The Weimar Constitution of 1919

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 132-134:

But the biggest political event during the summer of 1919 was the ratification of the new democratic Weimar Constitution, which was adopted by the National Assembly on 31 July by a margin of 262 to 75 votes. It was signed by President Friedrich Ebert on 11 August and came into force on the same day. The Weimar Constitution (Weimarer Verfassung) was a compromise worked out between the various political factions represented in the National Assembly. It retained the term Reich, with all its imperial associations, to denote the new Republic. The chief author of the Constitution, the liberal Professor Hugo Preuss, decided to retain those features of the Bismarckian Constitution that were likely to function under a democratic system and to incorporate some aspects of the 1848 liberal Frankfurt Constitution which had never been implemented. The federal structure was retained, which was welcomed in the southern German states, and by the dominant state of Prussia, which covered 75 per cent of German territory, even though the power and autonomy of the states was weakened. Between 1919 and 1932, Prussia became a stronghold of the Social Democrats who ruled it in coalitions with the Centre Party (Zentrum) and the German Democratic Party (DDP).

The Weimar Constitution was divided into two main parts. The first, which had 77 articles, laid out the various components of the Reich government. Section 1 (Articles 1–19) defined the German Reich as a Republic whose power derived from the people. The territory of the Reich was defined as the regions covered by the German federal Länder. The legislative authority vested in the Reich was extensive, giving the federal government authority over foreign policy, defence, colonial affairs, citizenship, child-welfare, health, freedom of movement, immigration, public order, emigration, banking, taxation, customs, trade, social insurance, currency, postal, telegraph, telephone, railways, and water services. Except for all these, the Länder, elected by a secret ballot, could govern their territories as they saw fit. In the event of a conflict, Reich law superseded regional state law, but the adjudication of conflicts would be determined by an independent Supreme Court (Reichsgericht).

Section 2 (Articles 20–40) described the functions of the national parliament in Berlin, which retained the title of Reichstag. The Reich Chancellor was given a dominant position over the cabinet, and was required, along with the Reich cabinet, to resign in the event of a defeat in the Reichstag, after a vote of no confidence. In the event of a tie, the President had the deciding vote. The Reichstag also had the power to impeach the Reich President, the Reich Cabinet, or individual Ministers, before the Supreme Judicial Court (Staatsgerichtshof). All Germans – male and female – over the age of 20 were given the right to vote in all elections, which were to be held every four years unless a government lost a vote of no confidence in the Reichstag, in which case an election would be held within 60 days. In place of the former single member constituencies, the country was divided into 35 electoral districts. The voting system was based on an exact proportional representation of the votes cast for each party or independent candidate in elections: one seat was allocated in the Reichstag for every 60,000 votes. This allowed smaller parties to gain representation in parliament, with as little as 1 per cent of the votes. Only candidates on pre-prepared lists drawn up by the leaders of the political parties were allocated seats, which tended to mean only those known to be loyal to the party line made it on to the party list. Any constitutional amendments required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag.