The Weimar Republic

On November 9, 1918 Philipp Scheidemann, a Social Democrat, proclaimed the republic. It was later named after the city of Weimar, where the National Assembly that drew up the constitution convened. During the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) the German Reich – as the country continued to be called – was a democratic federal state, a mixture of presidential and parliamentary systems. This second attempt to set up a liberal democracy along Western lines in Germany also failed. Ridden by strife, it ended in the National Socialists seizing power, which resulted in a totalitarian dictatorship.

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