Abstract

Even before the implementation of the Weimar Constitution, Rudolf Wissel, finance minister of the first social democratic government in German history, pointed out with bitter disappointment to the Party Congress of June, 1919: “By building the edifice of formal political democracy, we have done nothing but pursue the program already begun by the imperial government of Prince Max von Baden. We have completed the constitution without a profound popular participation and we have not been able to placate the masses' tacit resentment because we did not have an adequate program… We have failed to influence the revolution so that Germany would have been animated by a new spirit.