Reich Citizens' Council

The Reich Citizens‘ Council (German: Reichsbürgerrat) was the umbrella organisation for the citizens’ councils that were set up across Germany to oppose the workers‘ and soldiers’ councils that had taken over many local governments in the early weeks of the German revolution of 1918–1919.

After the parliamentary Weimar Republic was established and the workers' and soldiers' councils disbanded, the Reich Citizens' Council adopted a programme to fight Marxism, alter the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and end the "command economy". It worked with or supported other conservative and far-right groups such as the Anti-Bolshevist League and the German Agrarian League. The Kapp Putsch of March 1920 split and seriously weakened the council, but it was still able to use its influence to help elect Paul von Hindenburg president of Germany in 1925 and block a referendum to expropriate the properties of the former German princes in 1926. By the time the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the Reich Citizens' Council was no longer playing a significant political role.

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