The first round of the Reich presidential election of 29 March 1925 had these results:
| Votes | |
| Dr. Karl Jarres, Middle Class coalition | 10, 416,658 |
| Otto Braun, SPD | 7,802,497 |
| Dr. Wilhelm Marx, Center Party | 3,887,734 |
| Ernst Thälmann, Communists | 1,871,815 |
| Dr. Wilh. Hellpach, Democratic Party | 1,568,398 |
| Dr. Heinr. Held,Bavarian People’s Party | 1,007,450 |
| Erich Ludendorff, Völkisch parties | 285,793 |
| Others | 25,761 |
| Total of valid ballots | 26,866,106 |
The election was inconclusive, since none of the candidates had the necessary majority. (In the first round, a candidate must have more votes than all others together if he is to be elected.) In the second round, the national parties united behind General Field Marshal von Hindenburg, while the Center, Democratic, and Social Democratic parties supported the Center Party’s Marx, and the KPD stayed with its candidate from the first round, Thälmann.
As was to be expected, the Reds, and also the Center Party, conducted the election campaign in a typically Jewish-Marxist manner, using hateful, personal attacks on the opposing candidates. In a crude manner impossible to surpass, the honorable old field marshal was buried in piles of filth by the Red and Black press.
It is interesting and instructive to compare the outbursts of the System parties in 1925 and 1932. One thereby recognizes the deep dishonesty of the System press in all its loathsomeness.