The German Democratic Party (DDP), as a liberal center party, was part of the government in the so-called Weimar Coalition (1919/1920), i.e. at the time of the dramatic beginnings of the Weimar Republic. Minutes and other meeting reports of the Reich parliamentary group of the DDP are published here for the first time. They provide an insight into internal parliamentary decision-making, an area that is typically shy of publicity due to the prevailing fractional confidentiality. Thanks to a number of additional archival documents, the internal deliberations of the DDP parliamentary group, which were momentous for the first German Republic with its great burden of problems, become accessible: from the Treaty of Versailles to the Weimar Constitution and the Works Commitee Act to the Kapp Putsch in 1920.

Autorentext
Jörg-Detlef Kühne, geb. 1943, lehrte 19882008 als Professor für Öffentliches Recht und Verfassungsgeschichte an der Leibniz Universität Hannover, zuvor an der Universität zu Köln; Studium der Rechtswissenschaften und Geschichte.