Born in 1864, Max Weber held a series of academic appointments. For many years he suffered from mental illness, but recovered fully. At the end of World War I when the German Empire collapsed totally, Weber was living in Munich. In the absence of any government, the people established their own which the called the Soviet of Munich, imitating those of the Russian Revolution the year before. Weber was elected to the Soviet where he met Kurt Eisner, its leader. Eisner was a creative and innovative man who seemed to know what to do when no one else did. Weber considered him an archetype of the charismatic leader. Weber died in 1920.Remember the name of Kurt Eisner, leader of Munich Soviet.
The Jewishness of Kurt Eisner is declared by John Toland in his book, Adolf Hitler published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. (page 76) :
"In Munich another insurrection broke out on November 7. It was led by Kurt Eisner, a small elderly Jew wearing a black floppy hat which, large as it was, couldn't contain a shock of wild hair. Epically untidy, he was a living cartoon of the bomb-throwing Red."
Mr. Toland once again speaks of revolutionaries and Munich on page 84:
"Munich too was on the verge of another revolution, this one inspired by a coup in Budapest. On March 22 news arrived that a popular front of Socialists and Communists had seized control of Hungary in the name of the councils of workers, soldiers and peasants. A Hungarian Soviet Republic was announced under the leadership of an unknown, Bela Kun. A Jew himself, twenty five of his thirty-two commissars were also Jews, provoking the London Times to characterize the regime as 'the Jewish Mafia.'"
The Spartacist uprising:
On the far left of the USPD a radical revolutionary group had been waiting for increasing chaos in order to provoke an allegedly "true," socialist revolution according to the Bolshevist model. This was the Spartacist League, originally a part of the USDP, but calling itself Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on 1 January 1919. Its leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, had opposed the war and had spent several years in prison for their pacifist activity. Although they admired the success of Lenin's revolution in 1917, they had reservations about the undemocratic style in which Lenin consolidated his power.
Shortly before the elections to the National Assembly, on 5 January, the most radical workers in Berlin got out of control and started an armed uprising. Liebknecht and Luxemburg considered the moment too early for a revolution but felt compelled to go along. Out of a sense of loyalty, the leaders followed the masses into catastrophe. The radical workers occupied newspaper offices and public buildings and called for a socialist revolution in Germany. In some other cities similar uprisings occurred. The government, now led exclusively by the SPD, called Free Corps into Berlin to repress the rebellion. For several days fighting occurred in the center of Berlin. On 15 January the uprising broke down. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brutally murdered by Free Corps officers. Their corpses were thrown into the central canal of Berlin. Although the USPD and many of the workers who mistrusted the SPD had not supported the Spartakist uprising, the bloody intervention by the Free Corps, which were called and directed by an SPD minister, did irreparable damage to working-class unity. Even many moderate workers without sympathies for the Spartacists' cause now deeply resented the SPD.
Revolution in Munich:
As if there had not been enough trouble already, a turbulent and bloody episode seized Munich. On 21 February a rightist student shot the Bavarian Minister President, Kurt Eisner, a USPD member. Eisner, whose party had only received two percent of the vote at the Bavarian state elections, was on his way to the Bavarian parliament in order to submit his resignation. The senseless act of terror against him triggered more violence. Shootings occurred in the parliament building in Munich, and the USPD called a general strike in Bavaria. For several months Bavaria remained unstable. On 7 April some Independents seized power in Munich and proclaimed a soviet republic for all of Bavaria. The regular government, led by an SPD member, fled to another city. Journalists and writers formed an insurrectionary Bavarian government (among them the author Ernst Toller). After standing aloof for a while the Communists entered the revolutionary government and became the dominant force, further radicalizing the government. The Communists took and murdered several hostages. In early May 1919 a Free Corps and regular army units repressed the Bavarian revolution with utmost and often blind brutality incommensurate to the real danger.
Source: http://www.colby.edu/personal/rmscheck/GermanyD3.html
D.3. The Republic Besieged, 1918-1923
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