Authoritarian Liberalism in Late Weimar

Abstract

This chapter examines the interwar breakdown of liberal democracy in the Weimar Republic. Hermann Heller used the term authoritarian liberalism to capture the conjunction of political authoritarianism and economic liberalism ruling late Weimar. This regime attempted to depoliticize conflict, specifically in the economic sector, which had been threatening the interests of capital. It was ‘tolerated’ by the social democrats, who gradually abandoned democratic projects over the course of the 1920s, leaving behind not only radical options such as democratization of the economy, but also the parliamentary institutions of the Weimar Republic. The chapter concludes by examining how the seizure of power by the Nazi party, although marking a break, in the sense of heralding a regime based on mass mobilization, national redemption, and a cult of violence, continued the trajectory of depoliticization, signalling the ‘end of the political’.