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The Reichstag on the morning after the fire (archive caption: “Am Morgen nach dem Reichstagsbrand”).Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1977-148-19A / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

The Reichstag fire · Berlin 1933

The Reichstag burned on a Monday night. Within a day, civil liberties were suspended. 24 days later, parliament voted away its own power.

A 24-year-old Dutchman was arrested inside the burning building at 21:27. Before the next evening a presidential decree had suspended the basic rights of the constitution, and the state of emergency it created lasted until 1945. Who set the fire is still disputed. What was done with it is not.

21:27
Marinus van der Lubbe is arrested inside the burning Reichstag
Under a day
from the fire to Hindenburg’s signature on the emergency decree
7
articles of the constitution suspended, from personal freedom to free speech
444 to 94
the Enabling Act, 24 days after the fire

01Platz der Republik, 27–28 February 1933

The fire was under control around 23:00. At the same hour, the order went out to arrest every Communist deputy

Monday, 27 February 1933. The alarm came shortly after 21:00. At 21:27 police seized Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, inside the burning building; he admitted at once that he had set the fire. At 21:42 the fire brigade raised its highest alarm.

Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Frick came to the building. Göring declared the fire the work of the Communists, a claim historians regard as refuted. A meeting there ended around 23:00 with an instruction to arrest all Communist deputies and officials and to ban every Communist newspaper. No decree yet existed. In the hours after the fire, police and SA men arrested several thousand people.

Tuesday, 28 February 1933. The cabinet sat from about 11:00 to 13:30, and again from 16:15. Hindenburg signed the decree soon after the second cabinet session; by about 19:45 Frick was already explaining it to the representatives of the German states.

Marinus van der Lubbe, born in Leiden in 1909, had been a member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands; he left it and joined the left-communist group “Spartacus” in 1931.

From the fire to the signature, hour by hour

Less than a day

Times as the sources give them. Where a source says “shortly after” or “about”, so does this clock; the dashed box is the window in which the signature must fall, between the start of the second cabinet session and the briefing of the states.

A black-and-white photograph of a charred box in the debating chamber: burned furniture in the foreground, two men standing by a gutted window.
A burned-out box in the Reichstag after the fire, 1933 (archive caption: “ausgebrannte Loge”).Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14367 / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de
A black-and-white photograph of five men in coats and hats standing together outside a prison gate.
Carl von Ossietzky (centre) outside Tegel prison, 10 May 1932. He was arrested again hours after the Reichstag fire.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0527-0001-861 / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

0227 February – 23 March 1933

24 days, day by day

From the day after the fire every day was lived under the decree. The calendar fills in as you read: red for each day under the emergency decree, a mark on the day of each event.

27 Feb 1933 – 23 Mar 1933One row per week
A calendar of the days from the fire to the Enabling Act, one row per week. As you read, each day under the emergency decree turns red, the day of each event is marked, and a strip beneath shows the seven suspended rights, the election result and the final vote.
The fireUnder the decreeAn event
A hazy black-and-white photograph of the Reichstag and its dome seen across the square, with onlookers, a lamp post and a lorry in the foreground.
The Reichstag on the morning after the fire.Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1977-148-19A / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Day 0 · Monday 27 February 1933

The Reichstag burns

Fire is reported shortly after 21:00. At 21:27 van der Lubbe is arrested inside the building. The constitution’s basic rights are still in force.

A black-and-white photograph of five men in coats and hats standing together outside a prison gate.
Carl von Ossietzky (centre) outside Tegel prison in 1932. He was arrested again hours after the fire.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0527-0001-861 / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Day 0 · the night

Arrests before any decree

The order to arrest Communist deputies and officials goes out around 23:00. Police and SA men arrest several thousand people in the hours after the fire. Carl von Ossietzky, editor of Die Weltbühne, is taken to the police prison in Spandau.

A black-and-white press photograph of men in dark coats coming down the Reichstag steps between columns, with uniformed men saluting at the side.
Hindenburg (centre) at the Reichstag in 1925.Agence Rol, 1925. Via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
A printed page of the Reichsgesetzblatt headed Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat.
The decree as printed.(unattributed), 1933. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Day 1 · Tuesday 28 February 1933

The decree

Two cabinet sessions, about 11:00 and 16:15. Hindenburg signs the “Decree for the Protection of People and State” soon after the second cabinet session. 7 articles of the constitution are suspended.

Vorwärts, the SPD's daily, is banned the same day.

A black-and-white portrait of a man in a dark peaked cap, looking to one side.
Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the KPD, in 1932.Agence de presse Meurisse, 1932. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Day 4 · Friday 3 March 1933

The KPD’s leader is taken

Ernst Thälmann, the KPD's chairman, is arrested in his hiding place in Berlin.

A black-and-white photograph of a uniformed policeman in a spiked helmet and an auxiliary policeman with an armband walking a dog along a Berlin street.
Election day, 5 March 1933: Schutzpolizei with Nazi auxiliary police on patrol in Berlin (archive caption).Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14381 / Pahl, Georg / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Day 6 · Sunday 5 March 1933

An election under the decree

Reichstag election. The NSDAP wins 43.9 per cent, short of a majority on its own; with the DNVP it has one.

SPD 18.3 per cent, KPD 12.3 per cent, Centre 11.2 per cent, DNVP 8 per cent.

Day 9 · Wednesday 8 March 1933

The Communist seats are cancelled

The KPD's mandates in the Reichstag are annulled under the emergency decrees. The KPD had won 81 seats three days earlier. Many of its deputies were already in custody or in hiding.

A black-and-white photograph of a line of men in civilian clothes standing in a yard, watched by uniformed guards.
Prisoners under SA guard at the Oranienburg camp, 1933.Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1976-086-16 / Unknown author / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Day 22 · Tuesday 21 March 1933

A camp outside Berlin, a ceremony in Potsdam

The SA opens a concentration camp in a former brewery in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, one of the first.

The new Reichstag is opened with a state ceremony in the Garrison Church in Potsdam; it then meets in the Kroll Opera.

A black-and-white photograph of a long, low neoclassical theatre building with a portico, seen across an open square.
The Kroll Opera on the Platz der Republik, 1930. With the Reichstag unusable after the fire, the parliament met here.Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-09067 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Day 24 · Thursday 23 March 1933

The Enabling Act

Guarded by SA and SS, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act by 444 votes to 94. Only the SPD votes against; 26 of its deputies are in custody or have fled. The government may now make laws without parliament, at first for 4 years.

27 February 1933 – 23 March 1933

The whole span

24 days

From a fire on a Monday night to a parliament that had voted away its own power. Every day after the first was lived under the decree, and the state of emergency was not lifted until 1945.

03Reichsgesetzblatt, 28 February 1933

One page suspended 7 basic rights. The state of emergency it created lasted until 1945

The “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State” was issued under Article 48 of the constitution, the President’s emergency power, and was signed by Paul von Hindenburg. It suspended, “until further notice”, the articles below. Arrests already under way that night now had a legal basis.

A printed page of the Reichsgesetzblatt headed Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat.
The decree of 28 February 1933 as printed in the Reichsgesetzblatt.(unattributed), 1933. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

What the Weimar constitution had guaranteed

  • Art. 114Freedom of the personSuspended
  • Art. 115The home is inviolableSuspended
  • Art. 117Secrecy of letters, post, telegraph and telephoneSuspended
  • Art. 118Freedom of expression, including the pressSuspended
  • Art. 123Freedom of assemblySuspended
  • Art. 124Freedom of associationSuspended
  • Art. 153PropertySuspended

The state of emergency it created was not lifted until 1945.

A black-and-white press photograph of men in dark coats coming down the Reichstag steps between columns, with uniformed men saluting at the side.
Paul von Hindenburg (centre) leaving the Reichstag in 1925. As Reich President he signed the decree of 28 February 1933.Agence Rol, 1925. Via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

04Berlin and Leipzig, 1933–2007

Who set the fire is still disputed. What it was used for is not

Decades of argument have not settled who lit the Reichstag. The fire’s use is on the record, day by day, above.

Van der Lubbe alone

From the early 1960s Fritz Tobias and Hans Mommsen argued that van der Lubbe acted alone and that the Nazis exploited a fire they had not planned. For decades this was the prevailing view.

Nazi arsonists

Critics ask how one visually impaired man could have set so many fires so quickly. Benjamin Carter Hett (2014) concludes that the evidence points to Nazi arsonists.

The state of the question

Who set the fire is still disputed.

The trial and after

  • 21 September 1933The trial of van der Lubbe and four Communist co-defendants opens at the Reichsgericht in Leipzig.
  • 23 December 1933Van der Lubbe is sentenced to death. All 4 co-defendants are acquitted.
  • 10 January 1934Van der Lubbe is executed in Leipzig.
  • December 2007In December 2007 the Federal Prosecutor General found that the verdict against van der Lubbe stands quashed.
A colour photograph of a large domed neo-baroque court building under a blue sky.
The Reichsgericht in Leipzig, where van der Lubbe and four Communist co-defendants were tried from September 1933.Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

The fire took one night. The decree took less than a day.

24 days after the fire, the Reichstag handed its power to Hitler’s government.

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{{cite web |title=The Reichstag fire: twenty-four days to the Enabling Act, 1933 |url=https://berlinfographics.com/reichstag-fire-1933/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-09 |access-date=2026-11-09}}