Political turmoil and economic poverty

A fundamental social and political transformation took place in Germany at the end of the First World War. An epoch of history came to end upon the abdication of Wilhelm II. Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the republic in Berlin. British Canadian troops occupied the city of Bonn following the withdrawal of the German soldiers. They were replaced by the French forces of occupation in 1920. In the meantime the city suffered considerably from the consequences of the world war due to its special economic structure. The high income tax revenue, which was once the bedrock of the city’s prosperity, fell by the wayside due to the tax reform of 1920.

Three processes that were running in parallel were to make the economic situation in Germany and above all in the Rhineland, that had already been bleak enough, deteriorate still further in the first post-war years. In addition to the turmoil of the so-called Ruhrkampf (Ruhr struggle) in the course of which the Rhineland revolted in the form of passive resistance to the occupation and the dismantling of the coal and steel industry, the movement of the separatists, who proclaimed a separation of the Rhineland area from Prussia under French control, was also going on at the same time. At a national level the ever increasing levels of inflation, which were a consequence of the high reparation payments that the state had committed itself to pay in the Versailles treaty made matters worse still.

The fact the Rhineland had belonged to the German Reich manifested itself in the “Rhine millennium festival” in quite spectacular style two years later. The festival referred to the events in 921 AD when the rulers of the Western and Eastern Francia met on a ship on the Rhine off the shoreline of Bonn and agreed upon the incorporation of the areas on the left hand side of the Rhine within the German Reich.

The economy slowly recovered in the course of the 1920s due to the currency reform that has been introduced. Public life began to normalise again when the French troops of occupation left the Rhineland in 1926.