Origin
Following the end of World War I, a German National Assembly gathered in the town of Weimar, in the state of Thuringia, in January 1919 to write a constitution for the Reich. The nation was to be a democratic federal republic, governed by a president and parliament.
The constitution was drafted by the lawyer and liberal politician Hugo Preuss, who was then state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, and later became Minister of the Interior. Preuss criticized the Triple Entente decision to prohibit the incorporation of post-Austro-Hungarian-dissolution German Austria into the nascent German republic, saying it was a contradiction of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination of peoples.
Disagreements arose between the delegates over issues such as the national flag, religious education for youth, and the rights of the provinces (Länder) that made up the Reich. These disagreements were resolved by August 1919, though sixty-seven delegates abstained from voting to adopt the Weimar Constitution.
The Republic's first President, Friedrich Ebert, signed the new German constitution into law on August 11, 1919. The first article of the constitution stated that "The power of the state emanates from the people."
The fundamental tenet of the Weimar Constitution was that Germany was to be a republic on the parliamentary model with a parliament elected using proportional representation. Universal suffrage was established, with a minimum voting age of 20.
Read more about this topic: Weimar Constitution
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