Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

Discontent in the Bürgerliche Society 1900–1933 • 241opinion’, he closed, ‘a ten year separation of the couple should constitute groundsalone.’ 178Kolbe was not alone in producing written protest against the BGB’s marriagelaws. In 1919, Dr. Kurt Erhardt wrote a short piece for popular consumption titledEin neues Ehescheidungsrecht! 179 Amongst other things, he cited the detrimental effectsunglückliche Ehen had on children. By 1920, the dissatisfaction with familylaw turned into organized resistance, and the Verband Eherechtreform was foundedin Cologne. ‘The basis for the union’, according to its first petition to the Reichstag,‘is the deep and great misery of the people who must live their lives in shatteredmarriages.’ 180 In 1921, associations were founded in other cities, and the VerbandEherechtreform in Berlin began the publication of a monthly newsletter. In the yearsleading to the Weimar Constitution, the BGB had bred organized resistance againstthe organization of the basic foundational structures of society so long envisionedby liberals. It is also likely that the basic alienation brought on by the BGB was asource of discontent in German society, and not lingering Prussianization or even theaftermath of the First World War alone.The most potent critique that emerged from disgruntled veterans after the FirstWorld War reflected the radicalization of continuing discontent over prewar socialrealities. Veterans underscored the fact that they were ‘workers and soldiers’ and thatthey fought alongside the ‘Heldentot’. 181 In January of 1919, J. Bügsen wrote of hisfriend’s troubles in the Rhineland. Before the war, he had a ‘happy family life’ withhis ‘young wife and their children’. 182 In 1914, however, he had been called to ‘theFlag, and, in his absence, another young soldier was quartered in his home with hisyoung wife. 183 At war’s end, he returned home ‘to find his home violated—his wifeand children indifferent’. 184 ‘The happiness of my friend is now destroyed,’ Bügsenlamented. ‘Who is responsible for this unhappiness’, he closed, ‘the war and the Statethat started the war’. 185 Moreover, one must remember that many Germans continuedto live in small towns, where not only individuals, but entire communities felt andwitnessed the effects of individual personal tragedy. A resident of the same town asBügsen, Carl Schmidt wrote of the same tragedy, but he went further, protesting thatthe war had ‘destroyed many marriages’. 186 ‘Many women’, he wrote, have forgottentheir place.’ 187 The state, he protested, had an obligation to help its ‘workers andsoldiers’; they should not be expected to remain in unhappy family relationships. 188The Bürgerliche Revolution was made visible not only by the triumph of bürgerlichelaw, but by the widespread discontent it produced at every level of German societyand across class lines. It was not just industrialization or modernity that producedunrest in German society, but the tangibility of the BGB, which, in reality, etchedthe supremacy of property over the everyday happiness of ordinary Germans. Theattempt to force people into a liberal sociopolitical mold proved disastrous in the endand implanted the seeds for the undoing of the liberal power and cultural consolidation.While at a high cultural level, Social Democrats and the women’s movement