GERMANY: Luther Rests

“Putsch!” Seventeen times during one night last week Berlin policemen rapped thunderously upon the doors of prominent Monarchists, burst in when they were not instantly admitted, ransacked.

Documents and other evidence thus collected enabled the Polizei to announce proudly that they had nipped a most elaborate Monarchist Putsch. “Exhibit A” was a large autographed portrait of Wilhelm of Doorn, with a note of glowing encouragement attached.

The scheme, as revealed, was designed to operate, if possible, without bloodshed, along semi-constitutional lines. The Cabinet was first to be unhorsed in the Reichstag and President von Hindenburg pressed to call in as Chancellor the arch-Monarchist Dr. Neumann, who was then to form a Cabinet from such notorious Fascists as Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, “the German Northcliffe,” subsidizer of numerous Monarchist papers, and General von Moehl, one of the most ruthless of soldiers.

The final step was to be the exaction of President von Hindenburg’s resignation, thus automatically causing a Monarchist Chancellor to assume the executive power, after which martial law would be declared on some pretext and an “emergency constitution” proclaimed, setting up a “regency” for the Hohenzollerns.

Forewarned of the police raids, all but one of the important Putsch plotters quietly “went abroad”. Unlucky Colonel von Luck, head of the Olympic (Militarist) Athletic Club, was arrested, jailed.

“Flagged Out!” The Putsch scare was aggravated last week by the occurrence of the identical event planned as the first step in its accomplishment — the fall of Chancellor Hans Luther’s Cabinet.

This actually resulted from a totally different cause, grew out of a squabble originally little noticed by the press — the so-called “German flag controversy” (TIME, May 17).

The imperial flag (black, white and red) was, as everyone knows, displaced by the Republican flag (black, red and gold) through the action of the National Assembly at Weimar in 1919. Recently the Luther Cabinet ordered that the merchant marine flag (black, white and red with a tiny black, red and gold field in the staff corner) should also be flown by German diplomatic and consular offices. This flag was denounced as “nine-tenths Imperial and only one-tenth Republican” by the Left parties; and last week Chancellor Luther was savagely interpellated about it in the Reichstag.

Herr Luther chances to possess more ability than wit. His enemies succeeded in making it appear that the Cabinet had taken a momentous decision detrimental to the Reich without consulting the Reichstag. Flustered, Herr Luther attempted to evade collision by announcing that he would postpone the execution of the flag order until August. Then, witless, he offered the ridiculous explanation that several months’ time would be needed to communicate the order to German consulates in different parts of the world.

The dam of ridicule and laughter burst. Herr Luther’s delighted enemies roared. Soon the Reichstag passed 176* to 146† (with 103 abstentions) a motion introduced by the Democrats censuring Herr Luther personally and incidentally puffing President von Hindenburg.

Never since the War has a German Chancellor been thus publicly humiliated. The Luther Cabinet at once resigned, refused to carry on pro tempore. Promptly the President appointed as “temporary Chancellor,” a noted militaristic Democrat of pronounced Monarchist leanings, Dr. Otto Karl Gessler, onetime gruff Burgomaster of Nuremberg, Defense Minister in the last seven Cabinets, appointed Dictator of Germany in 1923 to put down the Bavarian Separatist movement. At that time he said: “The Bavarians want and need a King. We can’t keep a King away from them forever.”

Retrospect. Herr Luther may look back upon more than a year in office as Chancellor* with pardonable pride. He formed a Cabinet (TIME, Jan. 26, 1925) after a three months’ crisis; and when it fell (TIME, Dec. 14, 1925) upon an issue bound up with the Locarno Treaties, he carried on as temporary Chancellor until he managed to form another Cabinet (TlME, Feb. 1) and again carried on until last week — a difficult feat of conciliation. Like a sage attorney who has pleaded well, Herr Luther rested his case with posterity.

New Cabinet. As the week waned, former Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, Minister of Justice in the Luther Cabinet, was summoned by President von Hindenburg to form a new Government. Since he heads the Catholic Centrist party, he stands upon the same political middle ground as Luther and Stresemann. Naturally, therefore, he called back the entire Luther Cabinet, except Dr. Luther himself. To Dr. Johannes Bell he entrusted his own former Ministry, Justice.

This development merely demonstrates once more that the potent German Socialists and Nationalists are so out of touch with the rest of the electorate that the only feasible type of Cabinet continues to be one resting on a Centrist minority coalition and steering a tortuous course between the giants of the Left and the Right.

*Democratice, Socialist, Communist. †German and Bavarian Peoples Parties and Catholic Center.

*During his regime President von Hinden burg was elected (TlME, May 4 ,1925), the great Germano-Polish mutual population transfers took place (TIME, Aug.10,1925), the Dawes Plan was officially reported to have worked well during its first year (TlME, Dec. 21, 1925), the First Rhineland Occupied Zone was evacuated by the Allies (TlME, Feb. 15), the Russo-German Neutrality Treaty was signed (TlME,May 10). At this period the Locarno Pacts were negotiated—resulting in the return of Germany to the Western European diplomatic sphere — and only the Geneva fiasco (TIME, March 15, et seq., THE LEAGUE) prevented Germany from enter ing the League.

While Herr Luther’s sterling political worth was made evident continuously a great deal of the credit for accomplishments belongs to his adroit Foreign Minister, Dr. Stresemann, who consistently leaped into many a breach left wide by the Chancellor’s lack of political agility.

As Finance Minister in the two Cabinets preceding his own, Dr. Stresemann’s (TlME Oct. 15. 1923) and Dr. Marx’s (TlME Dec. 10, 1923), his regime covered the inception of the Dawes Plan (TlME, June 16,1924), the suppression of the Rhineland Separatist revolt (TIME, Oct. 29, 1923), the squelching of Ludendorff’s “Beer Hall Revolt” (TlME, Nov.19, 1923) and h i s acquittal of a charge of treason (TlME, April 7, 1924), the death of Hugo Stinnes which toppled his industrial Tsardom (TlME, April 21, 1924), the election of the present Reichstag — the Communists being repudiated at the polls (TIME, Dec. 15, 1924).