PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

perspective is provided by A. Dorpalen in German History in Marxist Perspective,
1985.)
On Weimar politics there is a need to research the lines of continuity or discontinuity
between the political parties of the Wilhelmine era and those established in the
immediate post-war years in the new Weimar Republic. More research also needs to
be done on the collapse, particularly after 1928, of the party political system. It is
interesting to note that the majority of German language studies on individual parties
have tended to concentrate on the early and latter years of the Weimar Republic rather
than on its middle years. For English language instances of this see, for example, the
books by Evans on the Centre Party (The German Center Party, 1870-1933, 1981); by
Leopold in a biography on Hugenberg with reference to the Conservative Nationalists
or DNVP (Alfred Hugenberg. The Radical National Campaign against the Weimar
Republic, 1977); and by Fowler on the Communists (Communism in Germany under
the Weimar Republic, 1983). Put briefly it should be noted that there are still many
gaps in the political history of the Weimar Republic. There is a noticeable absence of
good biographies of the Republic’s numerous Chancellors. Regional studies of the
various parties are conspicuous by their absence. And finally there is also work to be
done on the social composition of the parties and how, if at all, that changed
composition between 1918 and 1933.
Until the 1960s political history dominated research on the Weimar Republic.
However, a symposium held in West Germany in 1973 reflected the growing interest
in the social and economic history of the Republic. Unfortunately for English
language students, few of these studies have been translated from their original
German into English. During the course of the next three decades numerous German
language studies focused on the socio-economic background to political events in
Germany between 1918 and 1933. A consensus developed amongst historians that
the formation of the Central Working Association between trade unions, employers
and government in 1918-1919, was significant as an exercise in co-operation, which,
however, had ended by 1924. Inevitably much has been written about the inflation of
1923. Early studies looked at the events surrounding the years 1922 and 1923 in
isolation. In the mid 1970s G. Feldman (The Great Disorder. Politics, Economics
and Society in the German Inflation 1914-1924, 1993) looked the origins of the
inflation back into the war years. (Coincidentally Feldman has also written
extensively about the effects of reparations on Germany.) Borchardt has looked at
length at who specifically gained by the inflation of 1923, and, how the inflated
currency of that time in the short-term directly affected the German middle classes,
and in the long-term indirectly led to the collapse of the Republic. In English
Holtfrerich (The German Inflation 1914-1923, 1986) has argued that the inflation was
inevitable. Fraenkel and others have seen the Ruhr lockout of 1928, when 250,000
workers were excluded from the workplace, as a significant turning point in the social
history of the Weimar Republic. The lockout showed that even before the Great
Depression, in the period of so-called ‘stabilisation’, the Republic was having to deal
with a potentially explosive situation between employers, trade unions and
governments. The years between 1924 and 1928 were not quite the ‘years of
stability’ as they had once been perceived as labour and capital were in conflict and as
the Republic saw the break up of the party system. Research on the mid years of the
Republic, notably by Borchardt (Perspectives on Modern German Economic History
and Policy, 1991), has shown that the Republic’s economy did not show an upturn
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 41