German constitutional reforms of October 1918
The Supreme Army Command under Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, in whose hands the real power lay at the time, hoped that democratizing the Reich would lead to better peace conditions from the Allies.
[1] The Bundesrat represented the federal states, and the Reichstag, whose deputies were elected by universal, equal and secret male suffrage, acted as the Parliament.
The government was not a classic cabinet with responsible departmental ministers but consisted of the chancellor and state secretaries who headed the Reich offices and had only limited freedom of action.
In late September Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, believing that the United States would be more likely to negotiate with a new Reich leadership, advocated appointing deputies from the Inter-Party Committee to the government so that they could seek a favorable peace agreement.
The Supreme Army Command also saw it as a chance to shift the responsibility for an unfavorable treaty to the parties that had supported the peace resolution.
Through the Emperor he obtained Ludendorff's dismissal and the cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare, but the United States expected further democratization of the Reich.
Undersecretary Theodor Lewald of the Ministry of the Interior had presented a reform bill on 3 October that would have made little change to the political system.
It proposed deleting the constitution's Article 21 §2 so that a Reichstag member could assume a Reich or other state office without losing his seat.
On 15 October the Bundesrat adopted the bill, but some individual state governments complained about the time pressure and therefore had no vote written into the minutes.
[7] Some members of the Bundesrat protested that Chancellor Max von Baden intended to announce at the next session of the Reichstag that he would introduce a bill for parliamentary accountability.
He said that a chancellor or state secretary could of course not remain in office without the confidence of the majority in the Reichstag but that Germany should not resort to forms of government that were not in keeping with its traditions.
[10] Emperor Wilhelm II wanted to give the reform laws his own meaning by issuing an imperial decree immediately after their approval on 28 October.
The deputies Matthias Erzberger, Adolf Gröber, Karl Trimborn (all Centre Party), Conrad Haußmann (Progressive People's Party), and Philipp Scheidemann (SPD), who had previously been assigned to perform the duties of state secretaries, could thus be officially appointed state secretaries and remain deputies.
[12] Per the amended Deputation Act (Stellvertretungsgesetz), a state secretary without portfolio could become a "proxy" for the chancellor, giving him the power to countersign and making him responsible to Parliament.
The constitutional historian Ernst Rudolf Huber saw it as the realization of the "full equality and collegialization" that was important during the transitional period from November 1918 to February 1919, since the state secretaries remained in office even when the Reichstag was no longer in session.
The article clarified existing law, with the system remaining federal because of the accountability to the Bundesrat, although it was only the Reichstag that could force the chancellor to resign.
"[17] The Imperial German Army was composed of the contingents of the individual states of Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony, with the emperor holding supreme command.
Within a few days, the revolt of a small number of ships' crews developed into the Kiel mutiny and eventually into the German Revolution of 1918–1919.
In more and more German cities the insurgents formed soviet-style workers' and soldiers' councils that took power at the local and, in many cases, the state level.
To forestall such demands, Max von Baden spent several days trying in vain to persuade Wilhelm II to abdicate.
Fearing that he would lose control of the situation in Berlin, and in order to prevent a civil war, the Chancellor on his own authority proclaimed the Emperor's abdication on 9 November and handed the reins of government to the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert.
The constitutional law expert Huber was of the opinion that in drafting the October reforms the parties had already accepted the risk of an inability to form a majority.
According to historian Gunther Mai, the pressure of time on writing the reforms "ultimately simply codified the change in constitutional practice as it had already crystallized when Max von Baden's government was established.
"[20] Mai thought that unclear regulations left areas of potential conflict open, with the result that it is not certain if democratization through parliamentarization would have succeeded in the long run.
"[21] The revolution was not accidental, since within "the life and world of the people, the authoritarian state" with its hierarchies and militarism "was much more than could have been eliminated by a few, albeit fundamental, changes to the constitution."
