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People's State of Bavaria

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The People's State of Bavaria (German: Volksstaat Bayern)[nb 1] was a republic in Bavaria from 1918 to 1919. The People's State of Bavaria was established on 8 November 1918 during the German Revolution, as an attempt at a socialist state to replace the Kingdom of Bavaria. The state was led by Kurt Eisner until his assassination in February 1919. Its government under Johannes Hoffmann went into exile in Bamberg when the rival Bavarian Soviet Republic was formed on 6 April 1919. After the Soviet Republic's end, the People's State of Bavaria developed into the Free State of Bavaria.

People's State of Bavaria
Volksstaat Bayern
1918–1919
Flag of Bavaria
The location of the Free People's State of Bavaria (in red) shown with the rest of the Weimar Republic (in beige).
The location of the Free People's State of Bavaria (in red) shown with the rest of the Weimar Republic (in beige).
StatusUnrecognized state
CapitalMunich
Common languagesGerman
GovernmentSocialist republic
Minister-President 
• 8 November 1918 – 21 February 1919
Kurt Eisner
• 1 March 1919 – 17 March 1919
Martin Segitz (acting)
• 17 March 1919 – 6 April 1919
Johannes Hoffmann
LegislatureLandtag of Bavaria
Historical eraWorld War I · Revolutions of 1917–1923
• Established
8 November 1918
• Disestablished
6 April 1919
CurrencyGerman Papiermark (ℳ)
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
German Empire
Kingdom of Bavaria
Weimar Republic
Bavarian Soviet Republic
Today part ofGermany (Bavaria)

Background

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Munich soldiers after the proclamation of the republic

The roots of the People's State lay in the German Empire's defeat in the First World War and the ensuing German Revolution of 1918–1919. At the end of October 1918, German sailors mutinied off the North Sea coast. After setting up a revolutionary workers' and soldiers' council at Kiel in early November, they quickly spread the councils across Germany and with little bloodshed took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities.[1]

 
Postage stamp of Bavaria's King Ludwig III with the overprint Volksstaat Bayern (People's State of Bavaria)

Munich, the capital of Bavaria, was "an island of anarchic bohemianism and political radicalism in an otherwise predominantly Roman Catholic rural sea of small towns and timber houses scattered across the foothills of the Alps," according to Michael Burleigh.[2] Alan Bullock writes that "Few towns in the Reich were as sensitive to the mood of unrest as Munich: its political atmosphere was unstable and exaggerated towards one extreme or the other,"[3] and, according to Joachim Fest, "No other city in Germany had been so shaken by the events and emotions of the revolution and the first postwar weeks as excitable Munich."[4]

Extensive constitutional reforms of the governing structure of the Kingdom of Bavaria, under discussion between the royal government and all parliamentary groups since September 1917, were agreed to on 2 November 1918. These included, among other things, the introduction of proportional representation and the transformation of the constitutional monarchy into a parliamentary monarchy. However, events on the ground were outpacing these measures.

Beginning on 3 November 1918, protests initiated by the socialist Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) called for peace and demanded the release of detained leaders. On the afternoon of 7 November 1918, the first anniversary of the Russian revolution, Kurt Eisner, an idealistic Independent Social Democratic Party politician[5][6] addressed a crowd estimated to have been about 60,000 on the Theresienwiese – current site of the Oktoberfest – in Munich. He demanded an immediate peace, an eight-hour workday, relief for the unemployed, abdication of Bavarian King Ludwig III and the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and proposed the formation of workers' and soldiers' councils. The crowd marched to the army barracks and won over most of the soldiers; those who didn't go over to the revolution were too war-weary to mount any resistance to it.[7] The combined group, estimated to be more than 100,000, then marched to the Residenz Palace.[8] That night, King Ludwig, abandoned by the army, fled from the Palace with his family and took up residence in Anif Palace in nearby Salzburg, for what he hoped would be a temporary stay. He was the first of the monarchs in the German Empire to be deposed.

The next day, Eisner, having gotten the approval of the local revolutionary workers' and soldiers' councils,[9] declared Bavaria a "free state" – synonymous to "republic" – a declaration which overthrew the monarchy of the Wittelsbach dynasty, which had ruled Bavaria for over 700 years, and Eisner became Minister-President of Bavaria.[10] Eisner was a middle-class Jew who had been a drama critic in Berlin before he left his wife and family to come to Munich, where he took up with a female journalist, frequented the cafés of the Schwabing district of the city, and wrote reviews for the Münchener Post – although he later lost his job because he was part of the "revisionist right-wing" of the Social Democratic Party, which wanted the party to drop its attachment to Marxist ideology.[9]

Eisner helped found the Munich branch of the Independent Social Democratic Party and became known for his anti-war stance, which had garnered him eight months in jail after he organized a number of peace strikes in January 1918; he was released under a general amnesty in October 1918.[9] Despite his gift for rhetoric and oratory, Eisner had no political or administrative experience when he became minister-president.[4][11]

Eisner government

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Kurt Eisner, the Minister-President of the Free People's State of Bavaria

The government consisted of:[12]

Portfolio Minister Took office Left office Party
Minister-President8 November 191821 February 1919 USPD
Vice President8 November 191821 February 1919 SPD
Ministry of Finance8 November 191821 February 1919 Independent
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Kurt Eisner
8 November 191821 February 1919 USPD
Ministry of Culture
Johannes Hoffmann
8 November 191821 February 1919 SPD
Ministry of the Interior8 November 191821 February 1919 SPD
Ministry of Justice8 November 191821 February 1919 SPD
Ministry of Transportation8 November 191821 February 1919 Independent
Ministry of Military Affairs8 November 191821 February 1919 SPD
Ministry of Social Welfare8 November 191821 February 1919 USPD

On 12 November 1918, King Ludwig III signed the Anif declaration releasing both civil and military officers from their oaths; the newly-formed Eisner government interpreted this as an abdication, although to date, no member of the royal House of Wittelsbach has ever formally renounced the throne.[13]

Though he advocated a socialist republic, Eisner distanced himself from the Russian Bolsheviks, declaring that his government would protect property rights. For a few days, the Munich social market economist Lujo Brentano served as People's Commissar for Trade (Volkskommissar für Handel).

On 7 January 1919, a Provisional State Constitution (Vorläufiges Staatsgrundgesetz) was promulgated.

The new republic started out with many strikes against it. None of the leaders were native Bavarians, and they were bohemians and intellectuals – many of them Jewish – who were conspicuous in their anti-bourgeois bias. Those from the right-wing called Eisner a "foreign, racially alien vagabond" and a Bolshevist, and his associates "unscrupulous alien scoundrels", "Jewish rascals" and "misleaders of labor".[citation needed] Eisner did not help matters by declaring that his regime would have "government by kindness" and would create a "realm of light, beauty and reason." There were frequent spectacles such as parades, demonstrations, concerts, and speeches, but the regime's philosophical utopianism won over few converts.[citation needed] Eisner even admitted to German guilt for World War I at a socialist conference in Bern, Switzerland, and, with his secretary Felix Fechenbach, published papers from the official archives of Bavaria which showed the German complicity in the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.[nb 2][4][9] Even cabinet ministers were dissatisfied with Eisner's leadership: one of them told him "You are an anarchist ... You are no statesman, you are a fool ... We are being ruined by bad management."[9] An organized campaign for Eisner's removal from office was not long in coming.[4][7]

As the new government was unable to provide basic services, it soon lost the support of the conservative Bavarian countryside, necessary for any government to hold together in the rural province.[7] Eisner's USPD was defeated in the January 1919 election, coming in sixth place, with only 3 per cent of the vote, and only garnering three seats in the Bavarian Parliament (the Landtag), while the Bavarian People's Party got 66 seats. Eisner, apparently because he was loath to give up power, delayed calling the Landtag into session until public pressure from all quarters – including a death threat from the Thule Society if he did not give up his office – forced him to. Finally, he set the legislature to meet on 21 February 1919,[15] more than a month after the election.[16]

As he was on his way to the Landtag to announce his resignation, Eisner was shot dead by the right-wing nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley,[17][18][19] an aristocratic former cavalryman now a student at the University of Munich, who was a believer in the "stab-in-the-back myth", which held that Jews, socialists and other undesirable elements had caused Germany to lose World War I. As a Jew, a socialist, a Bohemian, and a Berliner, Eisner was the perfect target.[9] Arco-Valley had been humiliated when a leftist mob tore off his cockade from his hat after the war, and then endured further humiliation when he was rejected from membership in the anti-Semitic Thule Society because of Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.[7][15]

After the assassination

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After the shooting, Arco-Valley was saved from lynching on the spot by the fast action of Eisner's secretary, Fechenbach. Instead, he was arrested and taken to Stadelheim Prison where, coincidentally, he was put in the same cell that Eisner had served time in earlier.[9] Despite the assassination of Eisner, the Landtag convened, and Erhard Auer – the leader of the Social Democrats and the Minister of the Interior in Eisner's government – began to eulogize Eisner, but rumours had already begun to spread that Auer was behind the assassination. Acting on these false allegations, Alois Lindner, a butcher and saloon waiter, and a member of the Revolutionary Workers' Council who was a fervent supporter of Eisner, shot Auer twice with a rifle, seriously wounding him. This prompted other armed supporters of Eisner to open fire, causing a melee, killing one delegate from the Centre Party and provoking nervous breakdowns in at least two ministers. From this point, there was effectively no government in Bavaria.[2][4][20]

These events caused unrest and lawlessness in Bavaria, and a general strike was proclaimed by the soldiers' and workers' councils, which distributed guns and ammunition, provoking the declaration of a state of emergency. The assassination of Eisner created a martyr for the leftist cause, and prompted demonstrations, the closing of the University of Munich, the kidnapping of aristocrats, and the forced pealing of church bells. "Revenge for Eisner" rang through bullhorns in the streets. The support for the Left was greater than ever before, even greater than Eisner himself had been able to garner.[4][9][20]

Hoffmann government

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For a month, a Central Council (soviet) under Ernst Niekisch held governmental power. On 17 March 1919, the Socialists' new leader, Johannes Hoffmann, an anti-militarist and former schoolteacher, patched together a parliamentary coalition government, but a month later, on the night of 6–7 April, communists and anarchists, energized by the news of a communist revolution in Hungary, declared a Bavarian Soviet Republic (BSR), with Ernst Toller as chief of state.[21][22] Toller called on the non-existent "Bavarian Red Army" to support the new dictatorship of the proletariat and ruthlessly deal with any counter-revolutionary behavior.[4][23][24] The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) reluctantly took part in the newly formed soviet republic, with the KPD's chairman Paul Levi denouncing the republic as "revolutionary adventurism".[19]

The Hoffmann government fled to Bamberg in Northern Bavaria,[16][25] which it declared as the new seat of government – although most of the ministers resigned.[4][26] An attempt by troops loyal to the Hoffmann government to mount a counter-coup and overthrow the BSR was put down on 13 April[7] by the new "Red Army" created from factory workers and members of the soldiers' and workers' councils. Twenty people died in the fighting.[9]

After a coup six days into Toller's regime, the KPD seized power, led by three Russian-German Bolsheviks, with Eugen Leviné as head of state and Max Levien as the chairman of the Bavarian KPD.[27][6][28] The rival governments clashed militarily at Dachau on 18 April when Hoffmann's 8,000 soldiers met the Soviet Republic's 30,000. The BSR forces – led by, of all people, Ernst Toller – was victorious in the first battle at Dachau, but Hoffmann made a deal which gave him the services of 20,000 men of the Freikorps under Lt. General Burghard von Oven [de]. Oven and the Freikorps then took Dachau and surrounded Munich.[22] Supporters of the BSR had, in the meantime, on 26 April, occupied the rooms of the Thule Society in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, and arrested Countess Hella von Westarp, the society's secretary, and six others, to be held as hostages.[29] Rudolf Egelhofer, panicked by Munich being surrounded by Hoffmann's forces, had these seven and three other hostages executed on 30 April.[16][22] They included the well-connected Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis.[30] The executions were carried out despite Toller's efforts to prevent them.[25]

The Freikorps broke through the Munich defenses on 1 May,[25] and, after the execution of 1,000–1,200 suspected communists,[19] Oven declared the city to have been secured on 6 May, ending the reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.[25]

Active participants in the Freikorps units which suppressed the Bavarian Soviet Republic included future members of the Nazi Party, including Rudolf Hess.[31]

The Bamberg Constitution [de] was enacted on 14 August 1919, creating the Free State of Bavaria within the new Weimar Republic.

Aftermath

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After the Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) returned to power, but was subsequently ousted in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.[32] The tumultuous period of the People's State of Bavaria and the Bavarian Soviet Republic was used by conservative and far-right circles to stoke fear and hatred of "bolshevism" among Bavarian society.[33] The period was popularly remembered as a period in which both states existed as one of shortages, censorship, restrictions on freedom, violence, and general disorder.[34] These feelings were then constantly to be reinforced by right-wing propaganda not only in Bavaria, but throughout the Reich, where "Red Bavaria" was held up as a lesson in the horrors of socialism and communism.[citation needed] In this way, the radical Right was able to provoke and feed the fears of the peasants and the middle class. The separate strands of Bavarian right-wing extremism found a common enemy in despising the left, and Bavaria became profoundly "reactionary, anti-Republican, [and] counter-revolutionary."[7][32]

The left itself had been neutralized after the demise of the two socialist states, and in such a way that there continued to be bad blood between the KPD and the SPD that prevented them from working together throughout Germany.[citation needed] This lack of cooperation, with the communists seeing the social democrats as betrayers of the revolution, and the social democrats seeing the communists as under the control of Moscow, was later to redound to the advantage of the Nazi Party, since only a parliamentary coalition of the KPD and SPD could have prevented the Nazis from coming to power.[35] Even at the height of their influence in the Reichstag, they did not have enough delegates to resist such a coalition.[35]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Also referred to as the Freier Volksstaat Bayern (Free People's State of Bavaria) or later simply as Freistaat Bayern (the present-day official name of Bavaria); the name of the state has also been translated as the People's Republic of Bavaria and Bavarian Republic; for further discussion of the terms Volksstaat and Freistaat, see Free state: Germany and Merz, Johannes (1997). "'Freistaat Bayern': Metamorphosen eines Staatsnamen" ['Free State of Bavaria': Metamorphoses of a state name] (PDF). Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 45: 121–142..
  2. ^ Fechenbach was tried in October 1922 for violation of a press law, although his acts were framed as "high treason". His sentence of 11 years in prison was a blatant miscarriage of justice, especially considering that in February 1924, Adolf Hitler and the other participants in the Beer Hall Putsch were tried on actual charges of high treason and received considerably milder sentences, of which they served only a small part. Fechenbach, on the other hand, did not even get his case reviewed by a higher court for four years. In the end, he was murdered by a Nazi death squad in 1933.[14]

References

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  1. ^ Sturm, Reinhard (23 December 2011). "Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik 1918/19" [From Empire to Republic 1918/19]. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (in German). Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  2. ^ a b Burleigh 2000, p. 39.
  3. ^ Bullock, Alan (1984). Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (revised ed.). New York: Harper Torchbooks. p. 62. ISBN 0-06-131123-5.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Fest, Joachim C. (1973). Hitler. Translated by Winston, Richard; Winston, Clara. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 109–111, 774–775 n.1.
  5. ^ Gaab, Jeffrey S. (2006). Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History. Peter Lang / International Academic Publishers. p. 58.
  6. ^ a b Bullock, Alan (1991). Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf. p. 70. ISBN 0-394-58601-8. Cite error: The named reference "bullock70" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b c d e f Kershaw 1999, pp. 112–116.
  8. ^ Mitcham 1996, p. 11.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Evans 2003, pp. 158–161.
  10. ^ Schuler, Thomas (December 2008). "The Unsung Hero: Bavaria's amnesia about the man who abolished the monarchy". The Atlantic Times. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013.
  11. ^ Kershaw (1999), pp. 112–116; Mitcham (1996), p. 11, 30; Evans (2003), pp. 158–161
  12. ^ Bauer, Franz J. (11 January 2024). "Kabinett Eisner, 1918/19" [Eisner Cabinet 1918/19]. Historisches Lexikon Bayerns (in German). Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  13. ^ Karacs, Imre (13 July 1996). "Bavaria buries the royal dream Funeral of Prince Albrechty". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
  14. ^ Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1970). The German Dictatorship. Translated by Steinberg, Jean. New York: Penguin Books. p. 137. ISBN 0-14-013724-6.
  15. ^ a b Mitcham 1996, p. 31.
  16. ^ a b c Burleigh 2000, p. 40.
  17. ^ Newton, Michael (17 April 2014). Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. pp. 131–132. ISBN 9781610692861.
  18. ^ Grau, Bernhard (13 October 2009). [Burial of Kurt Eisner, Munich, 26 February 1919 "Beisetzung Kurt Eisners, München, 26. Februar 1919"] [Funeral of Kurt Eisner, Munich, 26 February 1919]. Historisches Lexikon Bayerns (in German). Retrieved 8 August 2024. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  19. ^ a b c Heynen 2019, pp. 52–53.
  20. ^ a b Mitcham 1996, p. 32.
  21. ^ Ernst Toller. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 17 Feb 2012.
  22. ^ a b c Bartolf & Miething 2019, p. 225.
  23. ^ Mühsam, Erich (1929). Von Eisner bis Leviné [From Eisner to Leviné] (in German). Berlin-Britz: Fanal Verlag. p. 47.
  24. ^ Mitcham 1996, pp. 32–33.
  25. ^ a b c d Mitcham 1996, pp. 34–35.
  26. ^ Mitcham 1996, p. 33.
  27. ^ Gaab 2006, p. 58.
  28. ^ Bartolf & Miething 2019, pp. 230–231.
  29. ^ Bracher 1970, pp. 109–110.
  30. ^ "Timebase Multimedia Chronology: Timebase 1919". humanitas-international. Archived from the original on 29 September 2006. Retrieved 23 September 2006.
  31. ^ Mitcham 1996, p. 35.
  32. ^ a b Heynen 2019, p. 53.
  33. ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 115.
  34. ^ Kershaw 1999, pp. 114–115.
  35. ^ a b Burleigh 2000, pp. 40–41.

Bibliography

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48°08′N 11°34′E / 48.133°N 11.567°E / 48.133; 11.567

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