ABSTRACT
On 21 March 1933, a wreath-laying ceremony was held in the Garrison Church at Potsdam to mark the opening of the new Reichstag elected on 5 March.1 In front of the tomb of Frederick the Great, the holiest shrine of Conservative Prussia, the new Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, joined Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Reich President and the living symbol of the Prusso-German Conservative tradition, in a ritual of dedication for the new regime. It was attended by four of the six sons of the former Kaiser and a chair was symbolically left vacant for the exiled Wilhelm II. A guard of honour was provided by detachments of the Reichswehr, the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), and by the Stahlhelm, the conservative veterans’ organization, of which Hindenburg was honorary president. After an address, in which Hitler referred to ‘the marriage between the symbols of past greatness and the vigour of youth’, he bowed to and shook hands with Hindenburg in a gesture of homage from the new Germany to the old. Broadcast live to the nation, the occasion moved some members of the middle class to tears.2
