After the First World War, Germany faced an enormous housing shortage. The Weimar Republic, which clearly declared itself to be a social welfare state (Sozialstaat) in the constitution of 1919, adopted a housing policy characterized by systematic state intervention in order to adjust social inequalities in the free housing market. The state intervention at that time consisted of two components: economic intervention to promote "social house building" (Sozialwohnungsbau) for lower income groups, social intervention which aimed at solving conflicts between tenants and landlords, mainly to the advantage of tenants. The economic power of house owners had been excessively strengthened by the housing shortage, leading to high rents, and then fears of a catastrophe in the housing markets which might destabilize the new political order. The Republic, therefore, urgently needed to introduce a system of social intervention restricting the legal right of house owners to dispose of their property. But this attempt caused unrest itself, particularly amouag house owners, and they started a protest movement. The movement joined forces with the antirepublican movement of the petit bourgeoisie (Mittelstand), and developed into an increasing political burden for the Republic, which had to pay "social costs" for the establishment of the social welfare state. The law for legal regulation of housing rents in 1922 represented the core of the social intervention policy outlined above, and also served as the focus of the related conflicts in society and their social costs. This paper attempts to analyze the social and political dimensions of the new rent regulation system with special reference to the possibilities and limitations of the Weimar Repubic as a social welfare state.
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