputy for Siegen-Wittgenstein, founded a Christian Social Workers Party. The emergence of this party occurred right after the promulgation of Bismarck’s socialist laws and the outlawing of the Social Democratic Party. Stoecker obviously attempted to create a party with a socialist appeal, which could unite the German workers in his Christian-social movement on a respectable platform of monarchism, patriotism and a mild brand of bourgeois socialism. Rooted thus firmly in the conservative and patrimonial ideals of Christianity, king and fatherland, it aspired to become a peaceful workingmen’s organization with a vague promise of necessary reforms in conjunction with the other factors of our state.{28}

Stoecker initially launched his movement with the blessings of the Conservative Party, which hoped thus to convert the German workers from potential rebels under the tutelage of the SPD to obedient subjects useful to conservative aims. They recognized, of course, that the worker could never be persuaded to vote for the Conservative Party, whose agrarian capitalism was diametrically opposed to the interests of labor. But Stoecker’s party, in spite of its socialistic disguise, failed to attract the socialists. He subsequently reorganized it as a Christian Social Party, which became a typical lower middle-class movement of small shop-keepers and tradesmen, who accepted anti-Semitism as a convenient instrument to combat Jewish competition in their professional fields.{29}

Just as the Christian Socialists appealed to the urban middle-class, the Bund der Landwirte (Farmers’ League) tried to wield the small farmers into a political organization. Because the Conservative Party was principally the mouthpiece of the great-agrarian, estate-owning nobility, the small fanner, who had a precarious existence and often considered the great-agrarians as the source of his economic plight, stood in antagonism to it. The Bund der Landwirte did yeoman’s service for the Conservatives when it furnished a platform which, in its negative postulations, coincided with the objectives of conservative socialism, and was actually little more than a restatement of agrarian capitalism in a defensive way.{30} The small farmers’ movement joined the estate owners in the attack against industrial and financial capitalism, which was changing the economic structure of Germany to the detriment of agrarian interests. The anti-Semitic platform tried to direct the marginal farmers’ resentment from the estate owners to the alleged exploitation by Jewish capitalism. Naumann called the Bund der Landwirte the trade-union of the Conservatives. {31}

Such sentiments fostered other anti-Semitic movements, like the Anti-Semitic Party, the German Social Party, and the German Reform Party. The programs of these latter parties showed little variations, though we find in the German Reform Party an anti-Semitism of a racial nature which did not attack the Jews on a religious basis, but aimed to purify the German blood with prohibitive immigration laws against racially undesirable elements, and the exclusion of the Jews from the German citizen-body. Against the law of the fist (Faustrecht) of capitalism and the socialist revolution, they set their social reforms.{32} The fast sequence of emergence and disappearance of the various anti-Semitic movements indicates that they originated mostly in the passion of election campaigns and subsequently enjoyed only an ephemeral existence.

In the elections of 1907, the anti-Semites, sparked by the then newly founded Reform Party, achieved a relative success when they appeared with sixteen deputies in the Reichstag; but in 1912 they were almost eliminated from the political arena. Though they had combined their factions in a so-called Economic Union (Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung) in a desperate effort to gain strength through unity, they polled less than 52,000 votes.{33} They fused in the Reichstag of 1912 with some other splinter groups (the Reichspartei, Welfen and the Bavarian Peasant League) to form the "Deutsche Fraktion" in order to achieve the status of a full-fledged parliamentary faction (for which a minimum of 15 deputies was needed).{34}

6. The National Liberal Party

The National Liberal Party, the political organization of nationalism, monarchism and liberalism in the Empire, grew out of the various liberal trends, which had been active in Germany after the war of liberation and had led to the unrest of 1848. The liberal movement in Germany was divided into radical and moderate factions. Prior to 1848, the Moderates, led by Heinrich von Gagem, endeavored to obtain a unified Germany under a monarchic head. The Radicals were uncompromising republicans. They wanted abolition of the monarchy, abolition of the individual states, and a reorganization of the Reich in regions (Reichskreise).{35}

The phases in the development from the loosely organized liberal factions of 1848 to the important parliamentary party are better discernible in the Prussian Diet than in the Frankfurt Parliament. In Frankfurt, the representatives belonged largely to the German intelligentsia. They spent most of the time in political theorizing and deliberations about the Constitution. In Berlin the members of the National Assembly, often simple craftsmen and farmers, were rather representatives grouped together according to mutual interests and intentions.

However, it took a long time until political factions—as we find them in the Reichstag and the later state diets—formed on the basis of concrete political programs. The seating arrangements of right and left designated vaguely a political and state philosophy. But