Friedrich Ebert
Friedrich Ebert was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party who served as the first president of Germany from 1919 until his death in 1925.
Ebert was elected leader of the SPD on the death in 1913 of August Bebel. In 1914, shortly after he assumed leadership, the party became deeply divided over Ebert's support of war loans to finance the German war effort in World War I. A moderate social democrat, Ebert was in favour of the Burgfrieden, a political policy that sought to suppress discord over domestic issues among political parties in order to concentrate all forces in society on the conclusion of the war effort. He tried to isolate those in the party opposed to war and advocated a split.
Ebert was a pivotal figure in the German revolution of 1918–1919. When Germany became a republic at the end of World War I, he became its first chancellor. His policies at that time were primarily aimed at restoring justice and order in Germany and suppressing the left. To accomplish these goals, he allied himself with conservative and nationalistic political forces, in particular the leadership of the military under General Wilhelm Groener and the right-wing Freikorps. With their help, the Reich government which Ebert headed crushed a number of socialist, communist and anarchist uprisings as well as those from the right, including the Kapp Putsch, a legacy that has made him a controversial historical figure.
Early life
Ebert was born in Heidelberg in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on 4 February 1871, shortly after the creation of the German Empire, the seventh of nine children of the tailor Karl Ebert and his wife Katharina. Three of his siblings died at a young age. Although he wanted to attend university, this proved impossible due to his family's lack of funds. Instead, he trained as a saddle-maker from 1885 to 1888. After he became a journeyman in 1889 he travelled, according to the German custom, from place to place in Germany, seeing the country and learning fresh details of his trade. In Mannheim, he was introduced by an uncle to the Social Democratic Party, joining it in 1889. Although Ebert studied the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, he was less interested in ideology than in practical and organisational issues that would improve the lot of the workers then and there. Ebert was placed on a police "black list" due to his political activities, so he kept changing his place of residence. Between 1889 and 1891, he lived in Kassel, Braunschweig, Elberfeld-Barmen, Remscheid, Quakenbrück and Bremen, where he founded and chaired local chapters of the Association of Saddlers.After settling in Bremen in 1891, Ebert made a living doing odd jobs. In 1893, he obtained an editorial post on the socialist Bremer Bürgerzeitung. In May 1894, he married Louise Rump, daughter of a manual labourer, who had been employed as a housemaid and in labelling boxes and who was active in union work. He then became a pub owner that became a centre of socialist and union activity and was elected party chairman of the Bremen SPD. In 1900, Ebert was appointed a union secretary and elected a member of the Bremer Bürgerschaft as the representative of the Social Democratic Party. In 1904, Ebert presided over the national convention of the party in Bremen and became better known to a wider public. He became a leader of the "moderate" wing of the Social Democratic Party and in 1905 Secretary-General of the SPD, at which point he moved to Berlin. At the time, he was the youngest member of the party executive.
Meanwhile, Ebert had run for a seat in the Reichstag several times in constituencies where the SPD had no chance of winning: 1898 Vechta, 1903 and 1906 Stade. However, in 1912, he was elected to the Reichstag for the constituency of Elberfeld-Barmen. This was the election that also made the SPD the strongest party in the Reichstag with 110 out of a total of 397 members, surpassing the Centre Party. On the death of August Bebel on 13 August 1913, Ebert was elected as joint party chairman at the convention in Jena on 20 September with 433 out of 473 votes. His co-chairman was Hugo Haase.
World War I
When the July Crisis of 1914 erupted, Ebert was on vacation. After war was declared in early August, Ebert travelled to Zurich with party treasurer Otto Braun and the SPD's money to be in a position to build up a foreign organisation if the SPD should be outlawed in the German Empire. He returned on 6 August and led the SPD Reichstag members to vote almost unanimously in favour of war loans, accepting that the war was a necessary patriotic, defensive measure, especially against the autocratic regime of the Tsar in Russia. In January 1916, Haase resigned. Under the leadership of Ebert and other "moderates" such as Philipp Scheidemann, the SPD party participated in the Burgfrieden, an agreement among the political parties in the Reichstag to suppress domestic policy differences for the duration of the war in order to concentrate the energies of the country solely on bringing the conflict to a successful conclusion for Germany. This positioned the party in favour of the war with the aim of a compromise peace, a stance that eventually led to a split in the SPD, with those radically opposed to the war leaving the SPD in early 1917 to form the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, or USPD. Similar policy disputes caused Ebert to end his parliamentary alliance with several left-wing members of the Reichstag and start to work closely with the Centre Party and the Progress Party in 1916. Later those kicked out by Ebert called themselves "Spartacists".Beginning in 1916, Ebert shared the leadership of his Reichstag delegates with Scheidemann. Although he opposed a policy of territorial gains secured through military conquest on the western front, Ebert supported the war effort overall as a defensive struggle. Ebert experienced the traumatic loss of having two of his four sons killed in the war: Heinrich died in February 1917 in Macedonia, whereas Georg was killed in action in May 1917 in France. In June 1917, a delegation of social democrats led by Ebert travelled to Stockholm for talks with socialists from other countries about a conference that would have sought to end the war without any annexations of territory on the western front except for Luxembourg and giving back most of Alsace and Loraine with blessings from the German government. The initiative failed, however.
In January 1918, when the workers in munition factories in Berlin went on strike, Ebert joined the strike leadership but worked hard to get the strikers back to work. He was pilloried by some from the left as a "traitor to the working class" and by others from the right as a "traitor to the fatherland".
Revolution of 1918–19
Parliamentarisation
When it became clear that the war was lost in late summer and fall of 1918, First Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff of the military Supreme Command, pushed for the "parliamentarisation" of the German Empire, i.e. a transfer of power to those parties that held the majority in the Reichstag. The goal was to shift the blame for the military defeat from the OHL to the politicians of the majority parties.On 29 September 1918, Ludendorff suddenly informed Paul von Hintze, the German Foreign Minister, that the Western Front could collapse at any moment and that a ceasefire had to be negotiated without delay. However, he suggested that the request for the ceasefire should come from a new government sanctioned by the Reichstag majority. In his view, a "revolution from above" was needed. Chancellor Georg von Hertling and Emperor Wilhelm II agreed, although the former resigned. Scheidemann and a majority of SPD deputies were opposed to joining "a bankrupt enterprise", but Ebert convinced his party, arguing that "we must throw ourselves into the breach" and "it is our damned duty to do it". In early October, the Emperor appointed a liberal, Prince Maximilian of Baden, as chancellor to lead peace negotiations with the Allies. The new government for the first time included ministers from the SPD: Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer. The request for a ceasefire went out on 4 October. On 5 October, the government informed the German public about these events. However, there was then a delay, as the American President Wilson initially refused to agree to the ceasefire. His diplomatic notes seemed to indicate that the changes to the German government were insufficient and the fact that Wilhelm II remained head of state was a particular obstacle. Ebert did not favour exchanging the monarchy for a republic, but like many others, he was worried about the danger of a socialist revolution, which seemed more likely with every day that passed. On 28 October, the constitution was changed to make the chancellor dependent on the confidence of the Reichstag rather than the emperor. At that point, the majority parties of the Reichstag, including Ebert's SPD, were quite satisfied with the state of affairs; what they wanted was a period of calm to deal with the issue of negotiating an armistice and a peace treaty.
November Revolution
The plans of the new German government were thrown into disarray when a confrontation between officers and crews on board the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven on 30 October set in motion a train of events that would result in the German Revolution of 1918–1919 that spread over a substantial part of the country over the next week. Against that backdrop, the SPD led by Ebert on 7 November demanded a more powerful voice in the cabinet, an extension of parliamentarism to Prussia and the renunciation of the throne by both the Emperor and his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm. Ebert had favoured retaining the monarchy under a different ruler, but told Prince Max von Baden, "If the Emperor does not abdicate, the social revolution is inevitable. But I do not want it, I even hate it like sin." On the left, the Spartacists and a group of around 80 to 100 popular labour leaders from Berlin known as Revolutionary Stewards prepared for a communist revolution in the capital.On 9 November, the revolution reached Berlin as the larger companies were hit by a general strike called by the Spartacists and the Revolutionary Stewards, but also supported by the SPD and the mainstream unions. Workers' and soldiers' councils were created, and important buildings occupied. As the striking masses marched on the centre of Berlin, the SPD, afraid of losing its influence on the revolution, announced that it was resigning from the government of Prince Max.
Meanwhile, Prince Max had failed to convince Emperor Wilhelm II, who was at the army headquarters at Spa, Belgium, of the need to abdicate. Wilhelm had resigned himself to the loss of the imperial crown, but still thought he could remain king of Prussia. However, under the imperial constitution, the imperial crown was tied to the Prussian crown. When Max failed to convince him of the unreality of giving up one crown and not the other, he unilaterally and untruthfully announced that Wilhelm had in fact abdicated both titles and that the Crown Prince had agreed to relinquish his right of succession. The following morning Wilhelm went into exile the Netherlands, where he signed a formal abdication statement on 28 November.
Shortly after Prince Max's announcement, the SPD leadership arrived at the chancellery and Ebert asked the chancellor to hand over the government to him. After a short meeting of the cabinet, Prince Max resigned and, in a move that was unconstitutional because only the emperor could appoint a chancellor, handed his office over to Ebert, who thus became chancellor of Germany and minister president of Prussia. He was the first socialist, the second politician and the second commoner to hold either office. Ebert left the government of Prince Max mostly unchanged but appointed SPD members as Prussian Minister of War and military commander of the Berlin area.
Ebert's first action as chancellor was to issue a series of proclamations asking the people to remain calm, stay out of the streets and to restore peace and order. It failed to work. Ebert then had lunch with Scheidemann at the Reichstag and, when given the opportunity to do so, refused to speak to the masses gathered outside. Scheidemann however seized upon the opportunity, and in hopes of forestalling whatever the Communist leader Karl Liebknecht planned to tell his followers at the former royal palace, proclaimed Germany a republic. A furious Ebert promptly reproached him: "You have no right to proclaim the Republic!" By this he meant that the decision on the form of government was to be left to an elected national assembly. Later that day, Ebert asked Prince Max to stay on as regent, but was refused.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1977-074-08, Volksbeauftragte Landsberg, Scheidemann, Noske, Ebert, Wissell.jpg|thumb|right|People's Deputies Otto Landsberg, Philipp Scheidemann, Gustav Noske, Friedrich Ebert and Rudolf Wissell after the USPD had left the Council at the end of 1918
An entirely socialist provisional government based on workers' and soldiers' councils was about to take power under Ebert's leadership. It was called the Council of the People's Deputies. Ebert found himself in a quandary. He had succeeded in bringing the SPD to power, and he was in a position to put into law social reforms and improve the lot of the working class. Yet as a result of the revolution, he and his party were forced to share power with those on the left with whom he fundamentally disagreed: the Spartacists and the Independent Social Democrats. In the afternoon of 9 November, he grudgingly asked the USPD to nominate three ministers for the future government. That evening a group of several hundred followers of the Revolutionary Stewards occupied the Reichstag building and held an impromptu debate. They called for the election of workers' and soldiers' councils the next day with an eye to naming a provisional government. In order to keep control of events and against his own anti-revolutionary convictions, Ebert decided that he needed to control the workers' councils and thus become the leader of the revolution while at the same time serving as the formal head of the German government.
On 10 November, the SPD, led by Ebert, managed to ensure that a majority of the newly elected workers' and soldiers' councils came from among their own supporters. Meanwhile, the USPD agreed to work with him and share power in the Council of the People's Deputies, the new revolutionary government. Ebert announced the pact between the two socialist parties to the assembled councils who were eager for a unified socialist front and approved the parity of three members each coming from SPD and USPD. Ebert and Haase were to be the joint chairmen. The same day, Ebert received a telephone call from OHL chief of staff Wilhelm Groener, who offered to cooperate with him. According to Groener, he promised Ebert the loyalty of the military in exchange for some demands: that Ebert fight Bolshevism, end the system of workers' and soldiers' councils, call a national assembly and return the country to a state of law and order. In return Ebert promised that command of the troops would stay with the officer corps. Hindenburg remained head of the OHL to ensure and orderly return of the army. This initiated a regular communication between the two that involved daily telephone conversations over a secret line, according to Groener. The agreement between the two became known as the Ebert–Groener pact.
In domestic policy, a number of social reforms were quickly introduced by the Council of the People's Deputies under Ebert's leadership, including unemployment benefits, the eight-hour workday, universal suffrage for everyone over the age of 20, the right of farmhands to organise, and increases in workers' old-age, sick and unemployment benefits.