How to handle economic power? Law-making and the Reich economic council in Weimar Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the role of the Reich Economic Council (Reichswirtschaftsrat, RWR) in Weimar Germany and intends to highlight its ambiguous position between organized interests, political loyalties, public expectations and economic needs. In contrast to the prevailing historiographical narrative of the RWR’s insignificance, the paper argues for a closer look at its practice in economic policy to gain deeper insight into its role within the political system. Referring to the heated public debates on consumer policy and cartels in the late 1920s, the findings indicate that the RWR formed a platform for economic actors at the intersection of state and economy to influence or even pre-formulate economic policy within the protected sphere of an institutionalized 'back-room', and beyond party politics. But on the other hand, the refusal of taking sides in political controversies may have triggered the RWR's successive marginalization in the early 1930s. Thus, the RWR’s ambiguous position mirrors the contested and undecided nature of economic order in the 1920s, and therefore allows us to see behind the curtain of the complex relations between economy, politics and state in Weimar Germany.