March

March – named after the Roman god of war Mars – has been a turbulent month in German history. After demanding a range of civil and human rights in a document known as the Twelve Articles, German peasants rose up on 20 March 1525 to launch the German Peasants’ War. The bloody defeat of the insurgents made this the last popular revolt for three hundred years. The March Revolutions of 1848 saw the All-German National Assembly adopt an imperial constitution setting out a range civil liberties and democratic rights. This revolution also failed and Germans had to wait until 1919 for the first genuinely democratic German state. That year saw formation of the Weimar Republic following German defeat in the First World War. Democracy lasted only fourteen years, and was brought to an end on 23 March 1933 by the passing of the Enabling Act, a key legislative step on the road to the dictatorship of the Third Reich.