This master's thesis (January 2024) is a contribution to the history of democracy by juxtaposing the theory and practice of democracy in order to highlight its lines of development, ruptures and continuities. Firstly, this illustrates that democracy is an ongoing process, both in theory and in practice. This means that the ideas of what constitutes a democratic order change both spatially and temporally. It can be stated, that there is no such thing as one democracy. Rather, there are many types of democracy. Secondly, this work demonstrates how the diversity of democratic theory, which has its roots in the history of European ideas, has had an impact on the practical implementation of the principle of democracy and has been reflected in it. For this reason, the present work is divided into two thematic sections. The first section traces the development of the idea of democracy from the assembly democracy of ancient Athens through the thinkers of the Enlightenment to the emergence of liberal and representative democracy in the modern era. The second section examines the development of democracy in Germany from the perspective of constitutional history, focusing on the Weimar Constitution of 1919 as the foundation of the first German democracy. Abstract - Link to download