Named after the National Assembly that convened in Weimar and drew up a new constitution, in the early years the young republic was formed and influenced by a parliamentary majority of Social Democrats, the German Democratic Party and the Catholic Center. Democracy was working. The Social Democrats had relinquished their revolutionary ideas of the early years and attempts to drive the revolution in a socialist direction were quelled. Private ownership of industry and agriculture remained untouched and the mostly anti-republican civil servants and judges retained their positions.
Yet as early as the 1920s it was becoming evident just how fragile support in the middle classes really was. Amidst general confusion in 1923, the economic crisis, inflation, the occupation of the Ruhr by the French and communist attempts to seize government all demonstrated that democrats were in a minority in Weimar. Ensuing economic recovery led to political pacification. In foreign affairs, Germany, having been defeated in the Great War, resumed its political place as an equal on the international stage among other things with the signing of the Treaty of Locarno in 1925 and accession to the League of Nations in 1926. With regard to the arts, science and culture some sections of the population were for a short time able to refer to the “golden Twenties”. It was a period characterized by an intense but brief flowering, since the fall of the republic could already be foreseen in the next economic crisis in 1929.