The Fehrenbach cabinet, headed by Chancellor Constantin Fehrenbach of the Centre Party, was the fourth democratically elected government of the Weimar Republic. It took office on 25 June 1920 when it replaced the first cabinet of Hermann Müller, which had resigned due to the poor showing of the coalition parties in the June 1920 elections to the new Reichstag. The 1920 Reichstag replaced the Weimar National Assembly, which had served as Germany's interim parliament and written and approved the Weimar Constitution.
Fehrenbach's government was the first since the fall of the German Empire in 1918 that did not include the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The SPD remained the strongest party after the elections, but its share of the vote had dropped significantly. The government was formed by the Centre Party, the German Democratic Party (DDP) and the German People's Party (DVP).
The dominant issues that the cabinet faced were uprisings in Saxony and Upper Silesia and negotiations over Germany's war reparations to the Allies of World War I, the failure of which led to the French occupation of three cities in the Ruhr.
Fehrenbach resigned on 4 May 1921 over his government's inability to find common ground on war reparations. The cabinet remained in office on a caretaker basis until 10 May, when it was replaced by the first cabinet of Joseph Wirth, the Centre Party minister of Finance under Fehrenbach.
Election and establishment
The Reichstag elections of 6 June 1920 brought a defeat for the Weimar Coalition, the three parties that had carried the previous government – SPD, DDP and Centre. Their share of the popular vote dropped from 74.8% in the January 1919 election to 43.6%. Gains were made both by the parties on the right – the DVP and German National People's Party (DNVP) – and the far left – the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Nationalist voters blamed the Weimar Coalition for the lost war, for accepting the severe terms of the Treaty of Versailles and for domestic unrest by workers such as during the Ruhr uprising. Those on the left felt betrayed by the SPD and the other parties of the political centre for siding with the military and other forces that had been powerful under the Empire (the bureaucracy, industrialists and land owners) against communist or socialist protests.
Since the SPD, Centre and DDP had only 225 of the 466 Reichstag seats, the old coalition lacked a majority. In addition, the elections had not taken place in Schleswig-Holstein, Upper Silesia, East Prussia and West Prussia due to the plebiscites scheduled there to decide whether the regions would remain part of Germany. The 42 sitting delegates for the districts temporarily retained their seats until elections could be held after the plebiscites. The elections in East Prussia and Schleswig-Holstein took place on 20 February 1921 and resulted in the three Weimar Coalition parties losing a total of nine more seats seat. (The last of the 3 elections for the first Reichstag took place on 19 November 1922, when the Fehrenbach cabinet was out of office.)
On 8 June, the first Müller cabinet offered to resign. President Friedrich Ebert accepted but asked the ministers to remain in office until a replacement cabinet could be formed. Since the old coalition had insufficient Reichstag support and the left-wing and right-wing parties would not cooperate, the only solution seemed to be to expand the existing coalition to the left or right. Also on 8 June, an article published in the SPD party newspaper and viewed as reflecting the party's official stance, categorically refused cooperation with the DVP and called on the USDP to drop its most radical demands, thereby making a centre-left coalition that included it possible.
The Centre Party favoured maintaining the old coalition but was open to inclusion of the DVP. The DDP and DVP, as the smaller partners in any coalition, were passive. Both saw working with the SPD as unavoidable. On 11 June Ebert, following the tradition of approaching the strongest party first, asked Hermann Müller, the caretaker chancellor, to form a new cabinet. Müller contacted Arthur Crispien of the USDP to negotiate entry of the far-left party into the existing coalition. Crispien refused and Müller handed back the task of forming a government on 12 June.