Friedrich Ebert

Infobox President
name=Friedrich Ebert


order=1st President of the German Reich
term_start=February 11, 1919
term_end=February 28, 1925
chancellor=Philipp Scheidemann, Gustav Bauer, Hermann Müller, Konstantin Fehrenbach, Joseph Wirth, Wilhelm Cuno, Gustav Stresemann, Wilhelm Marx, Hans Luther
predecessor=Position established
William II (as ruler of the German Empire)
successor=Paul von Hindenburg
Hans Luther (acting)
birth_date=birth date|1871|2|4|mf=y
death_date=death date and age|1925|2|28|1871|2|4|mf=y
order2=9th Chancellor of the German Reich
9th Chancellor of the German Empire
1st Chancellor of the Weimar Republic
term_start2=November 9, 1918
term_end2=February 11, 1919
monarch2=William II (November 1918)
predecessor2=Prince Maximilian of Baden
successor2=Philipp Scheidemann
order3=Minister President of Prussia
term_start3=November 9
term_end3=November 11, 1918
monarch3=William II
predecessor3=Prince Maximilian of Baden
successor3=Paul Hirsch
party=SPD

Friedrich Ebert (February 4, 1871ndash February 28, 1925) was a German politician (SPD), who served as Chancellor of Germany and its first president during the Weimar period.

Born in Heidelberg as the son of a tailor, he himself was trained as a saddlemaker. He became involved in politics as a trade unionist and Social Democrat, and soon became a leader of the moderate "revisionist" wing of the Social Democratic Party, becoming Secretary-General in 1905, and party chairman in 1913. He also was a politician in Elberfeld (now part of Wuppertal).

In August 1914, Ebert led the party to vote almost unanimously in favour of war appropriations, accepting that a war was a necessary patriotic, defensive measure. The party's stance, under the leadership of Ebert and other revisionists like Scheidemann, in favour of the war eventually led to a split, with the more left wing elements in the party leaving in early 1917 to form the USPD.

When it became clear that the war was lost, a new government was formed by Prince Maximilian of Baden which included Ebert and other members of the SPD in October 1918. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, "Prince Max" resigned on November 9, and handed his office over to Ebert. Though the Kaiser was declared to have abdicated, Ebert favoured retaining the monarchy under a different ruler. On the same day, however, Scheidemann proclaimed the German Republic, in response to the unrest in Berlin and in order to counter a declaration of the "Free Socialist Republic" by Karl Liebknecht later that day. This proclamation ended the German Monarchy and an entirely Socialist provisional government took power under Ebert's leadership.

Ebert accepted this position only reluctantly. He was a supporter of the monarchy until the abdication of the Kaiser ("If the Kaiser abdicates, the social revolution is inevitable. But I do not want it, I hate it like sin", he said to Max von Baden on November 7), and when Scheidemann proclaimed the Republic he responded: "Is that true? You have no right to proclaim the Republic!" By this he meant that the decision was to be made by an elected national assembly, even if that decision would be the restoration of the monarchy.

Ebert led the new government for the next several months, notably using the army under support of Minister of Defense Gustav Noske to suppress the Spartacist uprising, commonly identified with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. When the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar in February, 1919, Ebert was chosen to be the first president of the German Republic.

The German workers protected his government from the Kapp Putsch in 1920 by means of a nationwide general strike. After the strike was over, however, Ebert's government again recruited the Freikorps and the soldiers who had wanted to overthrow him in order to quell remaining uprisings in western Germany.

While hundreds of civilians were killed (including many who had nothing to do with the uprising), most of the putschists were treated leniently. Some of the Freikorps already used the swastika as their symbol of resistance against the "red pack" at the time, and many of them as well as right-wing members of the "Reichswehr" would later become influential national socialists. In November 1923, Ebert rebuked his own party for leaving the coalition government of Gustav Stresemann.

Controversy

Ebert remains a somewhat controversial figure to this day. While the SPD recognizes him as one of the founders and keepers of German democracy whose death in office in February 1925 was a great loss, communists and others on the far left argue that he paved the way for fascism by supporting the ultra-right Freikorps and their violent suppression of Marxist uprisings.

The Freikorps, a loose association of German WWI veterans organizations that created and maintained independent support throughout Germany after World War I, had been disseminating the view that what they described as radical leftists of the German socialists, tacitly supported by the SPD, were responsible for Germany's defeat in World War I, a statement referred to by its deniers as the "Dolchstoßlegende". The claim, was supported by the alleged evidence of socialist support for the activities of the Spartacus leadership, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, in organizing hundreds of strikes which they claimed were to disrupt war production in the Imperial German armaments industry during 1917 and 1918, while allegedly seeking to replace Imperial Germany with a number of soviet socialist republics. Socialist leaning historians claim that this activity was not responsible for the collapse of the Imperial German defense economy on the homefront, the military collapse. They claim instead that since the mainstream socialist had entered the ceasefire negotiations on request of the military leadership, after the generals had decided that the war could no longer be won. Ebert aided the generals who, they claim, considered the Weimar Republic only a temporary, necessary evil to divert blame from themselves and prepare for the next war. Ebert is thus viewed by his leftist critics as having playing exactly the role that the military wanted him to play. These claims misrepresent the request of the generals for what it was, namely a requirement of the allies for the military leadership to remove itself from civil power in order to permit Germany to enter into the Versailles peace talks.

Some historians have defended Ebert's actions as unfortunate but inevitable to prevent the dismemberment of Germany and the creation of a number of soviet states on the model that had been promoted by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and the membership of the Spartacus Group. Leftist historians like Bernt Engelmann have argued that many of the workers were in fact centrist SPD supporters, and that the communist party was not yet politically relevant (in part because of the assassination of Liebknecht and Luxemburg). However, the actions of Ebert and his Minister of Defense, Gustav Noske, against the workers contributed to their radicalization and to increasing support for communist ideas. During his five years as President he issued 134 emergency decrees, amongst them a number that dealt with the socialist-led, and terrorist implemented , overthrow of the elected Government of Bavaria, and its short-lived replacement by an unelected soviet-style republican regime.

The creation of elected workers' councils, which Ebert had tolerated in the early days of the republic, was viewed by moderate workers as a legitimate centrist instrument to oversee the democratic government, when many government officials were reactionaries who yearned for a return of the monarchy, and when, socialists claim, workers still enjoyed little protection from exploitation, so that strikes were frequently ended with machine guns. Opponents of these claims claim that Bismarkian Imperial Germany was the leading western nation in promoting protection of workers from exploitation and introducing such programs as publicly supported health care and pensions.

Ebert's far left critics view him as a knowing or unknowing agent of the far right who made the wrong decisions in shaping post-World War I Germany by giving power and influence to those who, they claim, had already sought German world domination in World War I; thus preventing (they claim) the creation of a united, progressive political party. Anti-SPD slogans such as "Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!" ("Who betrayed us? Social democrats!") were born out of the experiences of Ebert's era when the scale of activities of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and other extreme leftist, arguably treasonous, had become widespread public knowledge, and the political opponents claimed that these activities could not have been stopped without tacit support by the SPD of the far right against the public. Ebert's supporters claim that a united, progressive political party was not possible given the simultaneous existence of the revolutionary left encouraged by Lenin's early successes while the bulk of socialist-leaning support sought a return and enhancement of stable growth from the earlier Bismarkian style social programs as a foundation for democratic socialism in Germany.

Ebert's supporters understood his leadership to be headed towards democratic rather than revolutionary socialist socialism and he is honoured for that stance in Germany today.

A German Grammar School located in Hamburg (Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium) was named after Friedrich-Ebert.

See also

* Friedrich Ebert Foundation
* Ebert-Groener pact

External links

* [http://www.ebert-gedenkstaette.de/index_n.htm President Friedrich Ebert Memorial in Heidelberg (in German only)]

Persondata
NAME= Ebert, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=German politician (SPD), who served as Chancellor of Germany
DATE OF BIRTH=February 4, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH=Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH=February 28, 1925
PLACE OF DEATH=