ABSTRACT
The class conflict within Germany was a major determinant of political instability in the long run and it was given a new dimension after 1923. The impact of the economic crisis made it imperative that the parliamentary parties most obviously representing two sides of the conflict, namely the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and German Democratic Party, should preserve a working political relationship beyond the demise of the first Great Coalition in 1923. The SPD proposed an immediate and ultimately abortive no-confidence motion in Heinrich Bruning’s government but there were soon signs of remorse within the party’s Reichstag faction. The fashionable contention that the Weimar Republic was afflicted by a ‘permanent structural crisis’ appears on the face of it to deny that any one year was more significant than another. The violence of Communist and National Socialist clashes, after the opening of parliament in October 1930, produced a majority for limiting the misuse of parliamentary immunity.
