Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert (February 4 1871 – February 28 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Deutschland (S.P.D.).

When Ebert was elected as the leader of the S.P.D. after the death of August Bebel, the party members of the S.P.D. were deeply divided because of the party's support for World War I. Ebert supported the Burgfrieden and tried to isolate the war opposers in the party. After the war and the end of the monarchy he served as the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office. Before being elected as President, he briefly served as Chancellor during the last months of the German Empire. After he was announced as the new President, the government intervened together with the army and right wing Freikorps against the leftist uprisings, which resulted in the death of several left politicians and ended the partnership of the S.P.D. in government with the Independent Social Democratic Party of Deutschland (U.S.P.D.).

After that he changed his politics to a “policy of compensating“ between the left and the right, between the workers and the enterprises. For that he followed a policy of brittle coalitions. This resulted in some problems, for example the S.P.D. agreed during the crisis of 1923 to an extension of the work time without extra payment for the workers, but the conservative parties hadn’t agreed to also introduce taxes for the rich as an compensation. His death, which resulted in the monarchist Paul von Hindenburg as his Presidential successor, is seen as an important break in the Weimar Republic, which ended less than a decade later.