Article 48 (Weimar Constitution)

Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919–1933) allowed the Reich president, under certain circumstances, to take emergency measures without the prior consent of the Reichstag. This power came to be understood to include the promulgation of emergency decrees. It was used frequently by Reich President Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party to deal with both political unrest and economic emergencies. Later, under President Paul von Hindenburg and the presidential cabinets, Article 48 was called on more and more often to bypass a politically fractured parliament and to rule without its consent. After the Nazi Party's rise to power in the early 1930s, the law allowed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, with decrees issued by Hindenburg, to create a totalitarian dictatorship by seemingly legal means. The Weimar National Assembly, which was responsible for writing a constitution for a new, democratic Germany following the overthrow of the Hohenzollern monarchy at the end of World War I, had the task of producing a document that would be accepted by both conservatives who wanted to keep the semi-constitutional monarchy of the Empire and people on the left who were looking for a socialist or even communist government. The Weimar Constitution's framers intended Article 48 to allow a strong executive within the parliamentary republic that could bypass the slower legislative process in times of crisis. The article allowed the Reich president to use the armed forces to compel any federal state to obey the lawful obligations placed on it by the Reich government. In addition, if "security and order" were endangered, the president could take measures, including use of the military, to restore order; he could also suspend certain enumerated fundamental rights: personal liberty, inviolability of the home, of the mail and other communications, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and of association, and the inviolability of property. The president had to inform the Reichstag of any such measures, and the Reichstag could revoke them by a majority vote.