Friedrich Ebert - Biography

Biography

Born in Heidelberg as the son of a tailor, he himself was trained as a saddle-maker. After he had become a journeyman he migrated, according to the German custom, from place to place in Germany, seeing the country and learning fresh details of his trade until he finally settled at Bremen. There he became interested in the agitation of the Social Democratic Party, obtained in 1893 an editorial post on the socialist Bremer Volkszeitung and in 1900 was appointed a trade-union secretary and ultimately elected a member of the Bremen Bürgerschaft (comitia of citizens) as representative of the Social Democratic Party. He became a leader of the "moderate" wing of the Social Democratic Party, becoming Secretary-General in 1905, and party chairman in 1913. In 1912 he was elected as a Member of the Reichstag (parliament of Germany) for the constituency of Elberfeld-Barmen (now part of Wuppertal).

In August 1914, Ebert led the party 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. The party's stance, under the leadership of Ebert and other "moderates" like Philipp Scheidemann, in favour of the war with the aim of a compromise peace, eventually led to a split, with those radically opposed to the war leaving the S.P.D. in early 1917 to form the U.S.P.D. For similar reasons several left-wing members of parliament had already distanced themselves from the party in 1916. Later they called themselves "Spartacists".

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 S.P.D. in October 1918. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Prince Max resigned on November ninth, and handed his office over to Ebert. Prince Max also declared that the Kaiser had abdicated. Ebert favoured retaining the monarchy under a different ruler ("If the Kaiser does not abdicate, the social revolution is inevitable. But I do not want it, I even hate it like sin" he had said to Max von Baden on November seventh). On the same day, how ever, 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. Ebert reproached him: "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 might be the restoration of the monarchy.

Scheidemann's proclamation ended the German monarchy, and an entirely Socialist provisional government based on workers' councils took power under Ebert's leadership.

Ebert led the new government for the next several months. He used the army under the command of Minister of Defense Gustav Noske and also Freikorps (paramilitary organizations of former soldiers) to suppress a Spartacist uprising against the establishment of a parliamentary democracy. Spartacist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered by members of the Freikorps. On February eleventh, 1919, five days after the Constituent Assembly convened in Weimar, Ebert was elected to be the first president of the German Republic.

In 1920, the German workers protected his government from the right-wing Kapp Putsch of some Freikorps elements by means of a nation-wide general strike. The armed forces Reichswehr remained neutral and did not defend the republic. Nevertheless, the government used the army and parts of the Freikorps in order to suppress a communist-led rebellion in Germany's main industrial area, the Ruhr district in north-west Germany. Thousands of people were killed.

Participants in the Kapp Putsch were treated leniently. The judiciary in the Weimar Republic was "blind in the right eye". 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.

Vicious attacks by Ebert's right-wing adversaries, including slander and ridicule, were often condoned or even supported by the judiciary when the president turned to the courts. The constant necessity to defend himself against those attacks also undermined his health.

Ebert suffered from gallstones and frequent bouts of cholecystitis. He became acutely ill in mid-February 1925, from what was believed to be influenza. His condition deteriorated over the following two weeks, and at that time he was thought to be suffering from another episode of gallbladder disease. He became acutely septic on the night of 23 February, and underwent an emergency appendectomy (which was performed by August Bier) in the early hours of the following day for what turned out to be appendicitis. He died of septic shock four days later, at 54 years of age.