Polirtcs ( 1989) (9) 1 20-25
WEBER AND WEIMAR:
THE ‘REICH PRESIDENT’ PROPOSALS
Peter Baehr
THANKS I N good measure to the work of David Beetham (1985; orig 1974) and Wolfgang
Mommsen ( 1984), an appreciation of Max Weber as a distinctively political thinker and actor
is gradually gaining recognition in the English speaking world. Even so, Weber’s reception
from British political scientists has remained hesitant and dilatory. A-level options devoted
to Modern Political Ideas and Doctrines (London) or Political Theory (Oxford) have no space
for Weber in their syllabi; while, to the best of my knowledge, few degree courses in Politics
treat him as a seminal figure deserving of the same detailed scrutiny enjoyed by, say,
Tocqueville, Mill or M a n .
This attitude to Weber’s political thought is not only archaic, nurtured by old habits of
academic pigeon holing which dictate that Weber was above all a sociologist. I t is also deeply
paradoxical. For as one commentator has put it, the span of Weber’s political writings is
‘remarkable, ranging from his early analyses of social and political change in East Prussia,
through book-length articles on the 1905 Russian revolution, to his sustained polemics on the
reform of the German constitution in the wartime and postwar period’ (Beetham, 1985, pp
13-14). Are not the themes of these writings - geo-politics, class conflict, state power,
legitimacy, ‘plebiscitary’ leadership, democracy, mass parties etc. - the very staples of the
political scientist’s diet?
This article examines one episode which occurred towards the end of Weber’s life (he died
in June 1920) in which political concerns were of paramount importance: his attempt to
influence the constitutional powers of the ‘Weimar’ Reich President. My objective in what
follows is merely to highlight Weber the political thinker in action, especially in respect of his
preference for a democratic, Caesarist ‘dictator’ to lead the new Republic. I offer here no
assessment or critique. My task is thus a limited one. But if this article helps encourage a
wider, cross-disciplinary perspective on Weber’s life and work, it will, I believe, have served
a useful purpose.
The Scholar as Partisan
Throughout his adult life Weber supported a variety of liberal-nationalist measures
designed to establish and enhance Germany‘s status as a great imperial power. The First
World War was, inevitably, the greatest threat to his hopes, and both during and after the
catastrophe he was witness to a series of events which filled him with anger and foreboding:
the highly publicized rantings of a Kaiser unrestrained by parliament; the irresponsibility of
pan-German agitation; the unrealistic expectations that cleaved to demands for unlimited
submarine warfare; the plotting of the German Supreme Command; the Brest-Litovsk
dtbicle. And of course there was the defeat itself and its aftermath - Wilson’s humiliating
cat-and-mouse diplomacy, naval mutiny at Kiel and at other ports in north Germany,
revolution in Berlin, insurrection in Bavaria. Faced with all of this Weber had not hesitated
to voice his opinions with a frankness that impressed most who knew of them. But Weber’s
sphere of action was limited. As a scholar by vocation he was obliged to engage in politics
through the media intellectuals customarily use - the public lecture, the congress speech and
report, the memorandum to persons of influence, the newspaper article (in NovemberDecember 1918 he was actually living in Frankfurt as the political adviser for the Frankfurter
Zeitung). He could only hope that policy-makers would listen to his arguments and be
persuaded by their logic; he was compelled to accept that such impact as he made would
inevitably be vicarious.
But then in December 1918, at the instigation of Hugo Preuss (the Secretary of State of
the Interior), Weber was invited to join the committee charged with the responsibility for
drafting what would become known as the Weimar Constitution: at last the man of letters
WEBER AND
WEIMAR:
THE
‘REICH
PRESIDENT’
PROPOSALS
21
might become truly a man of political influence. The committee’s deliberations and
conclusions, as we shall see, were not wholly to disappoint him. Even after six drafts of the
constitution, the last two conditioned by heated discussion on the floor of the Reichstag
(National Parliament), the final product endorsed on 31 July 1919 would carry in some
limited respects a recognisably Weberian stamp.
Directly preceding and following his cloistered involvement in Preuss’s committee, Weber
wrote a series of constitutionally oriented articles in which he publicly campaigned for a
‘plebiscitarian’ (ie popularly elected) Reich President. These texts should be situated in the
overall development of Weber’s thought for they mark a major reappraisal by him of the
conditions he thought most likely to produce effective political leadership in the German
situation.
During the latter part of the War, Weber had argued that a vigorous parliamentary
democracy of the British type was the model system for Germany to emulate if it were to
produce the leaders of energetic intelligence necessary for national reconstruction. The British
parliamentary system, he maintained, had much to commend it. It served to expose and
remove those politicians whose demagogy was not matched by their political judgement. It
enabled the supervision of the leader once installed as head of the executive. The British
parliamentary system also stood as a guardian of civil liberties (sic), offering firm resistance
to imperious rule. And finally it ensured continuity and ‘the peaceful elimination of the
Caesarist dictator once he has lost the trust of the masses’ (Weber, 1978, p 1452). Th’is was
the sort of system that Germany itself would be wise to adopt, Weber had advised.
His post-war writings, in contrast, entertain few hopes of parliamentary government being
able to furnish the political conditions imperative for affirmative, dynamic leadership in
Germany. On the contrary, he now insisted that the ‘necessity for a leader to provide decisive
political direction and a focus for national unity could ...only be met by divorcing him from
Parliament and giving him a separate power base in a direct presidential election’ (Beetham,
1985, p 232, my emphasis). The causes of this change of heart are implicit in the three main
reasons Weber advanced for supporting a President of the Reich ‘elected directly by the
people’ (Weber, 1986, p 128).
A ‘Plebiscitarian’ President
To begin with, only a directly elected President, Weber argued, would be able to affirm
the identity and unity of the infant Republic in the teeth of all those divisive interests that
threatened to asphyxiate it at birth.
Of these divisive forces, consider first the particularism arising from Germany’s Federal
make-up. In the near future, Weber claimed, the Bundesrat (Federal Council), ‘will rise
again’ and with its resurrection the demands of the Republic’s constituent states (dominated
by Prussia) will come to be elevated above the national interest. The power of the Reichstag
will decrease correspondingly - especially in its capacity to select and promote national
leaders (Weber, 1986, pp 128, 131; Weber, 1970, pp 113-4). Consider also the quite literal
provincialism of regionally based parties that will continue to fragment the political process
in Germany. And, relatedly, consider the danger posed for a weakened Germany by
proportional representation. Such an electoral system, Weber declared, is guaranteed in postwar German conditions to transport the quest for economic advancement directly into the
political arena. Where interest groups constrain political parties to place the former’s
preferred candidates at the head of the party list, parliament will:
. . . become a body within which those personalities who care nothing for
national politics set the tone, and who, in the nature of things, will rather
act according to an ‘imperative’ mandate from those with particular
economic interests. It will be a parliament of philistines - incapable of
being in any sense a place where political leaders are selected (1986, p
130).’
Only a president elected directly by the citizenry, that is elected ‘in a plebiscitarian way and
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PETER BAEHR
not by parliament’, can become ‘the safety-valve of the demand for leadership’ (1970, p 114).
Only through a ‘headship of state which indubitably rests on the will of the whole people
without intermediaries’ (1986, p 128) can the prospect of centrifugal politics be averted.
The second reason Weber campaigned for a Reich President elected by the people as a
whole hinged on his assessment of Germany’s economic plight. Economic restructuring,
including a dose of ‘socialization’, would be essential for Germany’s post-war financial and
manufacturing recovery. It was vital that such transformation be endowed with the authorit);
and legitimacy only a President chosen in Weber’s preferred manner could provide. The
President, Weber editorialized, should be no parliamentary manikin, no mere figurehead, but
actually just the opposite: a democratic dictator - Weber uses the term ‘dictator’ in its quasiclassical, Roman Republican sense - helping to create the conditions in which fundamental
change would be possible.2 It was a point he threw like vitriol in the face of the Social
Democrats, claiming, absurdly, that his prescription for the nation’s sickness was analogous
to their view of the dictatorship of the proletariat:
Let the Social Democrats remember that the much-discussed ‘dictatorship’ of the masses does indeed require the ‘dictator’, chosen by them, to
whom they subject themselves just as long as he retains their confidence
(1986, p 129).3
Without a President elected by the demos, symbolising the unity of the nation, and acting
accordingly, ‘the reconstruction of our economy, on whatever foundation, is impossible’
(1986, p 129).
Third, Weber envisaged in a plebiscitarian presidency the institutional prerequisite, though
not the guarantee, of strong, creative, personal leadership. Bound to parliament in the selection
of government ministers, the President would nonetheless remain free to formulate his own
initiatives, and as the focus and representative of millions ‘would often be superior to the
respective party majority in parliament, all the more superior the longer his period of office’
(1958, p 458). Recent elections had shown, Weber declared, that the German parliamentary
party response to a strong personality was overwhelmingly negative, manifesting a
combination of plain ‘very petty-bourgeois hostility . . . to leaders’ (1970, p 114), and fierce
resistance among entrenched party veterans to the spectre of ‘socialization’ ( 1958, p 458).
Parliament could thus not be expected to supply the leaders Germany so urgently needed.
The alternative was clear:
Previously, in the authoritarian state, it was necessary to advocate the
increase of the power of the parliamentary majority, so that eventually
the significance and thus the standing of parliament would be enhanced.
Today the situation is that all constitutional plans have fallen victim to
an almost blind faith in the infallibility and omnipotence of the majority
- not the majority of the people but of the parliamentarians, which is the
opposite, but equally undemocratic, extreme. We must restrict the power
of the popularly elected President as always . . . But let him be given firm
ground under his feet by means of the popular election. Otherwise every
time there is a parliamentary crisis - and where there are four or five
parties involved these will not be infrequent - the whole edifice of the
Reich will totter (1986, p 131).
Weber acknowledged that a popular election of a head of state could conceivably lead to
the re-establishment of a German dynasty. However, because the monarchical-imperial
system had been so profoundly discredited by the war and its outcome, he thought such a
prospect remote. A far greater and more pressing problem, on the other hand, concerned the
dearth of those ‘outstanding political leaders who can influence the masses’, a problem
consequential upon ‘our long inner impotence’ ( 1958, p 458). Commanding personalities with
insight, will and vigour do not appear overnight. Moreover Weber was certain that a
parliamentary type election of the Reich President, say, on the model of the French Third
WEBER AND WEIMAR: THE ‘REICH
PRESIDENT’
PROPOSALS
23
Republic, or a rotating presidential system, would only aggravate an already dire situation.
Both options were incompatible with firm, coherent and creative leadership because both (but
especially the latter) militated against the ingredient that Weber returned to again and again:
‘the responsible pcrsonalio’ (1958, p 461, emphasis in original).
Weber understood well enough that there would be a range of political interests repelled
by his ideas. He knew that a species of parliamentarian would be ‘loath to make the sacrifice
of self-denial required to allow tKe choosing of the highest organ of the Reich to pass out’ of
parliament’s hands. But he warned, ‘it must happen’:
If the ministers remain strictly bound to its confidence, parliament will
not have cause to regret this. For the great movement of democratic party
life which develops alongside these popular elections will benefit
parliament as well. A president elected by means of particular constellations and coalitions of parties is politically a dead man when these
constellations shift. A popularly elected President as head of the executive,
head of ofice patronage, and perhaps possessor of a delaying veto and of
the authority to dissolve parliament and to call referenda, is the guarantor
of true democracy, which means not feeble surrender to cliques but
subjection to leaders chosen by the people themselves (1986, p 132).
Impact of Weber’s Proposals
Though Weber’s brother Alfred would later write with regret to (an unsympathetic)
Theodor Heuss of Max’s ‘disturbing’ Reich President proposals, describing them as a
lamentable ‘slide into romanticism’ (Baumgarten, 1964, p 550), the person who was the object
of this solicitude had shown, in December 1918, no little satisfaction about the Preuss
proceedings in general and his role in them in particular. A letter penned to Marianne Weber
the day after the commission’s work had been concluded, though in the interregnum before
the first draft had been composed, positively oozes self-congratulation: ‘All right, the Reich
constitution is ready in principle, and it is very similar to my proposals’ (Marianne Weber,
1975, p 640,emphasis in original). And sure enough the constitution, when it eventually came
into force on 14 August 1919, undeniably enshrined a number of Weber’s preferences.
Mommsen has described Weber’s participation in the constitutional committee (‘the delivery
room of the Weimar constitution’) as ‘his greatest hour’ (1984, p 355), though, as Mommsen
also reveals, one should be careful not to exaggerate Weber’s influence and success. A number
of his proposals concerning the President’s standing were in fact either amended or rejected
both in the committee itself, where other voices prevailed, and in the legislative process that
followed. Crucially, a liberal conception of ‘balance of powers’ which owed much to the
influence of Robert Redslob and which found support in Preuss, displaced the more Caesarist
projections of Max Weber; the political independence of the Reich President for which Weber
had pressed so adamantly was hence quite extensively curtailed (Mommsen, 1984, pp 34854, 376-8). Nonetheless Weberian residues were still discernible in the final draft of the
constitution, particularly as it related to aspects of the President’s powers.
First, the demand for the President to be elected by the totality of German citizens (male
and female) became enshrined as Article 41 of the Weimar Constitution (Schuster, 1978, p
107). Second, the duration of the President’s tenure of office was fixed at seven years - another
of Weber’s recommendations (compare, Weber, 1958, p 458 with Art 43, para 1, in Schuster,
p 107). And third, Weber’s proposal that the President be invested with the powers to initiate
elections and referenda, so as to enable decisive action in the event of party deadlock, was
also realized in the constitution’s final draft (though not quite in the form he had originally
intended: see Mommsen, 1984, pp 368-9, 376-7; Weber, 1958, p 457; Schuster, 1978, Art 25
and Art 74, para 3, pp 104, 112 respectively).
The subsequent career of the Reich President proposals cannot concern us here. Nor is it
possible to rehearse the debates concerning the historical relationship of Weber to fascism.
We know that Weber took no interest in the notorious Article 48 (which facilitated the
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suspension of all the major civil liberties) but such nonchalance is revealing in its own way.
Then again, the significance of the draconian Article for subsequent events has probably been
overstated. The President could not, under the constitution, be an absolute dictator. The
third paragraph of Article 4% compelled the President to withdraw any emergency measures
if the Reichstag so demanded. Similarly, other articles (eg Art 43, para 2, on dismissal, and
Art 59, on impeachment: Schuster, 1978, pp 107, 109 respectively) allowed for significant
Presidential constraint. Besides, overpreoccupation with Article 4% may divert attention from
other aspects of the constitution which, though having nothing to do with the President as
such, arguably had a more serious impact on later history. For instance it is Koch’s contention
(1984, pp 269-70, 298, 306-9) that Article 76, which stipulated that the constitution could
be altered by a bill with at least two-thirds Reichstag support, was the really decisive
constitutional instrument in establishing the Third Reich.
The above historical reasoning is bound to remain speculative. Much easier to establish,
on the other hand, are the Caesarist elements of Weber’s proposals (though neither of the
t e r n Caesarism or charisma are employed by Weber in the constitutional contexts that deal
specifically with the German Reich President). The President, we have seen, is to be a leader
of robust authority, ‘supported by the revolutionary legitimacy of popular election’ (1958, p
457), elected ‘without intermediaries’. And as Weber had remarked elsewhere, speaking of
Napoleon I and 111 (1978, p 1452):
Every kind of direct popular election of the supreme ruler and, beyond
that, every kind of political power that rests on the confidence of the
masses and not of parliament . . . lies on the road to these ‘pure’ forms of
Caesarist acclamation.
Moreover, the President’s powers to dissolve parliament and resort to referenda display the
familiar ‘Caesarist-plebiscitarian’ mechanism of legitimation. Finally, the President is a
‘dictator’, a term Weber elsewhere employs to characterise the ‘Caesarist’ leader Gladstone
(1970, p 106). Weber’s main political objective for post-war Germany was, essentially,
responsible Caesarism - a system in which a dynamic, elective ‘dictatorship’ would operate
within the bounds of the rule of law. Responsible Caesarism is a curious, some would say
incoherent, idea. Nonetheless, the Reich President proposals were a deliberate attempt to
implant that idea in the constitution of the new Republic!
Weber’s Relevance
I have sought in this article to promote the image of Weber as a political thinker and actor.
This has been attempted through an exploration of the setting and the partial implementation
of his Reich President proposals. Weber’s political work remains important not because it
contains timeless verities, still less because of what it offers to those people attempting to
extend political participation in Britain and elsewhere; Weber’s instincts, and the thrust of
his writings, were markedly elitist in fundamental respects. Rather Weber’s work is
important, above all, as a provocation - for political scientists as well as sociologists - to think
imaginatively but also practically about political life. Hence, in studying his thought one is
doing more than fencing with the dead. One is meeting a challenge issued by a man who
sought to comprehend the limits and possibilities of citizenship. We may disagree with him
and with some of the values he fought hard to advance. But after reading him we know better
why we disagree.
NO&S
1. Weber says that proportional representation is tolerable ‘in n o d times’ ie in a period of relative social
stability, but its overall eKect is to weaken ‘unified political leadership’ (Weber, 1958, p 4 6 2 ) .
2. Cf Gurbachev’s plans to use the Soviet presidential office as an instrument of perestroika. Also the comments
in Owen (1984, p 178).
3. That the Rcich President’s office entailed a form of dictatorship was well understood by Preuss himself - and
by Carl Schmitt among others: see Dorpalen (1964, pp 169-70; Mommsen, 1984, pp 381-9).
4. More on Wcber’s use of the concept of Caesarism, in yet another specifically political context, can be found
in Bachr (1988).
WEBER AND WEIMAR: THE ‘REICH PRESIDENT’ PROPOSALS
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REFERENCES
Baehr, P (1988), ‘Max Weber as a Critic ofBismarck’, EuropanJournal of Sociology, 29, pp 149-164.
Baumgarten, E (1964), Mar Weber: Werk und Person, (Tiibingen: Mohr).
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Press).
Hindenburg and the Wcimar Republic, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press).
Dorpalen, A (1 W),
Koch, H W (1984)) A Constitutional Histoty of Gmnnny in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,
(London: Longman).
Mommsen, W J (1984), Mar Wcber and Gmnan Politics, leSrn90, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press), transl M S Steinberg.
Owen, D (1984), A Future That Will Work, (Harmondsworth Penguin).
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