Читать книгу The New German Constitution - René Brunet - Страница 12

The Constituent Assembly had been elected according to what was perhaps the most democratic suffrage ever known.

All Germans were electors, men and women, soldiers and officers, poor and feeble, provided they had passed the twentieth birthday. All electors were eligible to vote who had been Germans for at least a year.

The election took place on the basis of general tickets which could not be “split,” that is, an elector could not vote for candidates of different tickets; but facility was offered for parties to present lists in common.

The distribution of seats followed the system of proportional representation known under the name of Hondt.

These elections sent to the Assembly 423 deputies, of whom 39 were women.

At the extreme right were the German Nationalists (Deutschnationalen) with forty-two members. They were the former Conservatives of whom the least one can say is that they had learned but little from the war. It was the party of the big landed proprietors and the big manufacturers. Politically they declared themselves in December, 1918, in favour of the restoration of the monarchy and willing to accept a parliamentary monarchy. Economically they did not ask a single reform. Reactionary in politics they were in economic matters strongly conservative. Their leaders, Clemens von Delbrück, former minister of the Emperor and former chief of the Emperor’s civil cabinet, Düringer, raised their voices whenever it was necessary to defend the old régime, opposing all diminution in Prussia’s share of the government, and combatting every democratic institution.

To the left of them sat twenty-two members of the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei). The name is new; their ideas resembled those of the former National-Liberals.[6] It was the party of business men. Of the future form of government they said nothing. In fact, most of them remained monarchists, but that was a minor question. Their main concern was to establish in a tranquil and well regulated state freedom of commerce and a guarantee of protection for private property. They did not shut their eyes completely to the realities of the hour and intended to scrutinize certain reforms which it would be useless to oppose; such as new governmental monopolies, the participation of workers in industry control, etc. They were nationalist in feeling and would not sign a peace except one that safeguarded the economic prosperity of Germany. They were democrats in the sense that they were in favor of a strict legal equality for all persons. This group was presided over by Stresemann, whose cleverness in manipulating the parliamentary game was widely recognized.

Then came the Centre with eighty-nine deputies. Of all the parties it was this one that remained since its inception most faithful to itself. Its programme had not changed. It contained several propositions which formed its solid framework and for which the party was prepared to fight with all its power: the union of Church and State, confessional public schools, liberty of instruction, etc. On the political and economical problems of the hour the Centre certainly had its opinions; but it always ended by conceding whatever was necessary to safeguard the essential principles of a religious state and of freedom of instruction. Among those elected to the Centre there were Fehrenbach, who presided over the Assembly, Trimborn, Professor Beyerle, and Erzberger, whose indefatigable activities and limitless fertility of resources assured him perhaps a preponderant rôle in the government for some months, and who as much as the Minister of Finance was to effect a fundamental reform in the German fiscal system.

Then came seventy-four Democrats. Their party was born after the revolution of 1918 of a fusion of the old Progressives with the group of National-Liberals who did not go with the Volkspartei. Their program was that of the classic liberalism: national sovereignty, universal suffrage, equality of right of all citizens, individual rights, the right of private property and commerce. They opposed the intervention of the State except in extraordinary circumstances. This party attempted to group about itself all Germans in favour of a bourgeois republic, and was resolute in its opposition to both reaction and revolutionary socialism. This group counted among its members some of the men whose personal worth impressed itself on the assembly and who played rôles perhaps the most important in the development of the constitution—Haussmann, president of the committee on the Constitution; Frederick Naumann, whose idealism had free reign when he proposed with Beyerle the list of fundamental rights and duties of the Germans; Dernburg, Minister for the Colonies under the old régime and Minister of Finance under the Revolution; Koch of Cassel, future minister, and others.

There were 163 Social Democrats. They formed the most numerous group in the Assembly but, accustomed to the facile negations of opposition they seemed little prepared for the constructive rôle, at that time particularly difficult, which their electoral success suddenly called upon them to exercise. Theoretically they declared themselves faithful to the programme of Erfurt and to the Marxian theory of the class struggle. But at the same time they declared their faith in democracy, opposed all dictatorship and counted only on universal suffrage and the parliamentary régime to effect their socialistic reforms. It is from this Social Democratic group that there came the three Chancellors who governed Germany while the National Assembly sat—Scheidemann, Bauer and Hermann Müller. It is to this group that belonged Legien, president of the German Federation of Labour, Wissel who as Minister tried in vain to organize systematic control of business, and the Ministers Noske, David, the deputy Sinzheimer, who drew up the remarkable report on the Workers Councils, and others.

Finally there came the group of Independents of whom there were twenty-two. They accused the Social Democrats of having betrayed the cause of Socialism. As for their own program they did not specify any measures more definite than did the Social Democrats. They contented themselves with demanding that socialization be immediately commenced in order to break capitalist domination, to promote production to the highest possible degree and to distribute the fruits thereof among all citizens. Their spokesmen were Cohn and Haase, former Commissar of the People, who was later assassinated in July, 1919.

To sum up one can present the following table of the forces of the respective parties in the National Assembly:

PARTY	VOTES	DEPUTIES
German National People’s Party	3,200,000	42	(3 women)
German People’s Party	1,200,000	22	(1 woman)
Centre	6,000,000	89	(6 women)
Democrats	5,600,000	74	(7 women)
Social Democrats	11,400,000	163	(17 women)
Independents	2,300,000	22	(3 women)
Other parties	500,000	9	(2 women)

Besides these, troops from the Western front sent two deputies, both Social Democrats.