Kirchheimer saw the Weimar constitution as a trap for workers

Evidence

For Neumann and his Social Democratic colleagues in Berlin, Ernst Fraenkel, Otto Kahn-Freund and Martin Draht, what mattered was to exhaust the possibilities offered by the Weimar constitution. But for Kirchheimer what mattered was to understand that the constitution was not an opportunity but a trap. The constitution obscured awareness of the advantages of constitutionally guaranteed bourgeois property over the constitutionally guaranteed demands of the working class; it weakened the workers’ will to realize what they had demanded; and it encouraged a passive observation of events while the ruling classes regained their supremacy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 955

Categorization

• XREF: This prefigures the later Analysis of Authoritarianism’s finding that formal constitutional structures can stabilize class rule against the workers (dovetails with Chapter 26 on the authoritarian personality). — connects to: Weimar democracy fell because its constitution aided reactionaries — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 929; Weimar’s constitution functioned as a trap for the working class by masking bourgeois advantages — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 955

Broader Connections

• Weimar’s constitution functioned as a trap for the working class by masking bourgeois advantages #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 955