forced its ministers to vote against the allocation of funds to the project in the Reichstag although they had endorsed it in cabinet meetings. In addition, the Ruhreisenstreit was a bone of contention, as the DVP refused to provide financial support even to those only indirectly affected by the strike. Financing the budget for 1929 and the external liabilities of the Reich was a huge problem, and an agreement was only possible by counting on negotiating more lenient conditions with the Allies. Müller himself had been the leader of the delegation to the League of Nations in the summer of 1928 where he—despite a heated argument with French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand over German rearmament—had laid the groundwork for concessions by the Allies. By January 1930, the government had succeeded in negotiating a reduction in reparation payments (the Young Plan, signed in August 1929) and a promise by the Allies to completely remove the occupation forces from the Rhineland by May 1930. Meanwhile, Müller's cabinet also had to deal with diplomatic problems with Poland over trade and ethnic minority questions. German-Soviet relations also reached a nadir, as the Soviet government blamed the cabinet for violence between Communist demonstrators and the police in Berlin in May 1929. At that point, the bourgeois parties were looking for ways to end the coalition with the SPD. There were attempts to stop the Young Plan via a referendum and the coalition parties disagreed on the issue of unemployment insurance. Müller himself was unable to participate in the political arena for several months due to a life-threatening illness. Although Müller was able to resume his duties in the fall of 1929, he was physically weakened and unable to control the centrifugal forces at work. The coalition finally fell apart in a disagreement about budgetary issues. After the onset of the Great Depression, the unemployment insurance required an injection of taxpayer money by the Reich, but the parties could not agree on how to raise the funds. Müller was willing to accept a compromise offer by Heinrich Brüning of the Zentrum, but he was overruled by the SPD parliamentary group which refused to make any further concessions. On the suggestion of his advisors, Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg refused to provide Müller's government with the emergency powers of Article 48, forcing Müller to resign on 27 March 1930. Nevertheless, a number of progressive reforms were implemented under