In the Weimar Republic, fundamental debates on constitutional theory were conducted. A core theme was the relationship between popular sovereignty and democracy with the question of how the people could express themselves: Directly or only indirectly through representatives, with the help of organs or as a spiritual form of expression. There competed two directions, which are presented in the essay as the object-determined and the object-generating direction. For one, the writings of Carl Schmitt are used, for the other the work of Hans Kelsen. Both start from opposite concepts of democracy, which differ in particular in the popular concepts and the functions of the people as pouvoir constituant (Schmitt) or pouvoir constitue (Kelsen). The contemporary differences are additionally aggravated by philosophical-knowledge-theoretical controversies running in parallel: Can the will of the people be determined em-pirically or only as an intellectual manifestation? To this day, Weimar's fundamental discussions are regarded as a founding phase of Western constitutional thought, the second founding phase, so to speak, after the revolutionary phase in the USA and France before 1800.
