Presidential cabinets of the Weimar Republic
After Schleicher's tenure, the leader of the Nazis Adolf Hitler succeeded to the chancellorship and regained the consent of the Reichstag by obtaining a majority in the March 1933 German federal election with DNVP.
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution gave the President of Germany (Reichspräsident) the power to pass emergency measures which did not require parliamentary support, as long as the chancellor or competent national minister approved of them.
After a grand coalition led by chancellor Hermann Müller collapsed, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the Centre Party politician Heinrich Brüning to the chancellorship.
Brüning legislated to oppose the party's paramilitary activity but was replaced with Franz von Papen, a conservative advisor of the president, who sought to compromise with the forces of the radical right.
[10] After the Young Plan was accepted by parliament in early March 1930,[11] the government struggled to find a unified approach to the social and economic challenges posed by the onset of the Great Depression.
[9] A rift over a structural reform of unemployment benefits led to a collapse of consensus between the coalition parties, resulting in the resignation of Müller's cabinet on 27 March 1930.
[12] According to Otto Meissner, the president's chief of staff, Brüning's qualities were uniquely suited to the role: he belonged to the conservative wing of the Center Party and had fought in the First World War, making him acceptable to the far-right.
[16] On 3 April 1930, supported by the votes of the nationalist German National People's Party (DNVP), Brüning's government unexpectedly survived an SPD-led motion of no confidence.
When parliament rejected the bill, Hindenburg triggered article 48, dissolved the Reichstag, and signed the chancellor's spending plans into law using emergency powers.
[19] In September 1930, the election to replace the dissolved Reichstag returned a parliament without viable coalition options: the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) led by Adolf Hitler had won the second most seats after the SPD.
Rattled by the rising influence of the far-right, the party adopted a 'policy of toleration' (Tolerierungspolitik) towards Brüning's cabinet: it vowed to oppose motions of no confidence and thereby enabled the chancellor to govern solely via article 48.
[22] Tolerated by the SPD, Brüning continued his policy of fiscal austerity, facing growing opposition from business leaders and the extreme-right Harzburg Front.
[25] At this time, Hindenburg's advisors, chief among whom former general Kurt von Schleicher, developed plans to install a more authoritarian cabinet with the support of the NSDAP.
[41] In the following days, Papen intensely lobbied Hindenburg in favour of his plan, arguing that the conservative forces in a potential new government would keep Hitler's radicalism in check.
[45] According to the historian Andreas Rödder [de], the presidential cabinets were the result of a wider scepticism towards parliamentary government that had taken hold in German society around 1930 after years of legislative impasse.
[46] He argues that the accrual of executive power in the hands of the president appeared as the most practical option when the political status quo had proved ineffective.
[46] For the historians Udo Wengst [de] and Johannes Hürter, on the other hand, they mark a shift in political culture which emphasised the authority of the president.
In their view, governance of the Weimar Republic acquired a perceptibly different quality centred on constitutional issues and dictated by Hindenburg whose commitment to democracy was limited.
