The second Müller cabinet, headed by Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was the sixteenth democratically elected government during the Weimar Republic. It took office on 28 June 1928 when it replaced the fourth Marx cabinet, which had resigned on 12 June after failing to pass a promised school law.
The cabinet was a grand coalition made up of the Social Democratic Party, German Democratic Party (DDP), Centre Party, German People's Party (DVP) and Bavarian People's Party (BVP). Lasting just under one year and 9 months, it was in office longer than any other government of the politically unstable Weimar Republic. The broad range of views it brought together made it difficult to resolve the issues it faced and weakened support for the parliamentary system as a whole. In a vote on military spending for a new armored cruiser, for example, the SPD leadership felt it necessary to go against its own party's overwhelming opposition in order to preserve the coalition. On economic issues, impasses developed between the coalition parties on the left and the right. It was able to achieve some successes in foreign policy but eventually broke apart over the increased costs of unemployment insurance that came about with the onset of the Great Depression. Müller's second cabinet resigned on 27 March 1930 and was replaced on 30 March by the first cabinet of Heinrich Brüning.
The second Müller cabinet was the last government of the Weimar Republic to be based on parliamentary majorities. The presidential cabinets that followed ruled without the Reichstag using the emergency decree powers that the constitution granted to the German president.
Election After the Bürgerblock government under Chancellor Wilhelm Marx (Centre) broke apart because of the member parties' differing ideas on school policy, Reichstag elections were held on 20 May 1928. The SPD came out the clear winner, picking up 22 more seats than in 1924, for a total of 153. The Centre Party won 61 seats, the DVP 45, DDP 25 and BVP 17, coming to 301 seats out of the Reichstag's 491. The non-coalition parties with the strongest showings were the nationalist German National People's Party (DNVP) with 73 seats and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) with 54. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) had 12.
Formation of the government
As the strongest party in the Reichstag, the SPD had the task of forming a government. After not having participated in a cabinet since 1923 (under Gustav Stresemann of the DVP), it had expressed a willingness to take on government responsibility again at its 1927 party congress. It did not have many alternatives in 1928. There were not enough mandates to form a Weimar coalition (SPD, Centre and DDP), and a government of all the middle class parties against the Social Democrats was not possible either. The solution was a grand coalition consisting of the Weimar coalition plus the DVP and BVP.
Within the SPD, Hermann Müller was favored for the office of chancellor. A competing proposal to have the Prussian minister president Otto Braun as chancellor in a personal union of the two positions was quickly discarded. President Paul von Hindenburg would have preferred to see DVP chairman Ernst Scholz as chancellor but allowed himself to be persuaded by his inner circle, which expected a Social Democratic chancellorship to erode SPD support in the medium term. On 12 June 1928, Hindenburg finally entrusted Müller with forming a government, although he continued to play a role in the process. He insisted on Wilhelm Groener as Reichswehr (armed forces) minister and rejected the appointment of Joseph Wirth from the left wing of the Centre Party as vice-chancellor (the position remained vacant under Müller). The Centre, which did not want to see itself bound to full participation in the government, finally sent Theodor von Guérard as an "observer" to the cabinet, where he took over the post of minister of Transport. The DVP was also reluctant. Initially, it wanted to enter the government only if it was also allowed to participate in the Prussian government, demanding that the DVP be added to the Weimar coalition there. It took the intervention of the DVP's leading figure, Gustav Stresemann, who became foreign minister again under Müller, to convince the party to yield.
After the attempts to form a government had dragged on for weeks, Müller finally appeared before Parliament on 3 July 1928 with his policy statement. He was not, however, able to present a formal coalition government. It saw itself instead as a "cabinet of personalities", which meant that the parties from which the ministers came reserved the right to oppose parts of the government's policies. Many members of the Reichstag from the SPD also remained reserved about the new government. Their primary wish was to have the SPD ministers help the Reichstag membership and the party accomplish its goals. All in all, it was not possible to speak of broad support for the government from the parties involved. It was not until 13 April 1929 that the "cabinet of personalities" became a classic coalition government on the basis of a coalition agreement. Guérard resigned in order to allow greater ministerial participation by the Centre, which was represented by three ministers beginning in April 1929.
Members The cabinet consisted of the following ministers:
Domestic issues Armored cruiser A
At the beginning of its term in office, the new cabinet was faced with a serious crisis over the armored cruiser A, both in the public eye and within the government. The Treaty of Versailles had imposed significant constraints on Germany's armaments, although the construction of new warships was not completely prohibited. The Reichswehr had vigorously pushed for the construction of armored cruisers under the Marx government, ostensibly to replace obsolete units. While the Reichsrat, Parliament's upper house led by Prussia, had spoken out against the construction in December 1927, the Reichstag, with the Bürgerblock parties in the majority, had voted in favor. The Reichsrat responded on 31 March 1928, the day of the Reichstag's dissolution, with a request to the cabinet, which was then acting only in a managing capacity, to approve the construction of the ship after 1 September 1928 and a renewed examination of the financial situation. In the 1928 Reichstag election campaign, the left-wing parties SPD and KPD had sharply criticised the plan and demanded that it be abandoned in favor of social projects. Their campaign slogan was "Food for children instead of armored cruisers". The DDP also considered the armored cruiser to be a prestige project for the German Navy that made little sense. During the coalition negotiations, the DVP had pushed for the construction of the ship and referred to the favorable vote in the previous Reichstag. The Centre had supported the DVP, but only half-heartedly, and the DDP had abstained. In order not to endanger the formation of the coalition, a decision on the cruiser was postponed.
The issue came up in the cabinet in August 1928 when Minister of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Groener submitted a motion to approve the first instalment for the construction of the armored cruiser. According to Minister of Finance Rudolf Hilferding (SPD), there were no financial objections. Groener threatened to resign if the project was obstructed by the new government, and rumors of an ensuing resignation of President Hindenburg increased the pressure on the Social Democratic cabinet members. They did not want to provoke a governmental or even a constitutional crisis so soon after taking office and, in the end, agreed to grant the funds.
The cabinet's decision met with fierce criticism among the SPD Reichstag membership and in the party as a whole. The KPD took advantage of the situation to launch a petition for a referendum against the construction of the armored cruiser. Pressured in this way, the SPD parliamentary contingent decided to submit a proposal to stop the project. The Reichstag vote on the motion on 15 November 1928 took place under strict party discipline, with the result that the three SPD ministers and the Chancellor himself had to vote against the government resolution that they had supported just weeks earlier in the cabinet. It amounted to a vote of no confidence in themselves. The middle class public held the vote against the Social Democrats, viewing it as an inability to govern. Joseph Wirth of the Centre Party spoke openly of a "creeping crisis of German parliamentarism". Moreover, the Social Democrats' votes could not prevent the granting of funds for the construction of the armored cruiser since the middle class parties were able to put together a majority against the SPD's motion to stop the project.
In mid-June 1929, the second instalment for armored cruiser A came up for discussion, although without causing similar public controversy. In the Reichstag, the KPD moved that the instalment be cancelled, and the SPD agreed. This time, however, the Social Democratic cabinet members were not bound by the constraints of party discipline. They voted against the KPD motion and were thus part of the Reichstag majority that approved the funding.
Ruhr iron dispute The coalition had to deal with its first major social and economic crisis in the so-called Ruhr iron dispute, the "largest and longest lockout Germany had ever experienced". It took place in the iron and steel industry on the Rhine and Ruhr from October to December 1928.
The initial signs of the economic downturn prompted the regional metal employers' association to reject union demands for a wage increase. In the collective bargaining negotiations, it offered only an extension of the existing agreement, with a slight increase in pay for low-wage groups. When the bargaining parties were unable to reach an agreement, a state-appointed arbitrator, High Court Counsel Wilhelm Joetten, made a ruling on 26 October 1928. The trade unions accepted the arbitrator's decision, but the employers turned it down. In a legal procedure that had become common in 1923, the minister of labor, in this case the Social Democrat Rudolf Wissell, declared the arbitrator's award in such a situation universally binding. On 13 October 1928, the employers gave notice to their workforces effective as of 28 October, and on that date, closed the factories. Unlike in the past, they were not willing to accept an arbitrator's declaration of general applicability, with the result that on 1 November some 200,000 to 260,000 workers were locked out. 160,000 of them were not unionised and therefore without union support benefits. Benefits from unemployment insurance were not allowed.
The employers also took legal action against compulsory arbitration and declarations of general applicability. For them, the content of the arbitration award was less important than the procedure itself. They did not regard final decisions by a single person as appropriate. Above all, they considered the procedure of generalization to be an expression of wage fixing by the state. They thought that the social policy innovations of the Republic, which included the eight-hour day, autonomy in collective bargaining and the unemployment insurance introduced by the 1927 Act on Employment Services and Unemployment Insurance (AVAVG) – like declarations of general applicability to end collective disputes – were undesirable developments that should be rolled back. At a time when a Social Democratic-led government was once again established at the national level, the employers used the industrial action of lockouts to vigorously oppose "state wage determination". They had avoided such steps during the previous middle class governments.