Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. In this strike, the national bank refused to pay out currency, civil servants refused to follow orders, and workers refused to work. To pay for the large costs of the ongoing First World War, Germany suspended the gold standard (the convertibility of its currency to gold) when the war broke out.
This economic disaster had social consequences as well.
The first was the immense cost of the war itself and the damage it had done to Germany's civilian economy. Sexual liberation was a very real phenomenon, complete with a gay and lesbian rights movement led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld who ran an Institute for Sexual Science.Significant increases in women's rights were another achievement of the period. Check out Britannica's new site for parents! It was home to famous authors such as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, W.H. Workers went on strike in attempts to gain better working conditions; in 1917 alone, there were 562 separate str… There were between 65 and 80 gay bars and 50 lesbian bars in the capital alone. Faced with increasing violence from all sides, Ebert agreed in what became known as the Ebert-Groener Pact. Political violence peaked in 1923 with Hitler's attempted coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, which was put down by the military.Nevertheless, the leaders of the Weimar Republic still faced daunting challenges, mainly of the economic variety, particularly the burden placed upon them by the outgoing leadership of the Kaiser and the generals. World War I left Germany a shattered nation. While some historians condemn this act as a betrayal of democratic values, Ebert had few options at the time in order to maintain some semblance of law and order.At first, however, right-wing Freikorps or volunteer paramilitary organizations were deployed against left wing agitators. Economic crisis and political instability led to the collapse of the republic and the rise of the Third Reich. In fact, Article 48 was used frequently by liberal chancellors to take immediate action to stabilize the economy.Not everything about the Weimar period was impoverishment and political turmoil. Together they drafted and adopted one of the worlds most democratic and p… Login The Reichstag, in turn, was also elected by a popular vote with its seats distributed proportionally. In many ways, it never shook this association, particularly from the clauses of the But, even before that government could come into being, the German navy chose in November to order a suicidal assault against the British navy in an attempt to salvage some honor. Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topicsFind articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabeticallyRecommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the HolocaustExplore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust"Weimar Republic" is the name given to the German government between the end of the Imperial period (1918) and the beginning of Nazi Germany (1933).