Election Results

Germany will soon have a new Chancellor (Prime Minister). Name: Dr. Otto Braun. Party: Socialist. Present occupation: Prime Minister of Prussia. Characteristics: bald, preacher-like, thoughtful, sarcastic, stern. Famed? Yes, because in 1925 German Socialists cast 7,785,678 ballots in an unsuccessful attempt to elect him president.

That Socialist Braun will be the next German Chancellor was the virtually unanimous forecast of correspondents last week, when 40,000,000 Germans trudged to the polls through a nationally pouring rain and elected to the Reichstag a potent phalanx of Socialist deputies, more than twice as numerous as the runner-up Nationalist cohorts.

The Centrist parties which for years have held the balance of power did not materially gain or lose in strength last week. Therefore, they will be compelled by the sweeping Socialist gains to admit to power, at last, the Socialist party which has always been largest in Republican Germany but has generally been held down by a coalition of smaller rivals.

The election returns not fully verified last week show that the numerical strengths of the various parties in the forthcoming Reichstag, will be as compared to the previous Reichstag: Socialists 152, previously 131; Catholic Centrists (the party of Chancellor Dr. Wilhelm Marx) 62, previously 68; Nationalists (once the party of Hindenburg) 72, previously 110; Communists 54, previously 45; People's (the party of Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann) 44, previously 51; Democrats 25, previously 32, Economic Union 23, previously 21; Bavarian Peoples party 16, previously 19; Voelkische (the reactionary monarchist Ludendorffers) 12, previously 13; Independents 5, previously 3. Peasants 23, previously 0.

The striking Nationalist losses are of peculiar significance. Last spring, the leaders of the party proceeded to tone down their traditional white-hot pro-monarchist anti-Locarno and anti-Dawes plan program in order to enter the mild centre coalition cabinet, then formed by Dr. Marx (TIME, Feb. 7, 1927). By this compromise they apparently lost the confidence of almost half the Nationalist voters, who had had faith until then, that the monarchy might be restored in some modified form and that Germany might some day successfully buck against the Dawes Plan.

The Nationalist losses and Socialist gains make it absolutely unlikely in any event that the present cabinet of Dr. Marx can continue in office.