Today: Headlines from March 28-29, 1925

A Century in the Rear-View

Each morning in 2025 starts with a swipe or a smart-speaker headline. But step back exactly 100 years and the world was thumbing through broadsheets, huddling around crystal-set radios, and trying to gauge which way the post-war winds would blow. On this late-March weekend in 1925, all eyes in Europe fixed on Germany, a nation still staggering under reparations, hyper-inflation memories, and political whiplash.

1. Germans Queue at the Polls: The First Direct Presidential Election Since the Kaiser (29 March 1925)

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Berlin’s Kreuzberg dawn broke chilly and gray, but by 7 a.m. the cobblestones outside polling stations echoed with heavy boots and hopeful chatter. For the first time in German history, citizens were choosing their head of state by popular vote. The Weimar Constitution demanded a new president after the sudden death of Friedrich Ebert, and the ballot looked like a political kaleidoscope:

• Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg – the 77-year-old war hero many monarchists quietly hoped would steer Germany back toward conservative certainty.
• Wilhelm Marx – the centrist Catholic politician offering stability without nostalgia.
• Ernst Thälmann – the fiery Communist promising revolution by ballot instead of barricade.
• A half-dozen regional and fringe candidates splitting the protest votes.

By nightfall preliminary counts showed no one reached the required 50 percent. Hindenburg held a slender lead, Marx trailed, and Thälmann’s red wave tallied a striking 1 in 10 votes. Newspapers rushed extra editions; cafés stayed open past curfew; and the phrase “Stichwahl” (run-off) buzzed through trams and beer halls.

Why It Mattered

The election crystallized Germany’s identity crisis: imperial nostalgia versus republican pragmatism, all under the long shadow of economic pain. Just a month earlier, Adolf Hitler had been allowed to re-launch the Nazi Party after his brief imprisonment. In that sense, March 1925 marked Act I in a drama that would convulse the world within a generation.

2025 Side-Glance

• Today’s German voters cast digital absentee ballots; They also scroll fact-checks in real time—a far cry from waiting two days for final tallies by telegraph.
• The Weimar Republic’s fractured vote still serves as a cautionary tale whenever modern democracies flirt with polarization and disinformation.
• One century later, Germany’s Federal President is largely ceremonial, proof of how constitutional design evolves after hard-earned lessons.

Closing Reflection

Late March 1925 felt unsettled yet brimming with democratic possibility. Reading those headlines reminds us that the past isn’t just prologue—it’s a persistent whisper: guard your institutions, mind the margins, and remember that no ballot is ever truly “just another vote.”