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On 28 October, the Reichstag passed constitutional reforms that changed Germany into a parliamentary monarchy. The chancellor and his ministers were made dependent on the confidence of the parliamentary majority rather than the emperor, and peace treaties and declarations of war required the Reichstag's approval. [36]
The reforms overall were far-reaching and hasty, yet at the same time too half-hearted to avert the threat of revolution from below. Ultimately, the people and symbols of the old imperial power remained. [20] The constitutional reform was possible only with the involvement of the majority parliamentary groups.
Rathenau studied physics, chemistry and philosophy in Berlin and Strasbourg, and received a doctorate in physics in 1889 after studying under August Kundt. [ 4 ] Rathenau worked as a technical engineer in a Swiss aluminium factory and then as a manager in a small electro-chemical firm in Bitterfeld , where he conducted experiments in electrolysis.
Germany has been the home of some of the most prominent researchers in various scientific disciplines, notably physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. [1] Before World War II, Germany had produced more Nobel laureates in scientific fields than any other nation, and was the preeminent country in the natural sciences.
The leadership of the MSPD had seen its long-standing demands for a democratization of the Reich addressed by the October 1918 constitutional reforms. [2] The amendment to Constitution of the German Empire turned the German Reich into a parliamentary monarchy in which the government was no longer answerable to the emperor but to the majority in the Reichstag.
The success of the German Empire in the natural sciences, especially in physics and chemistry, was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became an industrial, technological, and scientific power in Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy ...
The leadership of the largest party in the Reichstag, the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD), and especially its chairman Friedrich Ebert, saw the party's main goal as already having been achieved by the constitutional reforms and believed that the Empire's elites would come to terms with democratisation if Germany remained a monarchy. [4]
Von Ranke, for example, professionalized history and set the world standard for historiography. By the 1830s mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology had emerged with world class science, led by Alexander von Humboldt in natural science and Carl Friedrich Gauss in mathematics. Young intellectuals often turned to politics, but their support ...