A Pledge Unredeemed: The Housing Crisis in Weimar Germany

Abstract

If every German had had his own home,” wrote the National Socialist Karl Fiehler in 1932, “the revolution of 1918 would not have been possible.” Typical of the Nazi tendency toward exaggeration, Fiehler's assertion nevertheless recognized the role of housing in a stable society. Article 155 of the Weimar constitution of August 11, 1919, promised suitable housing for every German, but that promise remained unfulfilled. The Weimar regime, in fact, left many promises unfulfilled, and the collapse of the republic might be attributed to a lack of effectiveness in solving basic social and economic problems. Existing studies of the Weimar republic provide inadequate treatment of the problem-solving process employed to attack specific problems such as the housing shortage. Students of Weimar Germany have been fascinated with the beginning and the end of the republic, paying little attention to the relatively stable years from 1924 to 1929. Examination of the German housing problem will not explain why the republic fell. Historians have already supplied a rich variety of “explanations” for the fall of the republic: the burden of Versailles, reparations, inflation, depression, constitutional deficiencies, political fragmentation, and unhealthy compromises between the republic and the military, labor and management, and federal and state governments. Not everyone has been convinced. The German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf criticizes “explanations that do not explain, statements that do not state anything.” Perhaps, as Michael Stürmer suggests, it is time to go beyond the origins and collapse of the Weimar republic. The historical significance of the Weimar republic lies in how it functioned as well as how it fell.