In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, Otto Kirchheimer, a young legal scholar and socialist, published an article, provocatively titled “Weimar— and what then?” It drew immediate and widespread attention from both academics and political leaders of all political persuasions. Kirchheimer focused on the issue of why democracy in Germany had become so dysfunctional in the space of ten short years. He argued that the source of the problem lay in the nature of the Republic's Constitution, in a serious flaw that resulted not from the governmental structures and processes that had been put in place, but from the character and nature of the fundamental rights that had been granted to the nation. He posited, following the lead of the liberal reformer Friedrich Naumann during the constitutional debates of 1919, that in the new social state of postrevolutionary Germany, it was no longer politically sufficient simply to provide citizens with a list of liberal freedoms protecting the individual against the incursions of an overbearing government. A modern constitution had also to incorporate in its pages a substantive “marching route, a binding program” for future political action. It had to contain an integrated and accepted vision of a future social order. But this was exactly what the Weimar Constitution was lacking. Kirchheimer observed that from the moment of its inception it had become essentially a tool of vested social and economic interests, whose primary goals were to ensure and legitimate the preservation of their “well-earned” historical rights. The result was a “constitution without decision [ohne Entscheidung],” one that did not contain “any values in whose name the German people can be in agreement.” Instead, it represented “a juxtaposition and recognition of the most different value systems previously unknown and unique in the history of constitutions.” By its very nature, it did not encourage true democratic compromise and reconciliation among interested parties, but only winning and losing based on the political strength of competing forces each seeking to impose its own ideological worldview and material interests on its opponents.