Editing Weimar Republic (section)

=== Golden Era (1924–1929) ===
{{Further|Golden Twenties}}

From 1924 to 1929, the Weimar Republic was relatively stable. Known in Germany as the "{{Lang|de|Goldene Zwanziger}}" ([[Golden Twenties]]), its prominent features were internal consolidation and [[rapprochement]] in foreign affairs, along with a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest, although the improvements came about without establishing a sustainable foundation for the parliamentary democracy. While Germany's recognition of its reparations obligations promoted reintegration into the contemporary state system and world markets, it also developed a strong dependence on American capital. The stability was partly borrowed and, in the end, only superficial.{{Sfn|Longerich|1995|p=145}}

==== Framework for economic policy ====
An essential basis for the relative stabilization was the restructuring of reparations through the [[Dawes Plan]].{{Sfn|Mommsen|1998|p=230}} Without fixing a final total sum, the plan regulated the scope, composition and the security of transfers for future annual reparations payments. The latter was to be guaranteed by the American financial expert [[Seymour Parker Gilbert|Parker Gilbert]] who, as reparations agent, could directly influence German fiscal and financial policy in order to secure monetary stability. The acceptance of the Dawes Plan in the Reichstag had long been uncertain – parts of the Right spoke of a "new enslavement of the German people" and the KPD of the enslavement of the German proletariat.{{Sfn|Winkler|1998|p=187}} Once the plan had been passed, it brought the Weimar Republic a significant inflow of American loans from state funds as well as private investors. The money served as both start-up financing for reparations and as aid for an economic revival. German railways, the National Bank and many industries were mortgaged as security for the loans.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kitchen |first=Martin |title=The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1996 |isbn=978-0521453417 |location=Cambridge, England |pages=241}}</ref>

The economic consolidation that occurred after the period of hyperinflation was largely at the expense of wage earners and the economic middle class. The eight-hour day, one of the main social achievements of the 1918/19 revolution, was in many cases watered down or abandoned; the civil service was affected by massive job cuts and salary reductions; and rationalization and concentration in large industries continued and deprived many small and medium-sized enterprises of their livelihoods. Savers and creditors who had been hurt by inflation were effectively left without any significant compensation.{{Sfn|Mommsen|1998|p=234}} Real wages, however, grew faster than the cost of living between 1924 and 1929. One study found that by 1928–29 they "had reached or exceeded their pre-war level".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schneider |first=Michael |title=A Brief History of the German Trade Unions |publisher=J.H.W. Dietz |year=1991 |isbn=978-3-801-20161-6 |location=Berlin |page=160 |translator-last=Selman |translator-first=Barrie}}</ref>

The declarations of social guarantees contained in the Weimar Constitution<ref>{{Cite wikisource|title=Weimar constitution#Section V: Economic Life}}</ref> had only a limited effect and stood in striking contrast to the many experiences of social decline. From 1924 onwards, small savers who had been impoverished or economically ruined by inflation were at least able to take advantage of the state-organized social welfare system, which replaced the former poor relief. The new system, however, was characterized by "petty means tests under an anonymous social bureaucracy" and by benefits that only secured existence at a subsistence level.{{Sfn|Longerich|1995|pp=174 f.}} In the brief peak phase of overall economic recovery and economic optimism, unemployment insurance was introduced in 1927. In some respects it was the "high point of the Republic's social expansion", although it benefitted only a portion of the workforce and did not cover permanent unemployment.{{Sfn|Mommsen|1998|p=282}} In the meantime, the state had also introduced a new system of social security.
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-00231, Radioansprache von Kanzler Wilhelm Marx.jpg|left|thumb|244x244px|Chancellor [[Wilhelm Marx]]'s Christmas broadcast, December 1923]]
The parliamentary system of Weimar democracy was the expression of a party landscape that was strongly characterized and fragmented by class and social milieus. Reichstag members as representatives of the interests of their respective electorates often had narrow limits to their willingness to compromise. Such class and status consciousness was part of the legacy of the imperial era and continued to have an effect, although it was also partly reshaped by a consumer and leisure-oriented mass culture that emerged in the 1920s and was driven by the new media forms of records, film and radio. People of all classes and strata went to the cinema or sat in front of the radio. Mass culture pointed in the direction of democratisation and was interpreted by conservatives as intellectual flattening and a decline in values. The class fronts were gradually softened by mass culture, marking a "class society in transition".{{Sfn|Winkler|1998|p=296}}

==== Unstable political system ====
After Reich President Ebert died at the beginning of 1925 at the age of 54, the candidate of the parties that supported the Republic, [[Wilhelm Marx]] of the Centre Party, was defeated in the second round of the [[1925 German presidential election|1925 Reich presidential election]] by the candidate of the nationalist right, [[Paul von Hindenburg]], 48.3% to 45.3%. Despite the fact that Hindenburg had declared in advance that he intended to hold office in accordance with the Weimar Constitution,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Conze |first=Werner |date=1972 |title=Hindenburg, Paul von |url=https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118551264.html#ndbcontent |access-date=25 May 2023 |website=Neue Deutsche Biographie |pages=178–182 |language=de |edition=9}}</ref> his electoral success showed how far the country had shifted to the right since Weimar's beginnings with a socialist president.

The Reichstag elections in [[May 1924 German federal election|May 1924]] and [[December 1924 German federal election|December 1924]] were once again failures for the [[Weimar Coalition]] (SDP, DDP and Centre), which had started so comfortably in 1919 and which maintained its position as a "bulwark of democracy" only in Prussia.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The End of the Weimar Republic |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Weimar-Republic/The-end-of-the-Weimar-Republic |access-date=21 May 2023 |website=Britannica}}</ref> In the May election, the Coalition partners lost a total of 13 seats, while the right wing DNVP and left wing KPD picked up 82 seats. After the SPD left [[Gustav Stresemann]]'s cabinet in November 1923 in protest of the Reich executions against Saxony and Thuringia, it did not take part in a government again until June 1928. From 1924 to 1928, there were three chancellors: [[Wilhelm Marx]] of the Centre party (twice), the non-partisan [[Hans Luther]] and [[Hermann Müller (politician, born 1876)|Hermann Müller]] of the SPD. Altogether there were seven cabinets under the three men.

==== Foreign policy ====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1989-040-27, Gustav Stresemann.jpg|thumb|258x258px|Gustav Stresemann, who was Reich chancellor in 1923 and foreign minister from 1923 until his death in 1929]]
Despite the frequent changes of personnel in the Reich chancellery and in the government cabinets between 1923 and 1928, there was nevertheless an effective constant in Foreign Minister [[Gustav Stresemann]] of the [[German People's Party]]. With his change from "monarchist of the heart" to "republican of reason",<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ullrich |first=Volker |date=20 January 2023 |title=1923 als Schlüsseljahr für 1933? |trans-title=1923 as the Key Year for 1933? |url=https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/deutschland-1933-2023/517470/1923-als-schluesseljahr-fuer-1933/ |access-date=26 May 2023 |website=Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung |language=de}}</ref> as he himself expressed it, Stresemann exercised a stabilizing influence on the political development of the Republic not only as Reich chancellor in 1923 but throughout the entire period of his participation in government.

He sought a release from the restraints of the Treaty of Versailles exclusively by peaceful means and through mutual understanding, although without abandoning long-term revisionist intentions such as regaining the territory ceded to Poland. He took the initiative for the 1925 [[Locarno Treaties]], which settled Germany's western borders but left the issue of the eastern ones open. Through reaching an understanding with France and securing Germany an equal position in the League of Nations in 1926, he led the Weimar Republic out of isolation. Germany signed arbitration conventions with France and Belgium and arbitration treaties with Poland and [[Czechoslovakia]], undertaking to refer any future disputes to an arbitration tribunal or to the [[Permanent Court of International Justice]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=2 November 1925 |title=The Treaties |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,728586-1,00.html |access-date=20 May 2023}}</ref> As a result of the Dawes Plan, foreign troops left the Ruhr in 1925.<ref>{{Cite web |date=8 June 2018 |title=Dawes Plan |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/treaties-and-alliances/dawes-plan |access-date=22 May 2023 |website=encyclopedia.com}}</ref> In addition, the 1926 [[Treaty of Berlin (1926)|Treaty of Berlin]] ensured that relations with the Soviet Union remained unencumbered. Beginning in 1925 there was secret and illegal cooperation between the Reichswehr and the [[Red Army]]. Germany tested weapons in the Soviet Union that had been banned by the Treaty of Versailles, including aircraft, tanks and poison gas.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whiting |first=Kenneth R. |url={{Google books|-1EsAAAAYAAJ|page=21|plainurl=yes}} |title=The Development of the Soviet Armed Forces, 1917–1977 |publisher=Air University |year=1978 |location=Montgomery, AL |pages=21 f}}</ref>

The favourable effects expected from the Locarno Treaties were to a certain extent realized. The first Rhineland zone was vacated in 1925, Franco-German economic relations were expanded through agreements, and the [[Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control]], which monitored German disarmament, left Germany in 1927. In 1928 Stresemann played an important mediating role between the US and France in the negotiations on the [[Kellogg–Briand Pact]], an international agreement on peace.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kolb |first=Eberhard |title=Die Weimarer Republik |publisher=Oldenbourg |year=2009 |edition=7 |location=Munich |pages=70 f |language=de}}</ref>

After the full reparations schedule under the Dawes Plan was drawn up in 1928/29, new negotiations took place. In the resulting [[Young Plan]], the question of possible relief was combined with a plan for the final settlement of the reparations question. Instead of the annual payment of 2.5 billion Reichsmarks envisaged in the Dawes Plan, an average of 2 billion – initially 1.7 billion – was to be paid over a period of 59 years. With the prospect of what was thought to be a final reparations plan, and in view of Germany's willingness to accept the liability until 1988, France in parallel negotiations conceded a withdrawal of troops from the occupied Rhineland five years earlier than under the Versailles Treaty. For the nationalist right in Germany, it was above all the reparations burden extending across generations that provided propaganda fuel for their agitation against the Weimar Republic. The DNVP and Nazi Party carried out a [[1929 German referendum|referendum against the Young Plan]], which failed by a large margin due to the low turnout, but through it the National Socialists were able to use their propaganda to draw nationwide attention to themselves and to make their mark on the right-wing fringe of the party spectrum.{{Sfn|Kolb|2009|p=122}}