Article 48

• Designed to be used in emergencies.
• Gave the president power to rule by decree without the consent of the Reichstag.
• Ebert used article 48 during the crisis of 1919-24. He used it on 136 occasions.
• He defeated threats to the Weimar Republic from the left, such as the Ruhr uprising of March 1920, and protected Weimar democracy during the first highly unstable few years.
• He used it in a way that would have a destabilising effect in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
• He used it to fight threats from the left; he did not tend to use emergency powers against the right.
• He used it on occasion where there was no emergency, in order to bypass opposition in the Reichstag.
• He established the precedent that the president could use Article 48 outside of emergencies and that the government viewed the left as a greater threat than the right.