Ute Daniel is going to present a working paper on 'Betreutes Wählen. Wahlrechtsdebatten im deutschen Kaiserreich am Beispiel des Großherzogtums Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (Anfang 20. Jahrhundert)'- 'Assisted Voting. Suffrage Debates in the German Empire with the example of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach (beginning of the 20th century)'

The historiography of democracy mostly tends to focus on movements and endeavours the aims of which were to foster democratic developments and political participation. These topics are extremely important. But they do not help to understand why democratic constitutions were established or universal franchise was introduced (or why both was rejected). So my project asks why monarchs and governments, parliaments and parties in the course of the 19th and early 20th century extended the franchise (or why they refused to extend it). The underlying hypothesis is, that universal suffrage – the core of democracy as we understand it today – was brought about neither by pro-democratic movements nor by governing classes convinced of the inevitability of democratic developments before 1914, but by the First World War.