Ebert became the first President of the German Reich after the abdication of Emperor William II , who had gone into exile in the Netherlands during the revolution in 1918 . The Weimar constitution gave the President extensive reserve powers , derived from that of the Emperor . The office was sometimes called Ersatzkaiser jokingly . In 1933 , President von Hindenburg signed into effect a constitutional amendment which gave the executive Hitler the power to pass laws without parliamentary consent . Due to this experience with overreaching powers that in an emergency could be abused to abolish the democratic process , postwar West Germany made the President little more than a figurehead , like most European monarchs .