German politics today

Third edition

Geoffrey Roberts

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780719095702
• eBook ISBN: 9781526109415
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This revised and updated third edition provides readers with a comprehensive description and analysis of the German political system, and of the political behaviour within the context of that system. It surveys the historical development of German politics, including the background, processes and political consequences of reunification, and recent changes to the electoral system, party system and recent Bundestag and Land elections. This authoritative yet accessible textbook presents certain specialised topics, such as the career of Angela Merkel and the Eurozone crisis, in separate sections within the relevant chapters, and provides tables for key information including election results, the membership of trade unions and lists of presidents and chancellors. The appendices include a review of significant constitutional court cases, a survey of the more important political features of each of the sixteen Länder, and the Bundestag election campaigns since 1949. Each chapter also offers suggestions for further reading. This new edition of German politics today offers a sound foundation for undergraduate courses focused on, or involving, study of the German political system.

1

The creation of present-day Germany

Germany before 1949

The Federal Republic of Germany, more than most European democracies, is the product of its past. Its constitution, its political system, its political culture, its policies, even some of its present-day political problems, can be explained comprehensively only by reference to the Weimar Republic, the Hitler regime that supplanted it, and the Second World War which Hitler called into being, as well as the period of the occupation regime that was imposed by the victorious allies at the end of the war.

The historical background to the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany can be divided into five phases. Each phase affected its successors, and certainly the third, fourth and fifth directly affected the political format and many of the policies of the Federal Republic. Each of these phases came to an end when the existing form of political system (the regime) was replaced by a new regime. The unification of Germany as the Second Empire (Reich) in 1871, and the way in which that came about, is the first phase. The consolidation of the new German state and its involvement in the First World War, a war which brought with it the end of the Second Empire, is the second phase. The third phase is the foundation, development and downfall of the Weimar Republic. Then came the Third Reich: the period of Nazi rule and the Second World War which was the product of Hitler’s schemes for territorial expansion. The final phase is the four-power occupation regime put in place following Germany’s unconditional surrender in 1945, a phase which lasted until 1949.

Box 1.1 Regimes in modern Germany

1871	Unification of Germany
1871–1918	Second Empire
1918–19	Provisional republic
1919–33	Weimar Republic
1933–45	Third Reich (Nazi regime)
1945–49	Occupation regime; Germany divided into zones
1949–90	Federal Republic (West Germany only)
1949–90	German Democratic Republic (East Germany only)
1990–	Federal Republic (reunified Germany)

The unification of Germany

‘For a society and political system to endure, people must identify with a nation and its history. A common history, culture, territory and language developed a sense of a Kulturnation long before Germany was politically united.’

(Dalton and Weldon, 2010, p. 10)

The territory that later came to be known as ‘Germany’ consisted before its unification in 1871 of a number of different states, ruled by kings, princes, dukes, even archbishops. These states varied greatly in terms of territorial extent, military power and economic strength. In the eighteenth century, the kingdom of Prussia emerged as the most powerful of these states, though Bavaria and Hanover were also important kingdoms. In the period of conquest and rearrangement of the states of Europe following the French Revolution, Napoleon welded together several of these Germanic states within a ‘Rhenish League’, a grouping of states which then, following Napoleon’s defeat, formed the basis for a German confederation created by the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). A customs union (the Zollverein) was established in 1834, facilitating trade among the Germanic states, and there were various manifestations of national feeling prior to 1848, such as the rally of nationalists and radicals at Hambach in 1832, or the composition by Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841 of the Deutschlandlied (his ‘German anthem’: ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles…’), which was officially adopted as the national anthem in 1922. These gave impetus to the cause of German nationalism, which developed apace in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1848, when a wave of revolutionary fervour swept across most of Europe, German nationalists perceived it as an opportunity to press for the creation of a united Germany. At the Frankfurt Parliament (1848–49), convened to discuss the issue of unifying Germany in the city that had been the site for the election of the Holy Roman Emperors, delegates decided that a unified Germany should be created, though it should not include Austria, a Catholic state whose king was also emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire, an empire which contained large areas populated by non-Germanic peoples. This Frankfurt Parliament promulgated a constitution for Germany on 27 March 1849, which envisaged a union of German states under an emperor. The next day they elected the king of Prussia as ‘emperor of the Germans’. However, that king, Frederick William IV, refused to accept this crown of an imperial Germany, as he did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the popular assembly which wished to convey the title to him. Especially in Prussia, a period of reaction followed which eroded many of the democratic reforms won in the 1848–49 period, such as freedom of the press and civil liberties. It also terminated, for some years to come, all hopes of the creation of a united German state.

A political crisis in Prussia in 1862 concerning the budget for the military led the king, William I, to appoint Otto von Bismarck as his new prime minister. Bismarck utilised a political dispute in the Danish border provinces of Schleswig and Holstein to expand Prussia’s military strength in a war with Denmark (1863–64), and to develop its alliances with other north German states. A quarrel with Austria and her allies arising from the settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein crisis resulted in a war in 1866 against Austria, in which Prussia was victorious. This ended any possibility of Austria, rather than Prussia, exercising hegemony within what was later to become Germany. In 1867 a North German Confederation was created, led by Prussia, which also had special treaties of friendship with south German states. A dispute with France about dynastic matters swiftly led to a war between France and Prussia (supported by its north and south German allies) in 1870. The successful prosecution of this war offered Bismarck the opportunity to translate Prussia’s alliances with other German states into a more integrated political arrangement: the creation of the Second Empire, with the king of Prussia, William I, proclaimed as its emperor on 18 January 1871. In this way, a unified German state was at last created, and created by Bismarck’s policy of uniting the various states of Germany by ‘blood and iron’ (i.e. through military alliances and the joint prosecution of war) rather than by the rhetoric of liberal-nationalists in the Frankfurt Parliament.

The Second Empire was not very much more than a confederation of member-states (the Länder). The royal rulers of component states such as Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony (and of course Prussia, by far the largest and most powerful of the member-states) retained their thrones and many privileges. Bavaria, for instance, retained special rights relating to its postal services, beer taxes and – in time of peace – control of its army. Each of the twenty-five component states retained its own form of franchise for election of its own parliament. These states were represented in the Bundesrat of the Second Empire (though Prussia, because of its size, dominated in this upper chamber of the legislature, as it did in the elected lower chamber, the Reichstag). Bismarck realised that creating a united German state was one thing; integrating its peoples so that they became ‘Germans’, rather than considering themselves primarily to be Bavarians, Saxons or Prussians, was something else entirely. In a period when these states were coping with the tensions of rapid industrialisation, coupled with the exodus of populations from rural areas to the towns and cities, with the growth of literacy and the spread of radical political ideas to members of the working class, Bismarck tried to ensure that no rival political force would counter his efforts at political and social integration. In particular, he instituted repressive policies against the Catholic Church (the Kulturkampf) and the socialists (the Socialist Laws), seeing international Catholicism and international socialism as loyalties which could potentially displace the feelings of German nationalism that he wished to foster among the people. In this aim, Bismarck’s policies eventually were successful, after he himself had left office. By August 1914, when the First World War started, feelings of German nationalism were vociferously expressed.

The Second Empire set about expanding its military and economic power. This brought it into conflict with a number of its European neighbours and encouraged several of them to enter into a set of mutually protective alliances. In turn, Germany wanted to prevent itself from becoming encircled by potential enemies, so it, too, entered into alliances, particularly with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. By 1914, rivalry among the principal European powers had created a situation in which war was likely. The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in June 1914 created a situation which drew Russia and Germany, then France and Britain, into a European war in August: a war which expanded to become the First World War. After years of virtual stalemate on the western front, then the collapse of the Russian military following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the decision by the USA to enter the war against Germany, the German western front was decisively breached in autumn 1918, and an armistice took effect on 11 November 1918.

Germany’s defeat was relatively sudden and, especially for Germany’s civilian population, entirely unexpected. They had suffered deprivation during the war as a result of the Allied blockade of sea routes upon which much of Germany’s foreign trade depended. They had believed the propaganda of their military-directed government that victory and territorial gains would be the inevitable outcome of the war and a recompense for their sufferings. Many families had lost sons and fathers in the war of attrition on the western front (in total, Germany lost 1.8 million dead during this war, more than any other combatant country). The closing days of the war saw riots and demonstrations in several parts of Germany, mutinies by the military, and agitation by communists who wanted Germany to follow Russia’s example and engage in its own communist revolution. The Social Democrats proclaimed a republic in Berlin on 9 November. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, fled to Holland and abdicated later that month. – as did many other royal rulers in Europe. The chaos within Germany accompanying the end of the war was utilised by the communists to try to impose a system of workers’ councils akin to those created in Bolshevik Russia. The new Social Democrat-led provisional government had to use the military to combat this revolutionary attempt. The assassinations in January 1919 of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the two leading figures of the abortive 1918–19 communist revolution, signalled the end of that attempt. Elections went ahead on 19 January 1919 for a constituent assembly (called the National Assembly), which was to draw up a new, republican, constitution for Germany: it met in the small, relatively peaceful, town of Weimar rather than in the capital, Berlin, which was a centre of continued political unrest. The hope was that this new constitution would establish, for the first time in Germany, a truly democratic form of government.

The Weimar Republic

The product of the deliberations of the National Assembly was the Weimar constitution, signed on 11 August 1919. This constitution has been blamed by many analysts for the failure of the Weimar regime to survive for longer than fourteen years. Certainly it appeared to be a democratic constitution. It was based on an electoral system of extreme proportional representation, which allowed numerous, often very small, political parties to obtain representation in the legislature: the Reichstag. This, in turn, meant that it was difficult for governments to be formed, since coalitions often had to consist of several parties, any one of which could abandon the coalition on a whim and bring down the government. Indeed, twenty different governments were formed before Hitler was invited to become chancellor in 1933. Of these, only four lasted longer than a year, and four lasted less than three months. The president of the republic (who was elected directly by the people) possessed the right to use emergency powers, which enabled him and his government to by-pass the Reichstag. Though the constitution provided for civil liberties and a form of constitutional court (the Staatsgerichtshof), these were not very efficacious in protecting the rights of citizens or the inviolability of the constitution itself. Though still a federal state in its structure, the political system of the Weimar Republic severely restricted the former powers of the Länder, so they could not act as bastions of democracy once the Republic itself was threatened.

But the Weimar regime faced greater problems than the content of its constitution. First, though the constitution was formally very democratic, Germany lacked convinced democrats. On the left, the communists wanted their version of republicanism to prevail, with a system of soviets (workers’ councils) rather than what they saw as a bourgeois parliamentary regime. On the right, a mixture of opponents of the regime preferred either the restoration of the monarchy or else a non-monarchical but authoritarian regime less open to popular control and less influenced by political parties than was the Weimar political system. This left the Social Democrats, the Centre (a Catholic party) and the liberal German Democratic Party – constituting the so-called ‘Weimar coalition’ – as the enthusiastic supporters of the regime. The bureaucrats, the military (what was left of it in its reduced form after the Versailles Treaty had been signed: see next paragraph), the judiciary, the universities, large sections of the press, commerce and industry, sections of the Protestant churches: all were suspicious of, or downright opposed to, the new democratic and republican regime.

Second, the politicians in office in 1919 had been required to sign the Versailles Treaty (the peace treaty after the First World War), with no opportunity to negotiate milder terms. For this, they and their new regime were blamed by the German people and especially by their political enemies. The terms of that treaty, involving losses of territory on the western and eastern borders of Germany, severe restrictions on the size and structure of the military, payment of heavy reparations to the victorious powers (just as France had had to pay reparations to Prussia in 1871), and admitted acceptance of guilt for starting the war, all rankled with many Germans. Agitators on the extreme right – including a young ex-corporal called Adolf Hitler – claimed (correctly) that German troops had not been defeated on German soil, and therefore they asserted (falsely) that surrender must have been the result of the activities of traitors on the home front: in other words, that German troops had been ‘stabbed in the back’. Such agitators opposed fulfilment of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, though they were generally not very open about what the consequences for Germany might be of such a policy of ‘non-fulfilment’. For many Germans, ‘the constitution and the treaty were both seen as embodying alien principles, imposed on Germany by the victorious West’ (Pulzer, 1997, p. 102). Certainly the Versailles Treaty gave ammunition to populist rabble-rousers for the lifetime of the Weimar Republic....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Preface
• Notes on style
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• 1 The creation of present-day Germany
• 2 The context of politics in reunified Germany
• 3 The development of the political system of the Federal Republic
• 4 The electoral system and electoral politics
• 5 The party state
• 6 The federal structure
• 7 Chancellor democracy
• 8 Parliamentary politics
• 9 Interest group politics
• 10 Germany and Europe
• 11 Germany: a ‘normal’ democracy?
• Appendices
• Index