On the international front, Germany obtained a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations and regained some of its lost sovereignty after negotiating the withdrawal of the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control.

[1] When Luther refused to remain in office in a caretaker capacity, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Reichswehr Minister Otto Gessler of the German Democratic Party (DDP) interim chancellor and asked him to form a new government.

Adenauer was unwilling to build a temporary minority cabinet as a stepping stone to an eventual grand coalition and wanted instead to create a majority government that included the SPD.

Speaking for the German People's Party (DVP), its parliamentary leader Ernst Scholz refused to entertain the idea of a coalition with the SPD for the foreseeable future due to domestic policy disagreements.

[2] The same day, during a meeting of the caretaker cabinet, Gustav Stresemann (DVP), mentioned Minister of Justice Wilhelm Marx (Centre) as a potential new chancellor.

It stated the intent of both sides to expand the coalition as soon as possible to make up a majority in the Reichstag, with the stipulation that the only parties that they would consider were those that accepted the binding nature of current international agreements and that supported the government's foreign policy.

Marx left the Justice and Occupied Territories portfolios vacant (with himself as caretaker) in case the grand coalition should prove possible once the referendum on the expropriation of the princes was out of the way.

Only when that hope proved elusive due to the opposition of the Social Democrats to the government's position on the expropriation issue did Marx appoint Johannes Bell (Centre) as minister of Justice and ask him to serve as caretaker for the Occupied Territories.

Finance Minister Peter Reinhold, however, had little success in convincing the other cabinet members to hold to strict spending limits in the face of the country's dwindling cash reserves, which was due largely to the high costs of unemployment benefits.

Labour Minister Brauns passed a bill to create jobs through public sector orders that would make use of idle production capacity in key industries, but by the time the programmes were ready to be implemented in the fall of 1926, an upturn in the economy had made the need for them questionable.

Hans von Seeckt, head of the Reichswehr Army Command, was forced to resign after he allowed the Hohenzollern Prince Wilhelm of Prussia to take part in military manoeuvres.