Emil Barth (politician)
Emil Barth (born April 23, 1879 in Heidelberg , † July 17, 1941 in Berlin ) was a German politician.
To date, no biographer has been found for one of the most controversial figures in the 1918/19 revolution in Germany ("one of the most controversial figures in the revolutionary period"), as A. J. Ryder attests to him; the sources are thin.
Within a few months, Barth advanced from a revolutionary to a People's Representative and, after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the proclamation of the republic by Scheidemann, belonged to the German provisional government, the so-called Council of People's Representatives . The most important source on Barth's life and deeds are his own memoirs, which were published as early as 1919 under the title From the Workshop of the German Revolution .
Childhood and youth
Emil Barth was the son of a worker and grew up during the period of high industrialization. He attended elementary school and then did a craft training. It was only late, at the age of 19, that he had completed this and then went on to become a plumber.
Political rise
Barth soon discovered his political interest. According to Matthias / Miller, “he initially sympathized with anarchist ideas.” According to his son's information, he moved to Berlin as early as 1904. There he appeared on the political stage for the first time from 1906 and 1908 as a member of the SPD and the DMV ( German Metalworkers Association ). The fact that he went to Berlin shows a certain determination, because he did not want to shape politics somewhere in the provinces, but rather at the source of power, in the capital of the empire. At times he seems to have stayed in Erfurt , where he was noticed for causing public nuisance (cf. Matthias / Miller). According to Hermann Müller-Franken , Emil Barth was sentenced to prison terms five times by the lay judges in Heidelberg, Erfurt, Berlin I, Rixdorf and the Berlin II regional court between 1902 and 1909 . In the press polemics of 1919, Barth's criminal record was even the subject of public discussion.
In 1914 he was elected a full-time functionary of the DMV, but remained an unknown member of the SPD. Since the beginning of the war, he was firmly against the war policy of the emperor, which was supported by his party and the trade unions. He criticized the war euphoria of his comrades and, above all, the approval of war credits. In the first years of the war, the movement of the " Revolutionary Obleute " was formed from opposition functionaries in the Berlin metal industry, to whose circle Barth had belonged since 1914.
After the establishment of the USPD , he left the SPD in 1917 in order to support the strike movement and the war opponents around Liebknecht and Ledebour in the USPD . He was able to avoid entering military service by pretending to be suffering from nerves.
From the workshop of the revolution
The title of his book From the Workshop of the German Revolution , published in July 1919, suggests that Emil Barth played a decisive role in the preparation and course of the November Revolution. Hermann Müller-Franken exaggerated it in his book The November Revolution with the words: “It goes without saying that Barth staged the revolution alone.” AJ Ryder describes Barth's role in a similar way: “Barth, who had a lively imagination, saw himself as the chief of staff of the coming revolution, and set about collecting arms and money. "
According to his own statements, Barth took center stage in the events of the revolution on February 9, 1918 at a meeting of the Berlin Revolutionary Obleute. Richard Müller was drafted into military service for the second time and therefore urged his friend Emil Barth to take over the chairmanship. He took over the office of chairman after a "speech full of revolutionary rhetoric" (see Ryder) about his ideas and goals of how this illegal organization should develop into a "revolutionary committee".
"I am only ready to take over the chairmanship when it is over with small, narrow-minded movements, if you pledge with me all of your self selflessly for a decidedly revolutionary movement, revolutionary in its goals, its organization and its weapons. [...] The goal is proletarian peace, i. H. the peace enforced by the proletariat, that is socialism , that is the dictatorship of the proletariat . "
In the months that followed, Barth tried to win other comrades for the preparation of the revolution by traveling and talking throughout the Reich. He got to know leading independents like Karl Liebknecht and Georg Ledebour and won the trust of his comrades. During that time, the movement was increasingly weakened by confiscations, informers and imprisonment. Barth, on the other hand, wrote of an increasing bitterness that was only useful for the revolution and that was caused by these developments. In the summer of 1918, Barth is said to have obtained weapons for the raiding parties that he had assembled for the outbreak of the revolution. But he was silent about the exact origin of these weapons. In the literature, however, Barth is said to have connections to the Russian embassy, where he is said to have received money and weapons.
In Barth's descriptions of the further course of the preparations for the Revolutionary Obleuten, he clearly exaggerates his role and contributes significantly to the blurring of his actual activities. The result is an image of an authoritarian commander who rules a network of revolutionary troops, who sends couriers throughout the entire empire, orders and trains them. Matthias / Miller therefore simply certify Barth “little sense of proportion”. By the outbreak of the revolution and the events of November 9, 1918, Barth and the Berlin Revolutionary Obleute were actually completely surprised. Barth, his comrades and the masses of the Reich were aware that the time was "ripe", but one cannot say that Emil Barth and his Revolutionary Committee ever saw this revolution of November 9th as it took place have planned. Actually, according to his own words, Barth wanted to "strike" on November 4th. At a decisive meeting of the Berlin Revolutionary Obleute and leading USPD members such as Liebknecht, Haase and Dittmann on November 2nd, 21 of the 40 chairpersons voted against a mass strike on Monday, November 4th, because some companies were not yet ready. The planned mass actions, including the occupation of public buildings and the like. Ä., were postponed to November 11th. On the night of November 9th, on Barth's instructions, leaflets were printed and the assumption of public authority was planned. As chairman of the stewards, he again dictated, according to his statements, a flood of instructions and a whole catalog of concrete procedures. His comrade Richard Müller, spokesman for the stewards before his arrest, vigorously denied Barth's leading role on November 9th. Although he praised Barth's services in the procurement of weapons, he said about the course of the uprising: "On the day of the uprising, no leadership was required, it would not have been technically possible, everyone had to act at their own discretion, as the situation required." Nevertheless, it can be assumed that the uprising plan for November 9th, which was jointly developed by the stewards, accelerated the course of the revolution and prevented unnecessary bloodshed.
In the Council of People's Representatives
After the chancellor had deposed the emperor on November 9, a new government had to be formed. After long debates, the USPD and MSPD finally agreed on a provisional socialist revolutionary government with equal representation, which should consist of six people's representatives. Barth was one of the negotiators on the side of the USPD. The co-chairman of the USPD Georg Ledebour and the leading representative of the left-wing radicals Karl Liebknecht, who were proposed for the revolutionary government alongside Hugo Haase , refused to cooperate with the “Scheidemanns”. That is why Emil Barth, who as chairman of the Revolutionary Obleute had great influence in the large Berlin companies, was nominated alongside Wilhelm Dittmann or suggested by Hugo Haase.
At a meeting of the workers 'and soldiers' councils on November 10th at the Busch Circus in Berlin, at which Barth took over the chairmanship, the council of people's representatives and the executive council were confirmed as two provisional government elements by a total of 3,000 delegates. The revolutionary Barth, with no experience of government politics, slipped into the role of a member of the government overnight. After a distribution of tasks in the cabinet, Barth was assigned the field of "social policy". He also had to take on the role of mediating body between the Executive Council and the Council of People's Representatives. He found this double burden to be an equally difficult and thankless task . As a link between the two ruling councils, he noticed early on that a cooperative and effective collaboration in the sense of an advancing revolution towards a socialist republic was simply not possible.
In government responsibility, Barth could not assert himself against his colleagues. In particular, personal differences with the SPD comrades became a problem. There was a crash inside the council, as the minutes show. Outwardly, however, Barth supported all of the decisions and lived up to his responsible role. The balancing act between left-wing radicalism and pragmatic government policy in a democratically operating council could not succeed. Barth asserts that he was always outvoted 5 to 1 internally. This image of the outsider in the cabinet is also confirmed by the analyzes of the minutes of the meeting by Matthias / Miller. Some passages in Barth's book also show how helplessly he searched for arguments to convince his comrades of his point of view. After all, on November 15th he was already thinking of resigning. Anger, disappointment and malice on the part of his left-wing comrades brought this dilemma with it.
During his time as the People's Representative, he changed in contrast to communist tendencies in the person of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . Contemporaries also noticed that his “radicalism” decreased under the influence of government work. In various incidents he acted as a taming element of demonstrating leftists. This transformation of the radical revolutionary and his ambivalent demeanor cost him sympathy and support. So he left in protest against Ebert's policy, on 29 December 1918 Council of the People's Deputies, after the defeat of the People's Marine Division .
After the division of the divided USPD, Barth rejoined the SPD in 1921. He seldom appeared as a speaker for the SPD and occasionally worked as a promoter for the social democratic book club Der Bücherkreis . During the National Socialist dictatorship he had to endure several arrests until he died on July 17, 1941 at the age of 62 in Berlin.
"Condemned by the various parties from left and right, I have an urgent need to write down what seems to me to be necessary to prevent me from being treated as a bloodhound, a nerd or a donkey later in history."
Sources and literature
swell
- Emil Barth: From the workshop of the German revolution. A. Hoffmann's Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1919.
- Emil Barth: Socialization - its necessity, its possibility. Self-published, Berlin-Neukölln 1920.
- Wilhelm Dittmann : Memories. Editing and imported by Jürgen Rojahn. 3 volumes. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main / New York 1995.
- Richard Müller: From the Empire to the Republic - Volume II: History of the German Revolution. Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1979.
- Hermann Müller-Franken : The November Revolution - Memories. The book circle, Berlin 1928.
literature
- K. Wrobel: Barth, Emil . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin (East) 1970, pp. 19-20.
- AJ Ryder: The German Revolution of 1918 - A Study of German Socialism in War and Revolt. University Press, Cambridge 1967.
- Erich Matthias , Susanne Miller : The government of the people's representatives 1918/19 - first part. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1969.
- Ralf Hoffrogge : Richard Müller. The man behind the November Revolution. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02148-1 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Emil Barth in the catalog of the German National Library
- Susanne Eckelmann: Emil Barth. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- Emil Barth in the archive of social democracy
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard Müller: From the Empire to the Republic . Volume II: History of the German Revolution . Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1979, p. 16.
- ↑ Ralf Hoffrogge: Richard Müller. The man behind the November Revolution. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 72 f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Barth, Emil |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 23, 1879 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heidelberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 17, 1941 |
| Place of death | Berlin |