The Weimar National Assembly elected on 19 January was dominated by the moderate wing of the SPD, which formed a coalition with the largely middle-class Centre and German Democratic (DDP) parties.

In the days leading up to Germany's surrender in World War I, the revolution of 1918–1919 broke out and led to the collapse of the German Empire.

The Council of the People's Deputies – the revolutionary interim government made up of three members from the Majority Social Democratic Party (SPD) and three from the more radical Independent Social Democrats (USPD) – wanted a popularly elected national constituent assembly to make the decisions on Germany's future form of government.

The middle-class parties generally agreed, but the left wing of the USPD and the communist Spartacus League called for a soviet system based on the Russian model.

The government's bloody suppression of the revolt of the socialist revolutionary Volksmarinedivision in Berlin led the USPD to withdraw from the Council of the People's Deputies at the end of December.

[4] The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was founded on 1 January 1919,[5] and the following week, government and Freikorps troops violently put down the Spartacist uprising by workers who were in favour of a council republic.

In its aftermath, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the leading figures of the KPD, were murdered by Freikorps officers on 15 January.

The Electoral Law of 30 November 1918, which was developed by the Council of the People's Deputies, decreed that universal, equal, secret and direct suffrage with proportional representation was to be used throughout Germany.

Even though Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg of the Communist Party (KPD) had spoken in favour of it participating in the election, the majority of delegates at its founding assembly voted to boycott.

[12] In social terms, the party represented broad sections of Catholic Germany, ranging from workers and the middle class to the nobility, with the clergy playing an important role.

A major issue for the party in 1919 was the perceived threat of a new Kulturkampf ('cultural struggle') similar to the one waged by Otto von Bismarck during the imperial era.

The anti-church policies of Prussian Minister of Culture Adolph Hoffmann in particular united the Catholic vote against the Social Democrats.

It included Pan-Germans, Christian Socialists and antisemites in its ranks, and found adherents among the middle class, civil servants and educated citizens (Bildungsbürgertum), as well as workers and salaried employees with strong nationalist sentiments.

[15] Of the 36,766,500 people eligible to vote, 83% went to the polls, compared with the 85% turnout in the previous Reichstag election held in 1912 under the German Empire.

The party's late founding meant that it lacked a functioning organisation, and many bourgeois voters opted for the DDP for tactical reasons.

Many voters decided in favour of the DDP not out of any fundamental agreement with left-wing liberalism but in order to strengthen the middle class's voice in the future government.

During the election campaign, the DDP had set itself apart from the SPD by promising to be the guardian of private property, a tactic which proved successful with the middle class.

In the end, a government consisting of representatives of the SPD, the DDP and the Centre Party was formed (the so-called Weimar Coalition).