The strengths and weaknesses of the new Constitution

The strengths and weaknesses of the new Constitution.

- The Weimar Government wanted to be a perfect democracy.

• Strengths:

1. All men and women over the age of 20 could vote  - comparably better when compared to Britain, where only women over the age of 30 could vote.
2. A Bill of Rights guaranteed every German citizen freedom of speech and religion.
3. The president and the parliament (Reichstag) were both elected.
4. The Reichstag made the laws and assigned jobs to the government, which had to do what the Reichstag wanted them to do.

-It looked great, but...

• Weaknesses:

1. Proportional representation: where the number of seats a party wins in parliament is worked as a proportion of the number of votes they win. This was the system in place in Germany, often leading to too many parties in the Reichstag. This made it harder to get laws passed.
2. Picking a Chancellor with the majority of the support in the Reichstag was difficult.
3. The new government had to accept the Versailles Treaty, so were hated by many German citizens because of the loss of territory, reparations, the "war guilt" clause etc.
4. Article 48: said that in an emergency, the President didn't need the support of the Reichstag, but could pass decrees. This was a problem as the definition of an "emergency" was never specified, and actually ended being used by Hitler as a back door to take power legally.