These are terms, concepts and ideas that are useful to understanding the political situation in the Weimar Republic. Some are particular to the period and government, while others were just in common usage but have a bearing on the Weimar milieu and political maneuvering. The period of German history from 1919 to 1933 is known as the Weimar Republic IPA (German Weimarer Republik). ...

• Agrarian Bolshevism — an idea by several political parties, involving the expropriation of large estates (mostly those of junkers in Prussia) and passing them out to peasants.
• Angestellte — White-collar employees
• Barmat scandal — brothers who owned a huge conglomerate of businesses and overextended themselves. Their bankruptcy involved millions of dollars and they bribed politicians on all levels of the Social Democratic party. It was a factor in the rise of Nazism.
  • Barmat Committee — The Prussian Landtag set up a special fact-finding commission.
• Beamte — civil service employees
• Best proclamation — the SA draft proclamation for the exigency when and if the communists would revolt after a Nazi electoral victory; found in the house of Dr. Werner Best, legal advisor to the Nazi Party; became a major embarrassment for Hitler.
• Black Reichswehr — another name for the Freikorps system
  • 'black' soldiers — the ex-soldiers involved in Freikorps units
• Bonzen — bosses; slang term for the Weimar system and those who enriched themselves at the expense of the workers.
• Conservative Revolutionary movement — a German nationalist literary youth movement, prominent in the years following World War I.
• der eiserne Hindenburg — the Iron Hindenburg; Hindenburg was the epitome for solidness
• der Krieg nach dem Krieg — "the war after the war"; the civil war that erupted in Germany after WWI; the turmoil of the Weimar Republic.
• Dolchstoßlegende — "Stab in the back" legend; the idea that the German Army was betrayed by subversive elements at home; i.e. the socialists, pacifists, liberals and Jews.
• Einwohnerwehren — civil guards; small civilian units established by General Maercker for the purpose of urban combat against communist revolutionaries; these civil units grew into the Orgesch.
• Erbhöfe — hereditary; farms labelled as such were guaranteed to remain with the same family in perpetuity.
• Ernährungsautarkie — agricultural self-sufficiency
• freebooters — the men of the Freikorps
• Freikorps — free corps; far-right paramilitary organizations made up of disillusioned WWI soldiers that sprung up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. They were frequently involved in political brawls, especially against the communists.
• Friedenssturm — Peace Offensive; term given by General Ludendorff to the last great offensive of WWI hoping to break Allied resolve.
• Froschperspektive — frog's-eye view; the German ex-soldier's outlook of WWI; categorization of ex-soldiers' memoirs.
• Honoratioren — important community leaders such as the major and village priest.
• industrial rationalization — the furious pace of major technological, financial, and economic reorganization that German industry underwent between 1924 and 1929.
• Inheritance
  • Partible inheritance — inheritances such as farms can be broken up amongst heirs; the culture of Catholic Bavaria
  • Impartible inheritance — inheritance passed only to the oldest son; family farmland prevented from being broken up amongst heirs.
• Kapp Putsch — (also Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch) of March, 1920 was an attempted military coup of the extreme right-wing aimed at overthrowing the Weimar Republic. It was a direct result of the Weimar government's acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles. It failed when the army did not intervene and a general strike paralyzed the capitol.
• Kriegspiel — preliminary situation report; General von Schleicher made one about the military's incapability to meet civil unrest. This one convinced von Papen to resign.
• Kriegserlebnis — (myth of the) war experience
• Kuhhandel — cattle trading; German slang term for the political maneuverings in the parliament and in the Weimar government.
• Kultur — culture <! --this is not a German term meaning something between culture and civilization. In German, there are two distinct words, Kultur and Zivilization, just like in English. Of course, different countries had different ideals of what "culture" should mean, but during the Weimar republic, Germany's understanding did not exceed variations between different English speaking countries. -->
• Landtag — state legislature
• Landespolizei — state police
  • Green police — another term for police (as opposed to the "police" of various paramilitary groups), because they wore green uniforms
• London Ultimatum — set the total sum of war damages to the Allies at 132 billion marks.
• Lusanne Agreement — Allies in order to forstall a Nazi government practically abolished the German reparations burden; major foreign policy success for Chancellor von Papen; July 9, 1932.
• Marstall — stables; ordered to be cleared during the Battle of the Schloss.
• Ministeramt — ministerial office
• Nahrungsfreiheit — self-sufficiency in nourishment.
• New Middle Class — white collar workers; consisted of the service and clerical (bookkeeping) occupations for management, industry and government
• Old Middle Class — consisted of self-employed farmers, shopkeepers, merchants and artisans
• Orgesch — Organisation Escherich; the civil guards that grew into the reserve militia for the German Army under the command of Major Dr. Forstrat Georg Escherich.
• Osthilfe — the 1931 government assistance programs for large eastern German estates. It made available 1.5 billion marks for farmers to make debt conversion and lowered local taxes and freight rates.
• Quasselbude — "twaddling shop"; Nazi slang term given to the German parliament
• Räterepublik — workers councils or "soviet" republics; the communist revolutions in Berlin and Munich
• Red terror — violence of the communist uprisings (see also White Terror)
• Reichsheer — = army of the Reichswehr
• Reichswährungskommissar — national currency commissioner
• Reichswehr — the German armed forces 1921-1934
• Rentenmark Miracle — Dr. Hjalmar Schacht issued the Rentenmark which was pegged to the price of gold and had an exchange rate of 4.2 marks per dollar. It ushered in five years (1924-1929) of economic stability and a new period of prosperity for the Weimar Republic.
• Saupreiss — Prussian swine; Bavarian slang term for Prussians because of their domination of German politics and culture.
• Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten — (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers) ; the largest of the paramilitary Freikorps organizations that arose after World War I. It was an accumulation point for nationalistic and anti-Weimar Republic elements.
• Schloss — castle
  • Battle of the Schloss — The Volksmarine Division led by Lt. Dorrenbach seized the Kaiser's castle and stables which defeated an army unit sent to dislodge them.
• Vertrauensmann — low-level political agent; Reichwehr sent agents to infiltrate political parties; The Bavarian unit sent Hitler as a Vertrauensmann to the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
• von — an aristocratic appellation to German names, though it does not always signify that class.
• Wahlkreise — Weimar electoral districts.
• Wehrkreis — military districts within Weimar Germany
• Weimar Coalition — the first solid majoritarian parties; the Social Democratic Party (37.9%), the Catholic Center Party (19.7%), the liberal Democratic Party (18.6%).
• Wehrverbände — volunteer defense units
• White terror — violence of the counter-revolutionary and anti-communist forces, i.e. the Freikorps. (see also Red Terror)
• Young Plan — the new reparations agreement negotiated by Gustav Stresemann at the Hague;
  • anti-Young coalition — Alfred Hugenberg with the Nationalist Party; Stahlhelm; the Pan-German League and Dr. Schacht of the Reichsbank; the campaign began in September 1929.
• Zusammenstösse — gang fights; the brawls between the various political paramilitary groups

Junkers (English pronunciation: ; German pronunciation: ) were the landed aristocracy of Prussia and Eastern Germany. ... The Sturmabteilung (SA, German for Storm Division and is usually translated as stormtroops or stormtroopers) functioned as a paramilitary organisation of the NSDAP – the German Nazi party. ... The Conservative Revolutionary movement was a German nationalist literary youth movement, prominent in the years following The First World War. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ... Magazine title from 1924, example of a propaganda illustration in support of the legend The Dolchstoßlegende or Dolchstosslegende, (German dagger-thrust legend, often translated in English as stab-in-the-back legend) refers to a social mythos and persecution-propaganda among bitter post-World War I German nationalists, that... The designation of Freikorps (German for Free Corps) was originally applied to voluntary armies. ... The word Putsch literally means a thrust or blow. ... Woodrow Wilson with the American Peace Commissioners The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 is the peace treaty created as a result of six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which put an official end to World War I between the Allies and Central Powers. ... Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. ... A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ... Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (January 22, 1877 - June 3, 1970) was a German financial expert and Minister of Economics from 1935 until 1937. ... The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918 The word Prussia (German: Preußen or Preussen, Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prūsai, Latin: Borussia) has had various (often contradictory) meanings: The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of southern Lithuania, the Kaliningrad exclave of... With an area of 70,553 km² (27,241 square miles) and 12. ... The Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (German: Steel Helmet, League of Frontline Soldiers) was one of the many paramilitary Freikorps organizations that arose after the defeat of World War I in the Weimar Republic. ... Von (generally in small case only as von) is a German preposition which approximately means of or from. ... A counterrevolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part. ... Gustav Stresemann (May 10, 1878 – October 3, 1929) was a German politician and statesman during the Weimar Republic and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. ... Arms of The Hague The Hague (with capital T; Dutch: Den Haag, or officially s-Gravenhage) is the administrative capital of the Netherlands, located in the west of the country, in the province South Holland of which it is also the capital. ... Alfred Hugenberg (June 19, 1865 - March 12, 1951) was an influential German businessman and politician. ...

See also

• Weimar political parties
• Weimar paramilitary groups
• Glossary of the Third Reich