Glossary of the Weimar Republic

These are terms, concepts and ideas that are necessary to understanding the Weimar period. Some are particular to the period and government and others were just in common usage but have a bearing on the Weimar milieu and political manuevering.

Weimar Political Glossary

• Agrarian Bolshevism — an idea of several parties of expropriating large estates, mostly in Prussia and private land not being worked and passed out to peasants.
• Angestellte — White-collar employees
• Barmat scandal — brothers who owned a huge conglomerate of businesses and overextended themselves. Their bankruptcy involved millions of dollars and that they bribed politicians of all levels of the Social Democratic party. It was another factor in the rise of Nazism.
  • Barmat Committee — Prussian Landtag set up a special fact-finding commission.
• Beamte — civil service employees
• Best proclamation — the SA draft proclamation for the exigency when and if the communists would revolt after a Nazi electoral victory; found in the house of Dr. Werner Best, legal advisor to the Nazi Party; became a major embarrassment for Hitler.
• Bonzen — bosses; slang term for the Weimar system and those who enriched themselves at the expense of the workers.
• Conservative Revolutionary movement — a German socio-political literary movement that sought to make a new nationalism combined with a "German socialism".
• der eiserne Hindenberg — the Iron Hindenberg; Hindenberg was the epitome for solidness
• der Krieg nach dem Krieg — "the war after the war"; the civil war that erupted in Germany after WWI; the turmoil of the Weimar Republic.
• Dolchstoßlegende — "Stab in the back" legend; the idea that the German Army was betrayed by subversive elements at home; i.e. the socialists, pacifists, liberals and Jews.
• Einwohnerwehren — civil guards; small civilian units established by General Maercker to garrison cities from red terror; these civil units grew into the Orgesch.
• Erbhöfe — heriditary; farms labelled as such that guaranteed farms to remain with the same family in perpetuity.
• Ernährungsautarkie — agricultural self-sufficiency
• freebooters — the men of the freikorps
• Freikorps — free corps; far-right paramilitary organizations made up of disillusioned WWI soldiers that sprung up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. They were frequently involved in political brawls.
• Friedenssturm — Peace Offensive; term given by General Ludendorff to the last great offensive of WWI hoping to break Allied resolve.
• Froschperspektive — frog's-eye view; the German ex-soldier's outlook of WWI; categorization of ex-soldiers' memoirs.
• Honoratioren — important community leaders such as the major and village priest.
• industrial rationalization — the furious pace of major technological, financial, and economic reorganization that German industry underwent between 1924 and 1929.
• inheritance
  • partible inheritance — inheritances such as farms can be broken up amongst heirs; the culture of Catholic Bavaria
  • impartible inheritance — inheritance passed only to the oldest son; family farmland prevented from being broken up amongst heirs.
• Kriegspiel — preliminary situation report; General von Schleicher made one about the military's incapability to meet civil unrest. This one convinced von Papen to resign.
• Kriegserlebnis — myth of the war experience
• Kuhhandel — cattle trading; German slang term for the political maneuverings in the parliament and in the Weimar government.
• Kultur — a German word for their particular brand of culture.
• Landtag — provincial legislatures or diets.
• Landespolizei — state police
  • Green police — another term because they wore green uniforms
• Lusanne Agreement — Allies in order to forstall a Nazi government practically abolished the German reparations burden; major foreign policy success for Cancellor von Papen; July 9, 1932.
• Marstall — stables
• Ministeramt — ministrial office
• Nahrungsfreiheit — self-sufficiency in nourishment.
• New Middle Class — consisted of the service and clerical(bookkeeping) occupations
• Old Middle Class — consisted of self-employed farmers, shopkeepers, merchants and artisans
• Orgesch — Organisation Escherich; the civil guards that grew into the reserve militia for the German Army under the command of Major Dr. Forstrat Georg Escherich.
• Osthilfe — the 1931 government assistance programs for large eastern German estates. It made available 1.5 billion marks for farmers to make debt conversion and lowered local taxes and freight rates.
• Quasselbude — "twaddling shop"; slang term given to the German parliament
• Räterepublik — worker councils or "soviet" republics; the communist seizures of power in Berlin and Munich
• Red terror — violence of the communist uprisings
• Reichsheer —
• Reichswaehrungskommissar — national currency commissioner
• Reichswehr — the German army organization
• Rentenmark Miracle — Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht issued the Retenmark which was pegged to the price of gold and had an exchange rate of 4.2 marks per dollar. It ushered in five years (1924-1929) of economic stability and a new period of prosperity for the Weimar Republic.
• Saupreiss — Prussian swine; Bavarian slang term for Prussians because of their domination of German politics and culture.
• Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten — (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers) ; the largest of the paramilitary Freikorps organizations that arose after World War I. It was an accumulation point for nationalistic and anti-Weimar Republic elements.
• Schloss — castle
  • Battle of the Schloss — The Volksmarine Division led by Lt. Dorrenbach seized the Kaiser's castle and stables which defeated an army unit sent to dislodge them.
• Vertrauensmann — low-level political agent; Reichwehr sent agents to infiltrate political parties; The Bavarian unit sent Hitler as an vertrauensmann to the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
• von — an aristocratic appellation to German names though it does not always signify that class.
• Wahlkreise — Weimar electoral districts. There were thirty-two districts.
• Wehrkreis — military districts within the Weimar Germany
• Weimar Coalition — the first solid majoritarian parties; the Social Democratic Party (37.9%), the Catholic Center Party (19.7%), the liberal Democratic Party (18.6%).
• Wehrverbände —
• White terror — violence of the counter-revolutionary forces, i.e. the Freicorps.
• Young Plan — the new reparations agreement negotiated by Gustav Stresemann at the Hague;
  • anti-Young coalition — Alfred Hugenberg with the Nationalist Party; Stahlhelm; the Pan-German League and Dr. Schacht of the Reichsbank; the campaign began in September 1929.
• Zusammenstösse — gang fights; the brawls between the various party paramilitary groups

See also

• Weimar political parties
• Weimar paramilitary groups
• Glossary of the Third Reich