Online Document Assignment 26

GUSTAV STRESEMANN

Competing Visions of Germany

The challenges of governing Germany in the 1920s were complicated by a lack of political unity. No single party enjoyed sufficient support to form a government on its own, so the creation of a parliamentary majority required the formation of coalitions. Such coalitions, while dominated by centrists like Gustav Stresemann, were inherently unstable, since it was difficult to impose political discipline on the constituent parties and the retention of individual parties within each coalition required constant negotiation. Complicating matters further was the existence of extreme political parties on the right and the left that frequently engaged in violent clashes.

Underlying Germany’s political disunity was a lack of consensus on fundamental issues. In many cases, Germany’s political parties disagreed not simply about the details of policy, but about the basic principles of government. Democratic government in Weimar Germany was an ongoing experiment, a fluid set of relationships and organizations whose final nature was not yet fixed. Under these circumstances, each party put forward its own vision of society and government. Those visions were often incompatible, and sometimes not even democratic. The documents included in this assignment represent three such visions. Each is a statement of principles formulated by a major Weimar political party. As you read them, focus on each party’s fundamental assumptions about Germany in the 1920s. How does each party imagine Germany’s present? What role does each party imagine government playing in the creation of Germany’s future?

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