Proclamation of the Republic in Germany

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Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the republic on November 9, 1918 from the Reichstag building. The authenticity of the recording is disputed.

The proclamation of the republic in Germany happened twice in Berlin on November 9, 1918 : by the MSPD politician Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building under bourgeois-democratic and by the leader of the Spartakusbund Karl Liebknecht at the Berlin Palace under socialist auspices.

Scheidemann's proclamation alone became effective. After some civil war-like unrest, the SPD and the bourgeois-democratic parties prevailed with their ideas: The German Reich went from a monarchy to a parliamentary-democratic republic with a liberal constitution. Scheidemann's action thus marked the end of the German Empire and the birth of the Weimar Republic , the first republic to encompass the entire German nation- state.

prehistory

At the end of the First World War , the November Revolution developed from the Kiel sailors' uprising , which took hold of the entire Reich within a few days and gradually forced the Federal Princes of the German Reich to abdicate . The Wittelsbach dynasty was overthrown in Munich on November 7th , and Kurt Eisner had declared the Kingdom of Bavaria as the first federal state of the empire to be a free state - i.e. a republic .

The leadership of the SPD under its chairman Friedrich Ebert saw their long-standing demands for a democratization of the Reich already fulfilled by the October reform. This change in Bismarck's constitution had turned the German Reich into a parliamentary monarchy in which the government was no longer responsible to the emperor but to the majority of the Reichstag . Under these conditions, at the beginning of the revolution the SPD was still ready to maintain the monarchical form of government as such, also because it tried to achieve continuity and a balance with the elites of the empire. The party leadership pushed for the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II , whose position had become untenable due to his responsibility for the lost war. However, the Kaiser, who had been at the headquarters in Spa , Belgium since October 29, repeatedly postponed the decision. Meanwhile, events in Berlin came to a head.

On the evening of November 8th, the SPD leaders in Berlin learned that the USPD , which was competing with their party and whose left wing formed the Spartacus League , had called for meetings and mass demonstrations for the coming day. It was foreseeable that this would not only demand the emperor's abdication, but the abolition of the monarchy as a whole. In order to anticipate these demands, the last Imperial Chancellor, Max von Baden, at Ebert's insistence, announced that Wilhelm II would renounce the throne on the morning of November 9 , before the latter had actually abdicated. The statement reads:

“The emperor and king has decided to renounce the throne. The Reich Chancellor remains in office until the questions connected with the abdication of the Emperor, the renunciation of the throne by the Crown Prince of the German Empire and Prussia and the establishment of the regency have been settled. "

When the emperor found out about this, he fled into exile in the Netherlands . There he signed the deed of abdication on November 28, 1918 . At noon on November 9th, Max von Baden transferred the office of Reich Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert. The latter, in turn, asked the prince to officiate as imperial administrator until a successor to Wilhelm II had been appointed as German emperor. At this point Ebert still assumed that he could save the monarchy.

Scheidemann's proclamation

Philipp Scheidemann
Reichstag building , west facade. To the left of the portal, from the second window on the first floor, Scheidemann proclaimed the republic.

The announcement of the renunciation of the throne came too late to make an impression on the demonstrators in Berlin. Instead of dispersing, as the SPD newspaper Vorwärts asked them to do, more and more people flocked to downtown Berlin and demonstrated between the City Palace , the seat of the German Emperor , Wilhelmstrasse , the seat of the Reich government , and the Reichstag .

At lunch in the dining room of the Reichstag building, the SPD politician Philipp Scheidemann, who had been State Secretary under Max von Baden since October 3 and was one of the first Social Democrats with a government office in Germany, learned that Karl Liebknecht would soon proclaim the Soviet Republic . If the SPD wanted to keep the initiative, it had to take precedence over its opponents on the left. Therefore Scheidemann went to the second window of the first floor north of the main portal of the Reichstag building shortly after 2 p.m. - according to his own statements "between soup and dessert" and proclaimed the republic. Immediately afterwards there was a brief dispute with Friedrich Ebert because of Scheidemann's unauthorized behavior.

On November 9, 1918, the Vossische Zeitung quoted Scheidemann's speech under the heading “Proclamation of the Republic” as follows:

“We have won across the board, the old is no longer. Ebert is appointed Reich Chancellor, the Deputy Lieutenant Göhre is attached to the Minister of War. It is now a matter of consolidating the victory we have achieved, nothing can prevent us from doing so. The Hohenzollern have abdicated. See to it that nothing spoils this proud day. It is a day of honor forever in the history of Germany. Long live the German Republic. "

The Austrian journalist Ernst Friedegg, who recorded the speech in shorthand, published it in 1919 in the German Revolutionary Almanac with a slightly different wording:

“The German people have triumphed across the board. The old rot has collapsed; militarism is done! The Hohenzollern have abdicated! Long live the German Republic! Deputy Ebert has been proclaimed Reich Chancellor. Ebert has been tasked with putting together a new government. All socialist parties will belong to this government.

Our task now is not to allow this brilliant victory, this complete victory of the German people, to be sullied, and therefore I ask you to ensure that security is not disturbed! We must be able to be proud of this day in the future! Nothing is allowed to exist that we will later be accused of! Peace, order and security is what we need now!

The commander-in-chief in the brands Alexander von Linsingen and the Minister of War Schëuch are each assigned a representative. The deputy comrade Göhre will countersign all the ordinances of the Minister of War Schëuch. So from now on, the decrees signed by Ebert and the announcements signed with the names Göhre and Schëuch must be respected.

Make sure that the new German republic that we are about to establish is not endangered by anything. Long live the German Republic. "

On the other hand, the version of the speech that Scheidemann spoke on record on January 9, 1920 and reproduced in his 1928 memoirs shows strong deviations from the texts of these contemporary sources:

“Workers and soldiers! The four years of the war were terrible. The sacrifices that the people had to make to property and blood were horrific. The unfortunate war is over; the killing is over. The consequences of war, hardship and misery, will weigh on us for many years to come. We were not spared the defeat that we wanted to avoid at all costs. Our proposals for mutual agreement were sabotaged, we ourselves were mocked and slandered.

The enemies of the working people, the real internal enemies who caused Germany's collapse, have become silent and invisible. These were the warriors at home who up until yesterday kept up their demands for conquest, just as they waged the most fierce struggle against any reform of the constitution and especially of the shameful Prussian electoral system. Hopefully these enemies of the people are forever done for. The emperor has abdicated; he and his friends have disappeared. The people have triumphed over all of them all along the line!

Prince Max von Baden has handed over his Reich Chancellery to MP Ebert. Our friend will form a workers' government to which all socialist parties will belong. The new government must not be disturbed in its work for peace and the care for work and bread.

Workers and soldiers! Be aware of the historical significance of this day. The unheard of has happened! Great and unmistakable work lies ahead of us.

Everything for the people, everything through the people! Nothing is allowed to happen that dishonors the labor movement. Be united, loyal and conscientious!

The old and rotten, the monarchy has collapsed. Long live the new; long live the German Republic! "

Scheidemann's text was held to be authentic for a long time until the historian Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg was able to plausibly prove Friedegg's authorship and the reliability of his anonymously published shorthand records in a source-critical analysis. Jessen-Klingenberg's conclusion was accordingly that Scheidemann had “handed down a falsification of his speech that he had composed himself. Of course, he had understandable personal and political reasons for this [...]. “Scheidemann had clearly assigned the blame for the war defeat to the opponents of a peace agreement and wanted to react to the daily political defamation of the Social Democrats by the stab in the back . Even after fifty years, this interpretation is considered “not outdated”.

Liebknecht's proclamation

Karl Liebknecht
Berlin Palace , Portal IV. Liebknecht proclaimed the socialist republic from the large window on the first floor.

In the afternoon around 4 p.m. Karl Liebknecht proclaimed the “Free Socialist Republic of Germany” in the pleasure garden in front of the Berlin City Palace . Standing on the roof of a car, he said:

“The day of the revolution has come. We enforced peace. Peace is made at this moment. The old is no more. The rule of the Hohenzollern, who lived in this castle for centuries, is over. At this hour we proclaim the free socialist republic of Germany. We greet our Russian brothers who were disgraced four days ago. […] The new socialist freedom of workers and soldiers will enter through this gate. We want to hoist the red flag of the free republic of Germany at the point where the imperial standard waved! "

After storming the castle, Liebknecht spoke again from the large window of Portal IV on the first floor. This speech was reproduced in the Vossische Zeitung as follows:

“'Party comrades, [...] the day of freedom has dawned. Never again will a Hohenzoller enter this place. Seventy years ago, Friedrich Wilhelm IV stood here in the same place and had to take off his hat in front of the procession of those who had fallen on the barricades of Berlin for the cause of freedom, in front of the fifty blood-covered corpses. Another train is passing here today. It is the spirits of the millions who have given their lives for the sacred cause of the proletariat. These victims of tyranny stagger past with split skulls, bathed in blood, followed by the ghosts of millions of women and children who have degenerated into sorrow and misery for the cause of the proletariat. And millions and millions of blood victims from this world war are following them. Today an immense number of enthusiastic proletarians stand in the same place to pay homage to the new freedom. Party comrades, I proclaim the free socialist republic of Germany, which should include all tribes, in which there will no longer be servants, in which every honest worker will find the honest wages of his work. The rule of capitalism, which has turned Europe into a mortuary, has been broken. We are calling back our Russian brothers. When they said goodbye to us, they said: 'If you have not achieved what we have achieved in a month, we will turn away from you.' And now it has hardly taken four days.

Even if the old has been torn down [...], we must not believe that our task is done. We must use all our strengths to build the government of the workers and soldiers and to create a new state order for the proletariat, an order of peace, happiness and freedom for our German brothers and our brothers all over the world. We extend our hands to them and call them to complete the world revolution. Those of you who want to see the free socialist republic of Germany and the world revolution fulfilled, raise your hand to take an oath (all hands are raised and shouts are heard: Cheer up the republic!). After the applause had died down, a soldier standing next to Liebknecht shouts [...]: 'Long live your first President Liebknecht!' Liebknecht concluded: 'We haven't got that far yet. President or not, we must all stand together to realize the ideal of the republic. High freedom and happiness and peace! '"

The Berlin newspapers reported on Liebknecht's proclamation in even more detail than on Scheidemann's speech. Nevertheless, his action did not have any lasting effect, since the left wing of the revolutionaries did not have a sufficient power base and after the suppression of the so-called Spartacus uprising in January 1919 further lost influence. It was not until the GDR , founded in 1949, that Liebknecht's proclamation was incorporated into its tradition. Portal IV of the Berlin Palace was recovered when it was blown up and integrated into the new State Council building as the "Liebknecht portal " .

aftermath

The SPD leadership initially succeeded in persuading the USPD to join a joint government, the Council of People's Representatives . However, this government broke up on December 29, 1918 as a result of the Christmas crisis, and in January 1919 the so-called Spartacus uprising broke out , in the course of which the SPD leadership deployed right-wing Freikorp troops against the left revolutionaries. On January 19, the elections for the Weimar National Assembly took place. She worked out the new republican-democratic constitution of the German Reich, which came into force on August 11, 1919. Despite strong restorative tendencies and the eventual failure of the Weimar Republic, there were never promising efforts to restore the monarchy in Germany.

One of the two protagonists of November 9th, Karl Liebknecht , was murdered on January 15, 1919 in the course of the Spartacus uprising together with Rosa Luxemburg by members of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division . Philipp Scheidemann also became an enemy of German national and ethnic groups . He was assassinated as early as 1922. After Hitler came to power, he fled into exile in Denmark. His name was on the first expatriation list of the German Reich on August 25, 1933. Scheidemann died in Copenhagen in 1939. Two of his daughters were murdered by the National Socialists .

literature

  • Wolfgang Michalka, Gottfried Niedhart (ed.): German history 1918–1933. Documents on domestic and foreign policy. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-596-11250-8 .
  • Insights. A tour of the parliamentary district. German Bundestag, Public Relations Department, Berlin 2006.
  • Sebastian Haffner : The betrayal. 1918/19 - when Germany became what it is. Verlag 1900, 2nd edition. Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-930278-00-6 .
  • Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg : The proclamation of the republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918. In: History in science and teaching . 19/1968, ISSN  0016-9056 , pp. 649-656.
  • Dominik Juhnke, Judith Prokasky and Martin Sabrow : Myth of the Revolution. Karl Liebknecht, the Berlin Palace and November 9, 1918. Hanser Verlag, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-446-26089-4 .
  • Lothar Machtan : The abdication. How Germany's crowned heads fell out of history. Propylaea, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-549-07308-7 .
  • Walter Tormin : Between Council dictatorship and social democracy. The history of the council movement in the German revolution 1918/19. Düsseldorf 1962.
  • Heinrich August Winkler : From Revolution to Stabilization. Workers and the labor movement in the Weimar Republic 1918 to 1924. Dietz successor, 2nd edition. Berlin et al. 1985, ISBN 3-8012-0093-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sabrow, p. 107
  2. ↑ See Heinrich August Winkler : The long way to the west . Volume 1. German history from the end of the Old Reich to the fall of the Weimar Republic. 4th revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2002, p. 2.
  3. ↑ Sebastian Haffner : The betrayal. 1918/19 - when Germany became what it is. Berlin 1994, p. 34.
  4. ↑ Lothar Machtan: The abdication. How Germany's crowned heads fell out of history. Propylaeen, Berlin 2008, pp. 226-235.
  5. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: From the revolution to stabilization. Workers and the labor movement in the Weimar Republic 1918 to 1924. Berlin / Bonn 1985, pp. 34–44; The declaration was written by the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, Theodor Lewald ; see Arnd Krüger & Rolf Pfeiffer: Theodor Lewald and the instrumentalization of physical exercise and sport. Uwe Wick & Andreas Höfer (eds.): Willibald Gebhardt and his successors (= series of publications by the Willibald Gebhardt Institute, vol. 14). Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 2012, ISBN 978-389899-723-2 , pp. 120-145.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Michalka, Niedhart (ed.): Deutsche Geschichte 1918–1933. P. 18.
  7. ↑ Vossische Zeitung, No. 575, evening edition of November 9, 1918, p. 1 ( digitized version of the edition in the newspaper information system (ZEFYS) of the Berlin State Library ).
  8. ↑ Quoted from Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg, The Proclamation of the Republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918 , in: History in Science and Education 19/1968, pp. 653–654.
  9. ↑ See Philipp Scheidemann, Memoirs eines Sozialdemokrats , Vol. 2, Dresden 1928, pp. 311–312; Publications of the German Broadcasting Archive (edited by Walter Roller): Tondokumente zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte 1888–1932 , Potsdam 1998, ISBN 3-932981-15-4 , pp. 102–103; Catalog of the scientific collections of the Humboldt University of Berlin (pilot project): Philipp Scheidemann, speech - Aut 37
  10. ↑ Quoted from Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg , The Proclamation of the Republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918 , in: History in Science and Education 19/1968, pp. 654–655.
  11. ^ German Historical Museum: Philipp Scheidemann. Report on November 9, 1918
  12. ↑ Cf. Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg, The proclamation of the republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918. In: History in Science and Education 19/1968, p. 649.
  13. ↑ Cf. Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg, The proclamation of the republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918. In: History in Science and Education 19/1968, p. 655.
  14. ↑ Heinrich August Winkler: Yes, it was! November 9, 1918: The proclamation of the republic is not a legend. , in: Die Zeit , April 25, 2018, accessed April 30, 2018; Reply to Lothar Machtan's different representation in the same newspaper from April 4, 2018 ( Philipp Scheidemann: And now goes home. , Edited April 6, 2018, accessed April 30, 2018).
  15. ↑ On November 5, 1918, the German government broke off diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.
  16. ↑ Quoted from novemberrevolution.de
  17. ↑ Juhnke, pp. 83-89 and Sabrow, pp. 121-125.
  18. ↑ see above
  19. ↑ Quoted from Karl Liebknecht proclaiming the Socialist Republic of Germany on November 9, 1918 (excerpt) , from: Gerhard A. Ritter , Susanne Miller (ed.): The German Revolution 1918–1919. Documents . 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 1968; Digitized version of the Vossische Zeitung of November 10, 1918 , with the speech printed on p. 2.
  20. ↑ Cf. Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg, The Proclamation of the Republic by Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918 , in: History in Science and Education 19/1968, p. 652.
  21. ↑ Juhnke, pp. 83-89 and Sabrow, pp. 121-125.
  22. ↑ Michael Hepp (ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger, Volume 1: Lists in chronological order . De Gruyter Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).