The Weimar Republic Era

The Weimar Republic Era, 1918 to 1933, was the period of Germany's first parliamentary democracy, established after the collapse of the German Empire at the end of the First World War and named for the city where its constitution was drafted. The republic faced crushing burdens from the outset, including the punitive Treaty of Versailles, catastrophic hyperinflation in 1923 that wiped out the savings of the middle class, and chronic political instability from both far-left and far-right paramilitary violence, even as its capital Berlin became a celebrated center of avant-garde art, cinema, architecture and cabaret culture. The Great Depression after 1929 devastated the German economy and fatally undermined public confidence in democratic government, and the era ended in January 1933 when President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor, opening the way for the Nazi dismantling of the republic's democratic institutions.