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| Order: | 9th Chancellor of Germany |
|---|---|
| Term of Office: | November 9, 1918– 1919 |
| Predecessor: | Prince Maximilian of Baden |
| Successor: | Philipp Scheidemann |
| Date of Birth: | February 4, 1871 |
| Date of Death: | February 28, 1925 |
| Political Party: | SPD |
| Profession: | |
Friedrich Ebert ( February 4, 1871– February 28, 1925) was a GermanThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east politicianA politician is an individual involved in politics, sometimes this may include political scientists. In other settings, a politician is a type of political figure who participates in a government. In Western democracies, the term is generally restricted t ( SPDThe Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands is the second oldest political party of Germany still in existence and also one of the oldest and largest in the world, celebrating its 140th anniversary in 2003. Rooted i), who served as the 9th ChancellorThe head of government in Germany has traditionally been called Kanzler ( Chancellor). The name of the office today is Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor); from 1871 to 1945, it was Reichskanzler (Imperial Chancellor). During the period of the Norddeutsche of GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east 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 more moderate "revisionist" wing of the Social Democratic Party, becoming Secretary-General of the party in 1905, and party chairman in 1913. He also was a politician in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), too.
In August 1914, Ebert led the party to vote almost unanimously in favor of war appropriations, accepting German propaganda that a war was a necessary patriotic, defensive measure. This refuted the belief of the German Kaiser who, on December 31, 1905, had written to chancellor Bülow that an "external war" was only possibly if the socialists were "shot, decapitated and defanged".
The party's stance, under the leadership of Ebert and other revisionists like Philipp Scheidemann, in favor of the war eventually led to a split, with the more left wing elements in the party leaving in early 1917 to form the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (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 Social Democratic party in October 1918. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Prince Max resigned on November 9, and Ebert was appointed Imperial Chancellor. The next day, however, in response to the unrest in Berlin, Ebert's associate Scheidemann declared the Kaiser had abdicated, ending the German Monarchy and proclaimed the German Republic, 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 Schneidemann 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 an uprising by the leftist Spartacist movement, commonly identified with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, even though many of its members were centrist SPD supporters. (Ironically, years later, Ebert's son, Friedrich "Fritz" Ebert, became a Communist, served as Mayor of East Berlin, and briefly acted as East German interim head of state.) When the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar in February, 1919, Ebert was chosen to be the first president of the German Republic.
In spite of Ebert's support for the violent suppression of revolutionary uprisings, the German workers protected his government from the Kapp Putsch in 1920 by means of a nation-wide 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.
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