history.
             The election gave the Social Democrats 163 of a total of 423 delegates to the assembly. They were the largest party but fell far short of an absolute majority. The Catholic Center party and the Democrats, the two other moderate groups, had as many delegates combined, while the Nationalists and other right-wing groups and the left-wing Independent Socialists had many fewer. The three moderate parties formed a coalition both to govern the country and to frame a new constitution. The assembly elected Friedrich Ebert first president of the German republic, with Philipp Scheidemann, also a Social Democrat, serving as chancellor. At the beginning of February 1919, the constituent assembly convened in Weimar, the city of Goethe and Schiller, in order to avoid intimidation by the army and the mobs of Berlin, still in a state of anarchy. Although the seat of government remained in Berlin, and the assembly itself moved there after a few months, the short-lived democracy to which it gave birth will forever be known as the Weimar Republic.
             The constitution borrowed freely from American, British, French, and Swiss precedent and practice, but all of these democratic shoots were grafted onto a solidly Germanic trunk. Although the republic was federal in form, the states were clearly subservient to the central government, which had greater power in principle if not in fact than it had under the Second Reich. There were also fewer component states than in the Second Reich as a result of amalgamation. The president, elected for a seven-year term, was similar to an elective constitutional monarch, as in contemporary France, rather than being an active head of government, as in the United States. He did, however, possess certain important emergency powers. Ironically, Article 48 of the constitution provided that "if public safety and order ... are materially disturbed or endangered," the president might suspend the constitution and "take th...