Mühlhausen:Hyperinflation und Staatskri

1923 is rightly regarded as the first great fateful year of the Republic of Weimar, which had been founded four years earlier. Within twelve months, the Germans experienced five governments. A veritable flood of crises, all of them individually with sufficient potential for danger, swelled into a torrent that threatened to drag the new state order into the abyss: The Reich, shaken by dramatic hyperinflation and economic crisis, beset from the outside not only by the occupation of the Ruhr, but also torn apart internally by separatism and unruly federal states (Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia), was on the brink of collapse.
Many in the control centres of power sought to push the Republic into the abyss, to smash the Weimar experiment, while others wanted to save it from ruin. There was a fine line between survival and exit, and it was almost a miracle that the defenders of the republic managed to avert the end after all by resorting to the extraordinary powers of the constitution.
Walter Mühlhausen provides a multifaceted picture of the year 1923 with nuanced judgements based on a broad range of sources: He succinctly illuminates the opportunities and risks of a dramatic time. In doing so, he succeeds in convincingly showing why 1923 did not come to an end.