The Successful German Center-Left

Joseph Hess and the Prussian Center Party, 1908–32

Bibliographic Data

ID9645321
AuthorsEric D Kohler (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume23
Issue4
Pages313-348
Publication date1990-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCentral European History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-9389 • E-ISSN: 1569-1616
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s000893890002166x
OpenAlexW1984849705
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited35

Given the Weimar Republic's collapse into dictatorship, its political historiography has stressed its many failures. To that pattern the Catholic Center Party, or Zentrum, which participated in all of the Republic's cabinets but one, has been no exception. Programmatically vague, the party was subject to bitter divisions between an authoritarian monarchist right and a vocal republican left. This trend was already obvious after the June 1920 Reichstag elections in which the party lost four million votes, mostly from the Catholic working class. Thereafter the Center remained unable to extend its appeal beyond a fixed, socially conservative base. Accordingly, the Center's record, culminating in the controversial chancellorship of Heinrich Brüning, has been presented as one replete with failure, if not desperation

Appeal · Archaeology · Authoritarianism · Center (category theory · Democracy · Dictatorship · Economic history · German · Historiography · Political science · Politics · Weimar Republic · European history and politics · European Political History Analysis · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law

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