1930 German Federal Election

A federal election was held in Germany on 14 September 1930 to elect the fifth Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. Despite losing ten seats, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) remained the largest party in the Reichstag, winning 143 of the 577 seats, while the Nazi Party (NSDAP) dramatically increased its number of seats from 12 to 107. The Communists also increased their parliamentary representation, gaining 23 seats and becoming the third-largest party in the Reichstag.

The government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party lost its majority in the Reichstag as a result of the election. With President Paul von Hindenburg's support, his new cabinet became the first of the three presidential cabinets that governed through presidential emergency decrees rather than the pariliament.

Background

After the 1928 German federal election, a five-party grand coalition was formed under Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Following the collapse of the coalition on 27 March 1930, President Hindenburg appointed Centre Party politician Heinrich Brüning as chancellor. He formed a seven-party coalition government that was two seats short of a majority and did not include the SPD, the party with the most seats in the Reichstag.

Brüning's government was confronted with the economic crisis caused by the Great Depression. He sought to balance the budget and stimulate exports through a policy of deflation which would require an unpopular policy of tight credit and a rollback of wage and salary increases (an internal devaluation). The Reichstag rejected Brüning's budgetary measures in July. With the backing of President Paul von Hindenburg, the bill was enacted using emergency powers allowed under the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag then overturned the emergency decree 236 to 222, with the yes votes coming from the Social Democrats, Communists, Nazis and a minority of the German National People's Party. At Brüning's request, Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag on 18 July 1930. The new election was held on 14 September 1930.

Electoral system

The Reichstag was elected via party list proportional representation. For the purpose, the country was divided into 35 multi-member electoral districts. A party was entitled to a seat for every 60,000 votes won. It was calculated via a three-step process on the constituency level, an intermediate level which combined multiple constituencies, and finally nationwide, where all parties' excess votes were combined. In the third nationwide step, parties could not be awarded more seats than they had already won on the two lower constituency levels. Due to the fixed number of votes per seat, the size of the Reichstag fluctuated between elections based on the number of voters.

The voting age was 20 years. People who were incapacitated according to the Civil Code, who were under guardianship or provisional guardianship, or who had lost their civil rights after a criminal court ruling were not eligible to vote.

The president was directly elected every seven years. He was head of the armed forces and had significant powers to dissolve the Reichstag, nominate a chancellor and invoke emergency powers through Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.

In 1930, Germany was formally a multi-party parliamentary democracy, with President Paul von Hindenburg (1925–1934) the head of state. However, beginning in March 1930, Hindenburg appointed governments without a parliamentary majority which systematically governed by emergency decrees, circumventing the democratically elected Reichstag.

Campaign

The Centre Party shifted to the right after Ludwig Kaas became its leader.

The Nazi Party had increased their share of the vote in state elections since the 1928 federal election. In spring 1930, Adolf Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels head of the party's Propaganda Division, and he oversaw the party's Reichstag campaign. Nazi Party membership rose from 108,717 in 1928 to 293,000 by September 1930. Another 100,000 people joined the party between the election and end of the year. The party had forty-nine newspapers, six of which were daily.

The SPD designated the "bourgeois block" of centrist parties and the Nazis as their enemies and, with the KPD, held rallies in Berlin on 1 August 1930 under the motto "Never again war". Some 30,000 people participated in the SPD rally in the Lustgarten and 15,000 in the KPD demonstration at the Winterfeldtplatz. On 23 August, KPD members attacked a Nazi event in Bunzlau. Three people were killed and two seriously injured in fighting with the police. The KPD election campaign climaxed with a rally in the Berlin Sportpalast on 12 September.

Results

The election had a voter turnout of 82%, the highest since the 1919 election. The Nazis increased their number of seats from 12 to 107. The Social Democrats (SPD) remained the strongest party with 143 seats, a loss of 10 seats from the 1928 election. The only other major party to significantly increase its seats was the Communist Party, which won 13% of the vote, securing 77 seats, 23 more than in the previous election. The Centre Party increased their seat count by seven to 68 but dropped to fourth from third place in both seat count and popular vote when compared with the 1928 election.

The German National People's Party's (DNVP) support plummeted. They lost 32 of their previous 73 seats and dropped to fifth from second, chiefly due to the fragmentation of the party under Alfred Hugenberg's leadership. Due to his more hardline positions, moderate voters moved to the newly formed Christian Social People's Service (CSVD), Conservative People's Party (KVP), and Christian-National Peasants' and Farmers' Party (CNBL). The DNVP received 13% of the vote in rural areas, twice as much as it received in urban areas.

The German People's Party (DVP) continued to haemorrhage seats, losing 15 and only attaining 4.5% of the popular vote. They ceased to be a notable political force after the July 1932 elections. The 28 other political parties shared the remainder of the votes.

The German National Association of Commercial Employees reported that half of its members voted for the Nazis.

184 of the seats in the Reichstag were held by parties that refused to participate in any coalition government.

Aftermath

The 1930 election left the Social Democrats and KPD with almost 40 percent of the seats in the Reichstag between them. In November 1931, the SPD suggested that the two parties work together, but KPD leader Ernst Thälmann rejected the offer, with the KPD newspaper ''Die Rote Fahne'' calling for an “intensification of the fight against Social Democracy”. Addressing the Nazi electoral breakthrough in the 1930 elections, Thälmann insisted that if Hitler came to power he was sure to fail and drive Nazi voters into the arms of the KPD. As late as February 1932, Thälmann was arguing that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis illarrive more quickly”.

As a result of the election, Brüning lost his majority in the Reichstag and continued to rule by decree, implementing harsh austerity measures that brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Governance by decree became the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. Following the 1932 presidential election, the newly re-elected Hindenburg refused to sign any more decrees, and Brüning resigned. A new cabinet was formed under the leadership of Franz von Papen (derisively labelled the "cabinet of barons"), but he was unable to form a majority in the Reichstag, receiving support only from the German National People's Party (DNVP) and the German People's Party (DVP); after a few months of ineffectual leadership, Hindenburg called a snap election.

References

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