Revolution, Weimar Constitution, and Versailles

Abstract

Abstract Nearly everything that aroused the passions in German state law and international law during the Weimar period revolved around the three issues of Revolution, Weimar Constitution, and Versailles. Concretely, this chapter talks about the end of the monarchies and thus also of the supreme ecclesiastical authority of Protestant regional sovereigns, of the transition to parliamentary democracy and the ‘party state’, and of the humiliation of the nation at the hands of the victorious powers. The ‘November revolution’ and ‘Versailles’ remained traumatic experiences that could not be absorbed and digested in only a few short years. Added to this was the fact that jurists with a predominantly bourgeois disposition experienced the new republic as insecure and unpleasant. The inflation of 1923 threatened the material resources of life. Against this backdrop, it might appear contradictory that the constitution was overwhelmingly accepted and commented upon by scholars of public law.