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The Making of the Reich President, 1925: German Conservatism and the Nomination of Paul von Hindenburg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Noel D. Cary
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Type
Symposium: Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic
Information
Central European History , Volume 23 , Issue 2-3 , June 1990 , pp. 179 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1990

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References

1. This old debate is well exemplified by the synthetic works of the distinguished liberal historians Erich Eyck and Gordon Craig. Whereas Eyck deemed Hindenburg's election a disastrous step on a straight road to Hitler, Craig saw Hindenburg's presidency as having benefitted the Republic in its middle years. Walter kaufmann even called Hindenburg's election “the best thing that could have happened to the Republic”: by endowing the Republic with the symbol of “national honor and respectability,” it destroyed the monarchist movement. Eyck, , A History of the Weimar Republic, 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962): 332–40;Google ScholarCraig, , Germany 1866–1945 (New York, 1978), 510f.;Google ScholarKaufmann, , Monarchism in the Weimar Republuic (New York, 1953), 150–52, 232.Google Scholar

2. See the recent short account in Jones, Larry Eugene, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 242–46Google Scholar. Useful older accouts are: Turner, Henry A., Stresemann and the Politics of the Weimar Republic (Princeton, 1963), 192–200;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDorpalen, Andreas, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, 1964), 64–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and (especially for the role of the Bavarian People's Party) Hauss, H.-J., Die erste Volkswahl des Deutschen Reichspräsidenten: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Verfassungspolitischen Grundlagen, ihrer Vorgeschichte und ihres Verlaufs unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Anteils Bayerns und der Bayerischen Volkspartei (Munich, 1965).Google Scholar

3. Der Deutschen-Spiegel (hereafter DS) no. 1 (5 Sept. 1924): v, vii. Loebell had never had much use for anti-Semitism or the völkisch camp: see ibid., 28f., as well as Max Warburg to Loebell, 23 Dec. 1919, and Loebell to Warburg, 3 Jan., 1920, Nachlass Loebell 45/22, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. (All collections of personal papers in the Bundesarchiv are hereafter cited as BA: NL [name]).

4. DS no. 3 (19 Sept. 1924): 10–13; DS no. 6 (24 Oct.): 9f. (“revolution”); DS no. 9 (31 Oct.): 8, 15f. (“dictatorship”); see also DS no. 1 (5 Sept.): 13; and DS no. 14 (5 Dec.): 7–9. Ebert had been elected by the Weimar National Assembly in January of 1919. The 1925 election thus would be the first direct election of a president.

5. Ds no. 1 (5 Sept. 1924): 5 (“childish”), 14f. (Loebell), 28f.; DS no. 9 (31 Oct.); 13 (Putsch); on the DNVP in the government, DS no. 10 (7 Nov.): 8, 12f., and DS no. 16/17 (19 Dec.): 19f. In 1920, during the Kapp Putsch, Loebell and the Burghers’ Councils had nervously kept their distance. Fearing civil war, they had insisted throughout the crisis on rapid “restoration of constitutional conditions.” BA: NL Loebell 45/22.

6. On the Reichsbanner, see DS no. 1 (5 Sept. 1924): 27–29; similiarly Kriegk in DS no. 6 (10 Oct.); and DS no. 10 (7 Nov.): 11f. On Wirth, see DS no. 2 (12 Sept.): 26–29; DS no. 6 (10 Oct.); DS no. 8 (24 Oct.): 24; DS no. 16/17 (19 Dec.): 23.

7. SPD, 26.0%; DDP, 6.3%; Z, 13.6%; DNVP/Landbund, 22.1%; DVP, 10.1%; WP, 3.3%; BVP, 3.8%; Communists, 9.0%; Nazi-völkisch groups, 3.0%; others, 2.8%;. Gebhardt, Bruno, Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte, 9th ed., paperback ed., 22 (Munich, 1982): 392.Google Scholar

8. Minutes by Zapf (DVP), Politisches Archiv des Auswärteigen Amts, Bonn, Nachlass Stresemann (Universtiy of California at Berkeley microfilm, hereafter cited as NL Stresemann) 20/3166/158154. The members of the Center party at the meeting categorically rejected a German National suggestion to include the Nazis.

9. Ibid. On the long, complex Prussian cabinet crisis of December–May, see Hömig, Herbert, Das Preussische Zentrum in der Weimarer Republik (Mainz, 1979), 121–43, esp. (for Z and DVP) 130, n. 20.Google Scholar

10. Augsbürger Postzeitung, cited by Kreuzzitung no. 110, 6 Mar. 1925 (hereafter KrZ); Frankfurter Zeitung no. 181, 9 Mar. 1925 (hereafter FZ); on the repeated crises over Wirth within the center, as well as the tensions therein over the presidential election, see Cary, Noel D., “Political Catholicism and the Reform of the German Party System, 1900–1957” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1988) 423–86;Google Scholar see also Bach, Jürgen A., Franz von Papen in der Weimarer Republik: Aktivitäten in Politik und Presse 1918–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1977), 62–96Google Scholar, and Hömig, 121–43. As early as 19 Dec. 1924, Deutschen-Spiegel (no. 16/17: 23f.) had predicted that the Center would eventually purchase a presidential candidacy for Marx by giving the SPD long-term control of the Prussian government.

11. On the initial deliberations of the Loebell Committee, see Hauss, 53–55. On the JDO and Seeckt, see the following: correspondence between Wilhelm Freiherr von Gayl and Arthur Mahraun, Mar. 1925; protocol excerpt, Vaterländische Vereinigung, 13 Mar.; Seldte's circulars of 12 Mar. and 10 Apr.; Karl Jarres to von Gayl, 17 Mar.; and Der Jungdeutsche no. 61 and no. 84, 13 Mar. and 9 Apr.; all in BA: NL von Gayl 31/23.

12. Documentation in BA: NL von Gayl 31/23; for the Gayl–Jarres initiative, BA: R 45 II/3 (see also Jones, 275–77).

13. Quotations attributed to Jarres (September 1923), recalled in FZ no. 215 and no. 216, 21 Mar. 1925.

14. Vossische Zeitung no. 115, 9 Mar. 1925 (hereafter VZ); Hauss, 52, 55f.; for Stegerwald and constitutional reform, see Kölnische Volkszeitung no. 123, 16 Feb. (hereafter KV); for a detailed analysis of Stegerwald's supportive but critical stance toward the Weimar Republic, see Cary, “Political Catholicism,” Parts II and III.

15. In 1929, after the DNVP was taken over by the hard-line right-wing industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, the Pro-Hugenberg Reichstag deputy von Stubbendorf-Zapel reacted gleefully to the resultant exodus of the trade unionists, saying that the Dawes vote had revealed their baneful hegemonial influence in the party: typed essay, 12 Dec. 1929, intended for Deutscher Schnelldienst, BA: NL Otto Schmidt-Hannover 211/73.

16. Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung (Z), 10 Mar. 1925; Deutsche Tageszeitung (DNVP) no. 116 and no. 117, 10 and 11 Mar. (hereafter DTZ); FZ no. 181 and no. 182, 9 Mar.; KrZ (DNVP) no. 116, 10 Mar.; KV no. 123, 16 Feb.; Hauss, 52, 55f.; Cary, “Political Catholicism,” chaps. 5–7; see also KV no. 147 and no. 147 and no. 148, 25 Feb. In notes to his fiancée, the chairman of the DDP, Erich Koch-Weser, repeatedly complained during the week of 8 March that the Center was paralyzed by internal divisions: BA: NL Koch-Weser 12/32. In 1945, Stegerwald wrote that he would ultimately have been president but for his own party's hesitations: Wachtling, Oswald, Joseph Joos (Mainz, 1974), 104 (but see also the previous note).Google Scholar

17. DTZ no. 115, 10 Mar. 1925; NL Stresemann 20/3166/158427; on DDP and Marx, see also Koch-Weser to fiancée, 8 Mar., BA: NL Koch–Weser 12/32.

18. KrZ no. 116, 10 Mar. 1925 (DNVP), called Erkelenz's letter a “trick,” while the DVP wanted Jarres and was thus embarrassed by the whole initiative (see Die Zeit (DVP), quoted in FZ no. 191, 12 Mar.).

19. FZ no. 189, 12 Mar. 1925, labeled this development “disastrous” and “the exact opposite” of what the DDP had intended. See also FZ no. 191, 12 Mar. (citing the SPD's Vorwärts).

20. “Aktennotiz,” cabinet meeting 19 Dec. 1924 (in attendence were Chancellor Marx, Labor Minister Heinrich Brauns (Z), Stresemann, Jarres, and presidential secretary Otto Meissner), BA: NL Gessler 32/50. On 1 February 1924, Gessler had told Hamburg mayor Carl Petersen (DDP) that the only way to head off a constitutional collapse or an overhaul “according to the recipes of the Right” was an overhaul by the middle parties themselves: NL Gessler 32/18. While he prided himself on being scrupulously protective of the prerogatives of the republican state, Gessler's heart belonged to the monarchy: Gessler, , Reichswehrpolitik in der Weimarer Zeit (Stuttgart, 1958), 336, 339–41Google Scholar. On Gessler and the so-called “Luther-Bund” see NL Gessler 32/22, 32/53, 32/54.

21. Stresemann told Fehrenbach on 11 March that the ambassador to France had recently warned him against a man so closely identified with the military as Chancellor, let alone President, and had said that the French would prefer an out-and-out Rightist to the Minister of Defense. Stresemann penned a blunt note to Gessler telling him the same thing: NL Stresemann 20/3166/158433; also in Gessler, Reichswehrpolitik, 506f. Cf. Koch-Weser's skeptical comments to his fiancée (11 March) and to his diary (15 March) about Stresemann's motives. BA: NL Koch-Weser 12/32.

22. Berliner Tageblatt (hereafter BT) and VZ, cited in FZ no. 191 and no. 194, 12 and 13 Mar. 1925; Vorwärts cited in FZ no. 191; see also Koch-Weser's diary entry for 15 Mar., BA: NL Koch-Weser 12/32. FZ added (no. 191) that the Right deemed Jarres's prospects so poor that it was willing to settle for Gessler or Stegerwald from the Weimar parties.

23. “ Zu den Verhandlungen über die Aufstellung des Reichswehrministers Gessler als Kandidat für das Amt des Reichspräsidenten,” memorandum by koch-Weser and Erkelenz, BA: NL Koch-Weser 12/93; KrZ no. 122. BT no. 122, and FZ no. 193, 13 Mar. 1925; Gessler, Reichswehrpolitik, 337; Hauss, 60–62. The FZ commented that the DNVP had acted properly in killing Gessler's candidacy; indeed, the Center and DDP should have done the deed (no. 194, 13 Mar.).

24. “Zu den Verhandlungen…,” BA: NL Koch-Weser 12/93; BT no. 120 and no. 122, 12 and 13 Mar. 1925; Auf zur Reichspräsidenten-Wahl! Material für Reden, Aufsätze und Flugblätter, ed. Reichsblock, (Berlin, n. d. [03 1925]), 10, 22Google Scholar, in BA: NL Schmidt–Hannover 211/73; Der Jungdeutsche no. 61, 13 Mar., no. 84, 9 Apr., no. 99, 29 Apr., and Gayl-Mahraun correspondence, all in BA: NL von Gayl 31/23; Hauss, 62.

25. KrZ no. 122 (Westarp) and no. 124, 13 and 14 Mar. 1925. Westarp added that a Gessler candidacy might have spawned a wildcat Protestant candidacy. Stresemann concurred: anonymous article in Deutsche Stimmen, 20 Mar. 1925, draft in NL Stresemann 20/3166/158579; and Stresemann to Crown Prince, 23 Mar., NL Stresemann 20/3166/158602.

26. Thus, on 3 April 1925 (after the first ballot), the outgoing chairman of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie, Dr. Kurt Sorge (DVP), personally urged Jarres to step aside and facilitate a Gessler block before it was too late. BA: NL Jarres 99/23.

27. DTZ no. 122, 13 Mar. 1925. See also Krz no. 124, 14 Mar.; and Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten, 18 Mar., in NL Stresemann 20/3166/1585514 and in Gessler, 337.

28. See Stresemann to Crown Prince, 23 Mar., NL Stresemann 20/3166/158602. Six days before the second round of balloting, Stresemann publicly defended Marx's performance as Chancellor: Turner, 199.

29. DTZ no. 151 and KrZ no. 150, 30 Mar. 1925; Die Zeit, cited in KrZ no. 152 and FZ no. 242, 31 Mar. The Kölnische Zeitung (DVP), associated with industrial circles, was less sanguine and less committed to Jarres. The first-round results were: Ludendorff (völkisch groups), 1.1%; Jarres (Reichsblock), 38.8%; Held (BVP), 3.8%; Marx (Z), 14.4%; Hellpach (DDP), 5.8%; Braun (SPD), 29.0%; Thälmann (KPD), 7.0%. Gebhardt Handbuch, 22: 391. Turnout was 68.9%, 10% less than in Dec. But while the higher second-round turnout (77.6%) has sometimes been taken to show that apathetic or “unpolitical” fringe voters elected Hindenburg, it should be remembered that even this turnout was lower than that in all but two Reichstag elections.

30. 8-Uhr Abendblatt (Berlin) no. 65, 18 Mar. 1925 (“Republic vs. Monarchy” – a denial reiterated throughout the campaign); DTZ no. 131, 19 Mar. (“Purity”); speech outline and two undated Munich speeches, BA: NL Jarres 99/24 (remaining quotations); see also DTZ no. 122, 13 Mar., and Krz no. 125 and no. 141, 15 and 25 Mar. Jarres was said to aspire to be a Bismarckian type of leader (Bonner Zeitung no. 71, 24 Mar., and DTZ no. 149, 29 Mar.) and called for a “return to Bismarck” (DTZ no. 138, 23 Mar., and Munich speech, NL Jarres 99/24). Cf. “Warum Jarres?”, a typed circular in which Loebell downplayed not only “Republic vs. Monarchy” but also the flag issue: BA: NL von Gayl 31/23. Profiling Jarres's “anti-party” message, DTZ no. 150, 30 Mar., reported that a young voter convinced five others by saying, “It's very simple: Who wants to vote for a party bigwig? I'd vote for the man the citizens have put up!”

31. KrZ no. 122 (“distinction”) and no. 124, 13 and 14 Mar. 1925; FZ no. 194 and no. 235, 13 and 28 Mar. In a letter to von Gayl on 16 Mar., one Rightist called Jarres “a decided mediocrity” who should not be glorified lest the Right lose credibility when it promoted someone else on the second ballot. BA: NL von Gayl 31/23. See also Mahraun in JD no. 99, 29 Apr.

32. Stresemann, of course, had the same objections to Hindenburg as to Gessler. But he did not seem to take the candidacy seriously at first, and then became frantic when the impossible became imminent. See FZ no. 266, 9 Apr. 1925; Kessler, Charles, ed., The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan: Count Harry Kessler, 1918–1937 (London, 1971), 263–65Google Scholar; Dorpalen, 71f., 78f,; Turner, 195–99; Jones, 245f.

33. KrZ no. 157, 3 Apr. 1925; DTZ no. 163 and (quotation) no. 165, 6 and 7 Apr. The KrZ headline on 6 Apr. (no. 162) read, “Hindenburg [is] for Jarres.”

34. Gayl, Von, “Mit Schwert und Feder! Erinnerungen an Front- und Verwaltungsdienst in den Jahren 1914/1919,” typed memoris (1942)Google Scholar, BA: NL von Gayl 31/2, 105; see the similar view of former Free Corps General Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, telephone memorandum, 9 Apr. 1925, NL von Gayl 31/23; Seldte and Ausfeld, “Vertrauliches Rundschreiben,” 10 Apr., NL von Gayl 31/23; reminiscence by Loebell in “Hindenburg und das deutsche Volk,” a speech in honor of Hindenburg's eightieth birthday, 3 Oct. 1927, BA: NL von Loebell 45/22; Sorge to Jarres, 3 Mar. 1925, BA: NL Jarres 99/23. Von Gayl reports that when he explained to Hindenburg after the inauguration why he had opposed his nomination, Hindenburg reassured him that “in your place, I would not have voted for me either”: “Mit Schwert und Feder,” 105.

35. Seldte and Ausfeld, “Vertrauliches Rundschreiben,” 10 Apr. 1925, BA: NL von Gayl 31/23. A confidant told Jarres that the mention of Hindenburg to people he knew evoked “not just long but also amused faces”: A Pflüger to Jarres, 7 Apr., BA: NL Jarres 99/24. Jarres himself had the “distinct impression that even before the first election [some people] were working for some kind of change [of candidate] and that in the end, amidst the confusion, the old Field Marshal was the only way out they could find”: Jarres to former Chancellor Cuno, 17 Apr., NL Jarres 99/23.

36. JD no. 84, 9 Apr. 1925; cf. Dorpalen, 73.

37. Cuno later told Jarres that had it not been for the “unfortunate” statement by the Protestant League, the BVP would have had to support him, for otherwise it would have belied the very reason for its autonomy. Protestant League statement and Jarres-Cuno correspondence (6–17 Apr. 1925), BA: NL Jarres 99/23; KrZ no. 159 and FZ no. 252 and no. 253, 4 Apr. (BVP and Simons); Hauss, 65f., 92–97, 102–18, and (for reprinted articles from Z and BVP newspapers) 151–60; Gessler, 338; FZ nos. 259 and 261, 7 Apr.; FZ nos. 266, 269, and 270, 9, 10, 11 Apr.; KrZ no. 173, 15 Apr.; DTZ no. 164, 7 Apr.

38. For the familiar saga of Tirpitz's efforts to persuade the reluctant candidate, see Hauss, 98–103; Dorpalen, 71–73; and Wheeler-Bennett, John, Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History (New York, 1936), 257–60Google Scholar; for the sources of Hindenburg's electorate, see: Dorpalen, 80–83; Zeeder, John, “The German Catholics and the Presidential Election of 1925,” Journal of Modern History 35 (1963): 366–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially W. Falter, Jürgen, “The two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions,“ in this issue.Google Scholar

39. Cf. DTZ no. 123, 14 Mar. 1925, with no. 170, 10 Apr. On 20 Apr. (no. 183), the paper added sarcastically that the Weimar press seemed to “want to make the Reich President out to be a second Foreign Minister or Interior Minister or coalition–making power.” In fact this was exactly what the Right had wanted to do.

40. DTZ no. 170, 10 Apr. 1925; DTZ no. 198, 28 Apr. This message—that foreigners would be taught a lesson, yet that gains due to Germany's policy of fulfillment would not be jeopardized—was supported by scouring foreign newspapers for quotations that ran against the general alarmist trend: see DTZ no. 177, 16 Apr. (on the British and others); DTZ no. 184, 21 Apr. (on the French); DTZ no.188 and no. 189, 23 Apr. (on the Americans). KrZ no. 171, 12 Apr., dismissed the allegation that Hindenburg's candidacy would lead to war as a “lie … too stupid to deserve more than a denial.” Three years later, one of the chief sponsors of Hindenburg's candidacy, Otto Schmidt-Hannover, stated that the American attitude toward Germany had temporarily improved upon the election of a “symbol” whom Americans “compared to Lincoln or Washington”: speech draft, 6 Sept. 1928, BA: NL Schmidt-Hannover 211/73.

41. Die Zeit, cited in KrZ no. 169, 10 Apr. 1925 (on the French, cf. DTZ nos. 170, 177, 198, 10, 16, 28 Apr.); Kessler, 264f. (“Won't be elected”); Turner, 198f. (Simons). Stresemann regularly cultivated French public opinion through interviews and occasional articles in the French Press.

42. Campaign appeal by the Munich League of German War Veterans, in DTZ no. 178, 17 Apr. 1925 (“pride”); Dresdner Nachrichten, quoted in DTZ no. 170, 10 Apr. (“non-partisan”); DTZ no. 169, 9 Apr. (“jobbery”). The self-styled “Christian” Center was alleged to have opportunistically allied itself with the “Jewish” DDP and with Christianity's greatest enemy, “Jewish-spirited” Socialism— and to have given away Bismarck's Prussia as part of the deal: “a Catholic,” in DTZ no. 180, 18 Apr.; campaign statement of the Bavarian Christian Farmers’ League, in DTZ no. 177, 16 Apr. (“Jewish spirit”).

43. KrZ no. 124, 14 Mar. 1925 (on Jarres); DTZ no. 178, 17 Apr. (on Hindenburg). Cf. DS no. 1 (5 Sept. 1924): 6, which had deplored the German tendency to look for “the prophet, the hero, who will lead us to the promised land.”

44. KrZ no.167, 9 Apr. 1925 (“selfless fulfillment,” “National Movement”); DTZ no. 186, 22 Apr. (quoting Hergt, including“domestic peace”); Schultze-Pfaelzer, Gerhard, Wie Hindenburg Reichspräsident wurde, persönliche Eindrücke seiner Umgebung vor und nach der Wahl (Berlin, 1925), 9 (“Savior”); KrZ no. 173, 15 Apr. (Westarp).Google Scholar

45. DTZ no. 186, 22 Apr. (Hergt). On “spirit” cf. n. 42.

46. FZ, May–June, 1926; Stern, Fritz, “Adenauer and a Crisis in Weimar Democracy,” Political Science Quarterly 73 (03. 1958): 1–27; Dorpalen, 102–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. Kaufmann, 150–52, 232; Craig, 510f; cf. the more judicious assessment by Dorpalen, 85f., 113–17. As Craig notes, some republican contrarians at the time of Hindenburg's inauguration also reassessed his election as a potentially positive development: VZ no. 114, 13 May 1925; Kessler, 266f.; Gessler 341; Dorpalen, 85.

48. Gessler, 341(quoting von Graefe); Dorpalen, 153 (“Opposition”). The DNVP got 14.2% in May. of 1928, down from 20.5% in Dec. of 1924.

49. See the article by Falter in this issue.

50. This, of course, is why it is too facile to view the rise of Hitler as a consequence just of Hindenburg's (reluctant) appointment of him from above. For the trouble with the kind of men whom Hindenburg preferred, such as Papen, was that they lacked a popular base. As a result, these genuine “authoritarians” simply could not do what Hitler was able to do. Moreover, while Marx might not have appointed Hitler, his appointed was in a sense “normal” in a democracy, since he headed the largest party. Indeed, Marx's party itself tried to negotiate a coalition government with the Nazis as an alternative to Papen in 1932.