ABSTRACT
Best-selling paperbacks on Weimar and the rise of Hitler kept alive the habit of scouring the remote past of the German peoples for clues to Hitlerism. The quest for the ‘German mind’ made more intimidating the task of German historians trying to analyse the relationship of Hitler to Germany, and therefore to the political system of the Weimar Republic. The historians of what came to be West Germany were, it must be said, more preoccupied with self-understanding than those of the German Democratic Republic. Parliamentary practice evolved within the framework of the constitution drafted by Hugo Preuss. The constitution sought a judicious balance between plebiscitary and representative elements, rather than any ‘dualism’ of power between President and Reichstag. The argument that many Germans regarded the President as an Emperor-substitute and that German political parties depended on presidential rule because it was a more ‘comfortable’ option than parliament is an important one, but very difficult to substantiate.
