Bitte beachten Sie, dass die Hauptseminare für die BA-Vertiefungsmodule ab sofort nur noch alle zwei Semester, jeweils im Wintersemester, angeboten werden. Es wird kein Angebot mehr im Sommersemester geben. close

The history of the first German republic is marked by severe crises and upheavals. However, it was not until the years after the momentous break-up of the Grand Coalition in the spring of 1930 - the SPD was not to reinstate a chancellor until forty years later - that the destructive forces of the republic began to gain increasing influence on the democratic order. The fundamental political antagonism between the radical left and a right that was equally committed to revolution grew into a German civil war under the impression of the advancing economic and political crisis. The extent of political violence increased sharply, human lives were worth less and less, and the state's monopoly on the use of force was undermined more and more (ich glaube du meinst the states monopoly on the use of force was executed / used more and more). The process was accompanied and intensified by the failure of party constellations capable of winning a majority, which were replaced by the semi-parliamentary system of presidential cabinets, which depended decisively on the vote of the Reich President and his right to issue emergency decrees enshrined in the constitution. In the end, this constellation facilitated Hitler's and the National Socialists' access to power with their friend-foe thinking. They were only able to gain access to power because the core element of any state order, the guarantee of domestic legal peace and individual security, had been eroded in the civil war. The seminar will focus on tracing and analysing this process of rapid destruction of democracy. close

Martin Broszat, The Seizure of Power. The Rise of the NSDAP and the Destruction of the Weimar Republic, Munich 1990 (dtv 4516), Hagen Schulze, Weimar 1917-1933, Berlin 2000; Christian Striefler, Fight for Power - Communists and National Socialists at the End of the Weimar Republic, Berlin 1993; Albrecht Tyrell (ed.), Führer befiehl... Self-Testimonies from the 'Fighting Period' of the NSDAP, Cologne 1991 close