Friedrich Ebert

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Chancellor of Germany
Friedrich Ebert

1st President of Germany
In office February 11, 1919 – February 28, 1925
Succeeded by	Paul von Hindenburg
In office November 9, 1918 – February 11, 1919
Preceded by	Prince Maximilian of Baden
Succeeded by	Philipp Scheidemann

Born	February 4, 1871
Died	February 28, 1925
Political party	SPD

This is not the Friedrich Ebert involved in the founding of the GDR, but rather his father. For the son, see Friedrich Ebert junior

Friedrich Ebert (February 4, 1871 – February 28, 1925) was a German politician (SPD), who served as Chancellor of Germany and its first president during the Weimar period.

Born in Heidelberg as the son of a tailor, he himself was trained as a saddlemaker. He became involved in politics as a trade unionist and Social Democrat, and soon became a leader of the moderate revisionist wing of the Social Democratic Party, becoming Secretary-General in 1905, and party chairman in 1913. He also was a politician in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal).

In August 1914, Ebert led the party to vote almost unanimously in favour of war appropriations, accepting that a war was a necessary patriotic, defensive measure. The party's stance, under the leadership of Ebert and other revisionists like Scheidemann, in favour of the war eventually led to a split, with the more left wing elements in the party leaving in early 1917 to form the USPD.

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 SPD in October 1918. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Prince Max resigned on November 9, and handed his office over to Ebert. Though the Kaiser was declared to have abdicated, Ebert favoured retaining the monarchy under a different ruler. On the same day, however, Scheidemann proclaimed the German Republic, in response to the unrest in Berlin and in order to counter a declaration of the "Socialist Republic" by Karl Liebknecht later that day. This proclamation ended the German Monarchy and an entirely Socialist provisional government took power under Ebert's leadership.

Ebert accepted this position only reluctantly. He was a supporter of the monarchy until the abdication of the Kaiser ("If the Kaiser abdicates, the social revolution is inevitable. But I do not want it, I hate it like sin", he said to Max von Baden on November 7), and when Scheidemann proclaimed the Republic he responded: "Is that true? 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 would be the restoration of the monarchy.

Ebert led the new government for the next several months, notably using the army to suppress the Spartacist uprising, commonly identified with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. When the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar in February, 1919, Ebert was chosen to be the first president of the German Republic.

The German workers protected his government from the Kapp Putsch in 1920 by means of a nationwide general strike. After the strike was over, however, Ebert's government again recruited the Freikorps and the soldiers who had wanted to overthrow him in order to quell remaining uprisings in western Germany.

While hundreds of civilians were killed (including many who had nothing to do with the uprising), most of the putschists were treated leniently. 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. In November 1923, Ebert rebuked his own party for leaving the coalition government of Gustav Stresemann.

[edit] Legacy

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Ebert remains a somewhat controversial figure to this day. While the SPD recognizes him as one of the founders and keepers of German democracy whose death in office in February 1925 was a great loss, communists and others on the far left argue that he paved the way for fascism by supporting the ultra-right Freikorps and their violent suppression of Marxist urprisings.

Those were the same people who spread the Dolchstoßlegende, the idea that the socialists were responsible for Germany's defeat in World War I. This was a particularly perfidious claim, as the socialists had entered the ceasefire negotiations on request of the military leadership, after the generals had decided that the war could no longer be won. To the generals, the Weimar Republic was a temporary, necessary evil to divert blame from themselves and prepare for the next war, and Ebert is viewed by his critics as playing exactly the role that the military wanted him to play.

Some historians have defended Ebert's actions as unfortunate but inevitable to prevent the creation of a communist state (which they view as unacceptable). Leftist historians like Bernt Engelmann have argued that many of the workers were in fact centrist SPD supporters, and that the communist party was not yet politically relevant (in part because of the assassination of Liebknecht and Luxemburg). However, the actions of Ebert and his Minister of Defense, Gustav Noske, against the workers contributed to their radicalization and to increasing support for communist ideas.

The creation of elected workers' councils, which Ebert had tolerated in the early days of the republic, was viewed by moderate workers as a legitimate centrist instrument to oversee the democratic government, when many government officials were reactionaries who yearned for a return of the monarchy, and when workers still enjoyed little protection from exploitation, so that strikes were frequently ended with machine guns. Ebert's critics view him as a knowing or unknowing agent of the reaction who made the wrong decisions in shaping post-war Germany by giving power and influence to those who had already sought German world domination in World War I and preventing the creation of a united, progressive political party. Anti-SPD slogans such as "Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!" ("Who betrayed us? Social democrats!") were born out of the experiences of Ebert's era. A German Grammar School located in Hamburg (Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium) was named after Friedrich-Ebert.

[edit] See also

Ebert-Groener pact

Political offices
Preceded by Prince Maximilian of Baden	Chancellor of Germany 1918-19	Succeeded by Philipp Scheidemann
Preceded by Prince Maximilian of Baden	Prime Minister of Prussia 1918	Succeeded by Paul Hirsch
Preceded by None (Kaiser Wilhelm II as German Emperor)	President of Germany 1919–1925	Succeeded by Paul von Hindenburg