was engaged in perfecting its powers for doing so. A new period of German financial and economic management had been en- tered upon; and a new period of world economics had also begun, to what end a later generation would have to discover.
(A. F .*)
THE REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION
i. From the Old Reich l to the New. The German constitution which arose out of the Prussian and German victories of 1866 and 1870 had culminated in three supreme organs the Emperor (Kaiser), the Federal Council (Bundesrat) , and the Reichstag (National Representative Assembly). Bismarck, by taking over into his constitution the democratic Parliament of the Frankfort Paulskirche (see n.866) of 1848, linked that constitution with the democratic and national movement for unity which had continued to live in the mind of the German people since the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, but which had not been able of its own strength to carry through the political transforma- tion of Germany in accordance with its own ideas. Although Bismarck diverted this popular tendency into the paths of his own policy, he had not realized its aims. The Reichstag was linked up with the idea of 1848, but in the Federal Council the organ of the old Federation of Sovereigns survived. And this representation of the " Federated Governments " (die Verbiinde- ten Regierungen) was, according to the terms of the constitution, endowed with greater plenitude of power than the representation of the people, the Reichstag. The status and the construction of the Federal Council prevented the emergence of an independent and politically responsible Government, and thus obstructed evolution towards the parliamentary system. On the other hand this situation made the dynasties and governments of the individual states feel their subordination to the hegemony of Prussia less keenly; they were able to regard this subordination as the inevitable premium which they had to pay for mutual insurance under the Prussian protection. Prussian hegemony in the federally organized Empire was the natural consequence of the fact that Prussia embraced in population and territory four-sevenths of the whole Empire, and that she possessed the strongest military and administrative organization. The constitution of the Empire gave outward expression to this fact by making the king of Prussia the German emperor. But the real basis of the political power of Prussia in the Empire, as in its other aspects, lay not in the emperor's prerogatives but in the position of the Prussian Crown. The old public law of Germany always regarded its conception of monarchy as realized solely in territorial sovereignty. It remained, therefore, in this instance an open question and a matter of controversy whether the German emperor could be correctly described as monarch of the Empire and whether imperial Germany could be described as a monarchy. The political unification of Germany had not in fact been accomplished as in Italy, through the supersession of the territorial sovereignties by a national monarchy. On the contrary, the old Federation of Sovereigns (Fiirstenbund) had, after the expulsion of Austria, been more firmly compacted under the leadership of that member of the Federation which was now the strongest Prussia; and it had been popularized and modernized by the addition of the Reichs- tag elected by the democratic suffrages of the whole nation.
No doubt, in the course of those succeeding decades which brought an apparently assured position of power to the Empire in its external aspects, together with a splendid growth of eco- nomic prosperity, there arose a natural tendency towards develop- ment in the sense of the modern national State. Under the influence of this tendency the centre of gravity of public life was more and more altered in favour of the Empire; the political influence of the Reichstag and the independence of the Govern-
1 The words " Deutsches Reich " were, before the revolution of Nov. 1918, invariably translated " German Empire." But the word " Reich " has, for historical reasons, been retained by the German Republican Commonwealth as its official territorial and political designation. " Reich " is an old Germanic word found in various forms in Early and Middle English, and surviving in composition in the English word " bishopric." (Ed. E. B.)
ment of the Empire were more and more strengthened. Never- theless, this development never reached the point of giving distinct form and substance to the powers and responsibilities of a national Government. The extension of the political mentality of the people did not keep pace with that of its economic and social capacities; its political evolution could not overcome the tenacious resistance of the old powers and the obstruction of the old order of things. There remained an unsolved and apparently insoluble discord between the develop- ment that was necessary and the political dynamic forces that had been inherited, a conflict which was one of the deeper contributing causes of Germany's national disaster.
The military and political catastrophe with which the World War ended threatened likewise the internal political existence of the German people with a terrible twofold peril. Bitter disappointment and despair brought the complete dissolution of the national commonwealth appallingly near by producing the criminal delusion that single portions and fragments of a shattered Empire might be able to bear the dreadful consequences of defeat better than the nation as a whole in firm political unity. And at the same time the desperately bitter feeling of large sections of the people directed itself, in view of the collapse of all the old authorities, against the foundations of any and every order of the state and of society, which these sections, following the example of their neighbour, Russia, dreamed that they could overthrow by means of a world revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The only salvation from these two deadly perils, which menaced the political and social exist- ence of the German people and indeed of all Europe, was to be found, if anywhere, in the conception of a national democracy. This idea had lived through generations in the soul of the German people; it had survived failures and defeats, and it had only been relegated to the background by the successes of Bismarck's policy. What was now needed was to revive with resolute determination this idea of national German democracy. Not as a federation of sovereigns, nor as a federation of separate states (now without sovereigns) under Prussian hegemony, could the German Reich continue; it could only be perpetuated as a national commonwealth, the outward political expression of German national unity, by virtue of the sense of a common nationality and by democratic self-determination. The funda- mental idea of German national democracy had therefore to be " grossdeulsch " * (greater German). The " kleindeulsch " (smaller German) imperial Reich had been built upon dynastic foundations, and had therefore been compelled to exclude the Germans of the Habsburg Monarchy from the empire of the Hohenzollerns. But once the empire of the Habsburgs had been shattered to pieces in the name of the principle of nationality, the national and democratic German Republic would neces- sarily have been abjuring that very principle and the idea on which it was itself based, if it had not kept the door open for the Austrian Germans to enter and unite with their common stock. And, further, as the democratic idea of national unity was the only thing that could be effectively opposed to national disin- tegration, so it was only with the idea of complete democratic equality of rights for all members of the nation that the destruc- tive attempts to set up a lawless class despotism of the proletariat could be successfully encountered.
It was for Germany a piece of good fortune in the midst of bad that social democracy, which, after the collapse of the old authorities, had come to the top, should at this critical juncture have taken its stand upon the platform of political democracy and gradual social reform. The Social Democratic " Commissaries of the People " 3 promulgated the Electoral Law of Nov. 30 1918, which was drafted at their request by the Democratic Secretary of State for the Interior, Dr. Preuss. In accordance with the
1 The idea of Greater Germany, i.e. of Germany including German Austria, had been opposed since 1848 to the idea of " kleindeulsch" i.e. Germany, excluding Austria, which was adopted and carried out by Bismarck.
3 The first Provisional Government by six " Commissaries of the People (Volksbeauflragte)" set up under Ebert and Haase after the revolution of Nov. 1918.
