December 1924 German Federal Election

A federal election for the third Reichstag of the Weimar Republic was held in Germany on 7 December 1924. The parties of the far left and far right suffered significant losses in the voting, while the moderate left Social Democratic Party (SPD) made the greatest gains and remained the strongest party in the Reichstag. The negotiations for a ruling coalition nevertheless led to a shift to the right. The new government of the independent Hans Luther, a five-party centre-right coalition without the SPD, included the monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP) for the first time.

Background

After the previous Reichstag election on May 1924, Chancellor Wilhelm Marx of the Catholic Centre Party stayed in office with a minority coalition of the Centre, German People's Party (DVP) and German Democratic Party (DDP). It controlled only 128 of the 472 seats in the Reichstag. The most crucial issue the government faced was passage of the Dawes Plan, an agreement with the Allies to resolve the problems surrounding Germany's World War I reparations. With the help of the Social Democrats (SPD) and half the members of the right-wing German National People's Party (DNVP), the Reichstag voted its approval on 29 August. Marx then attempted to expand his coalition to the right to include the DNVP, but the negotiations failed. In the hope of being able to form a broader coalition with a new Reichstag, Marx asked German President Friedrich Ebert to dissolve the Reichstag and call for another election.

Campaign

Just over 50 parties and an estimated 4,638 candidates contested the election, although only eight of the parties were large enough to have a real chance at winning seats.

The Centre Party, DDP and SPD – the parties of the Weimar Coalition that had dominated the Weimar Republic's founding – competed as a bloc using the resources and membership of the defense organization ''Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold'', which the three parties had formed earlier in the year.

The second-strongest member of the governing coalition, the right of center DVP, tried to woo voters to it from both the center and the right. It emphasized nationalist and monarchists issues where the DNVP was a major competitor, whereas in strongholds of the DDP and Centre, it campaigned on issues such as the importance of duly implementing Germany's treaty agreements.

The DNVP announced its monarchism openly in its party program:

Our party remains as it was—monarchist and nationalist. Our aims are German and national. Our glorious colors are black, white, and red. Our will is firmer than ever to create a Germany free from Jewish and French domination, free from parliamentary cliques and the domination of capitalism—a Germany in which we and our children again proudly wish to do our duty.

The Communist Party of Germany (KPD), at the opposite end of the political spectrum, carried out a campaign of boisterous agitation, but it was handicapped by an improving economy and the many voters who had been alienated by its unruly tactics during the previous Reichstag session.

Electoral system

The Reichstag was elected via party list proportional representation. For this purpose, the country was divided into 35 multi-member electoral districts. A party was entitled to a seat for every 60,000 votes won. This 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.

Results

The clearest result of the election was a decline in strength in the parties of the far right and far left. The National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFP), a combination of the Nazi Party and the German Völkisch Freedom Party formed after the two were banned as a result of the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, lost 18 seats, dropping from 32 to 14. The Communist Party, which fell from 62 to 45 seats, was the other major loser in the election.

The SPD made the largest gains, climbing from 100 to 131 seats. Much of the increase almost certainly came at the expense of the KPD. The DNVP added eight seats, and the Centre Party, DVP and DDP all saw smaller increases.

Aftermath

Following the election, the balance of power lay with the DVP, which announced that it would only join a government of the bourgeois right, not a grand coalition that would include the SPD. Unlike after the May 1924 election, negotiations with the DNVP were successful, and in January a new majority cabinet was formed under Hans Luther – an independent close to the DVP – as a coalition of the Centre Party, DNVP, DVP, DDP and Bavarian People's Party. The Luther cabinet lasted just under 16 months.

References

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