How far did the Weimar Republic recover, 1919-29?

The republic survived the crises of 1919-23 by using the right-wing army and Freikorps units to crush the Communists, and getting the help of  the left-wing unions to crush the Kapp Putsch.

Stresemann, and American money (the Dawes Plan) led to a period of prosperity which saw a cultural flowering in Germany.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize on the Streseman recovery and Weimar social change

How stable was the Weimar Republic? - Sixth Formers' ideas

Gustav Stresemann - difficult but worth it

Weimar films

Prof. Rempel's page on Weimar culture (difficult)

Podcast

The Bauhaus  - BBC Witness History

Giles Hill the Stresemann Years

YouTube

Simple video on Weimar art & culture

Mr Portman's great video - How far did Stresemann solve Germany's problems?

How did the Weimar Republic survive and recover, 1919-29?

Although it seemed that the Weimar Republic MUST collapse, it managed to survive.  To do this it used any method available to it:

1.  Freikorps

Against the Communists, the SPD Defence Minister, Gustav Noske, used bands of Freikorps.  They were right-wing and enjoyed putting down the Communist revolts of 1919–1920.

2.  Army

The Army, led by von Seeckt, was also right-wing, and enjoyed putting down the Communist revolts of 1923.

3.  Strikes

The Kapp Putsch was right-wing, so the Freikorps and Army refused to help the government.  However, Ebert appealed to the workers of Berlin (who were left-wing), who went on strike.  Berlin came to a standstill and the Putsch collapsed.

But then (and most of all)...

4.  Stresemann's Achievements  [DIFFERS]

After 1924, a politician named Gustav Stresemann led the government (he became Chancellor in August 1923).  At first he had opposed the Weimar Republic, but changed when he realised the alternative was anarchy.  

a.  Dawes Plan, 1924

Stresemann called off the 1923 Ruhr strike and started to pay reparations again – but the American Dawes Plan gave Germany longer to make the payments (and the Young Plan of 1929 reduced the payments).

b.  Inflation controlled, November 1923

Stresemann called in all the old, worthless marks and burned them.  He replaced them with a new Rentenmark (worth 3,000 million old marks).

c.  French leave the Ruhr, April 1924

Stresemann persuaded the French to leave.

d.  Foreign Affairs

In 1925, Stresemann signed the Locarno Treaty, agreeing to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.  In 1926, Germany was allowed to join the League of Nations.  Germany had become a world power again.

e.  Economic Growth

Germany borrowed 25,000 million gold marks, mainly from America.  This was used to build roads, railways and factories.  The economy boomed and led to prosperity.  Cultural life also boomed (the Roaring Twenties).

f.  Reforms and social change

Stresemann introduced reforms to make life better for the working classes – notably Labour Exchanges and unemployment insurance (1927), and benefits for war veterans' families, single mothers and the disabled.  The Republic developed infant, youth and materal welfare programmes.  Money was spent on social infrastructure such as schools, sports facilities and local parks.  The government spent money on housig, but also made low interest loans available, and tax breaks & land grants for housing developers.  (See below)

g.  Strength at the Centre

Stresemann arranged a 'Great Coalition' of the moderate pro-democracy parties (based around the SDP, the Centre party and Stresemann's own 'German people's Party', the DVP).  United together, they were able to resist the criticism from smaller extremist parties, and in this way, he overcame the effects of proportional representation – the government had enough members of the Reichstag supporting it to pass the laws it needed.

Cultural Flowering – The 'Roaring Twenties'

The 1920s became in Germany a time of real cultural creativity, with developments in Architecture, Art, Books, Films and Cabaret.  There was a 'democratization' of the arts – they were made available to a much wider audience, particularly films and music.

Famous names of this period include:

•   the November Group, of radical artists, founded in 1918.

•   the Bauhaus school of design & architecture, founded by Walter Gropius.

•   the artist Paul Klee.

•   the singer and film star Marlene Dietrich.

•   the artist Otto Dix (famous for his harsh paintings of World War One trenches).

•   the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, who wrote the anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

HOWEVER – I, much of the avant-garde art in the period was sexually explicit/liberated and highly politicised/left-wing.  It provoked a strong reaction from the right-wing, which criticised it as 'decadent' and 'degenerate':

•   conservative (small 'c') Germans saw the cultural changes as a world in decay; right-wing and nationalist parties saw it as "filth and trash".

•   the Catholic Centre Party were morally offended and feared for 'the family' – in 1926 a 'Law to Protect Youth from Pulp Fiction and Pornography' was passed, breaking the article in the Constitution forbidding censorship.

•   since many artists and performers were Jewish, moral and political opposition merged with racist anti-semitism.

•   since most public art was in fact commissioned and paid for by the state, moral and political opposition became criticism of the government and its 'wasteful' expenditure. 

•   Bauhaus buildings, expressionist art and risqué cabarets were NEVER mainstream; the 'Weimar culture' of most Germans was 'light' entertainment, magazines and films – they had little loyalty to avant-garde culture.

The film Cabaret was set in the Kit-Kat club in Berlin in 1930, before the Nazis took power.

Social developments

The AQA lesson suggestions expect students "to explore social change not only with reference to women and feminism but also Weimar Culture and the clash between modernists and traditionalists".  The 1920s were a time of considerable social change, when "although a number of Eureopan countres embarked upon social programmes, Weimar Germany stood in the vanguard of this social modernisation" (as one historian wrote in 20); highlights included:

1.   real wages increased steadily, especially for the working class

2.   2 million new houses were built and homelessness fell by 60%.

3.   the status of women change massively:.

   • women over 20 could vote; some went into local politics and a few were elected to the Reichstag.

   • more working-class women went out to work, and some middle-class women went into professions such as teaching; in 1925 a third of German workers ere women.

   • young women were more liberated in their social life (e.g. going out alone dancing and to the cinema), and in their clothing.

   • there was a huge increase in newspapers and magazines aimed at women.

HOWEVER - II, not everybody was happy with the ways of this new modernity:

1.   Standard of Living: white collar workers and rural/farming sectors did not share in the rising standard of living, and there was high unemployment.

2.   Social Freedoms: not all women took advantage of their social freedom: few married middle-class women worked; fewer women than men went out to vote; 'liberation' was generally limited to the cities.

3.   Feminism: right-wing parties saw feminism as harmful to the family and the nation; the Catholic Centre Party opposed contraception; only the Communist KPD Party had a feminist agenda; there were only 26 (5%) female Reichstag deputies in 1926.

4.   Welfare: modern historians have noted that the republic's social welfare programme had its negative side: social welfare programmes exerted control over people's lives, and conditioned them for increased state control; in doing so they created resentment at their intrusion into people's independence; and they saw the development of criticism of the lazy and the incorrigible. 

Weaknesses of the Weimar Republic

However, many historians believe that the strength and success of the Weimar republic was largely an illusion:

1. It depended on economic success and prosperity, and this in turn was wholly based on American loans.  If anything happened to undermine the American economy, the Weimar Republic would be in great danger.

2. As soon as economic prosperity returned, the Great Coalition organised by Stresemann collapsed, and the moderate pro-democracy parties began to argue among themselves again.  Thus they would not be strong enough to resist a challenge from extremist parties if ever there was one.

3. Extremist politicians were not won over by the good times.  Right-wing nationalists still hated the Republic as the 'November criminals' - they just waited for a situation to arise which would give them the opportunity to attack the Weimar government.

In this way, the Wall Street collapse of 1929 was to prove a disaster for the Weimar Republic.