Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert , 1871-1925, first president (1919-25) of the German republic. A Social Democratic deputy in the Reichstag, in 1913 he became party leader, succeeding Bebel ; a gradualist, or moderate, he was seen as pragmatic and non-ideological. Ebert supported the war effort during World War I. In 1917, leftists split from the party over the war budget and called for revolution. Ebert's party formed a coalition with Catholic and centrist parties. He would have preferred a parliamentary monarchy to the republic, but he succeeded Maximilian, prince of Baden as chancellor when the monarchy collapsed and was elected president in 1919. As president, he provided strong, nonpartisan leadership. He suppressed the uprising (1919) of the Communist Spartacus party and the reactionary putsch (1920) of Wolfgang Kapp . During his presidency Germany accepted the Treaty of Versailles and adopted the Weimar constitution, but his coalition lost its majority because of resentment over the treaty.

Ebert, Friedrich (b. 4 Feb. 1871, d. 28 Feb. 1925). President of Germany 1919–25 Born in Heidelberg, he became a saddler, and joined the SPD in 1889. From 1893 he edited a party newspaper, and in 1900 he became leader of the SPD in the parliament of the city-state of Bremen. Elected to the national parliament in 1912, he became chairman of his party in 1913. Upon the collapse of the Empire he was appointed Chancellor on 9 November 1918, partly because of his hostility to the current revolts throughout Germany. On 10 November he established a pact with the army leader, General Groener. With the tacit support of the bureaucratic elites, this enabled him to squash the revolution and establish a democracy. In return he had to grant the army and bureaucracy almost complete autonomy, and the persistence of these old power structures fundamentally weakened the new Weimar Republic throughout its existence. He was elected President by the National Assembly on 11 February 1919, and tried (in vain) to secure a better treatment of Germany at the Paris Peace Conference. He was due to face a popular presidential election in 1922, but, owing to Germany's volatile domestic situation in 1922, Parliament voted to extend his period in office. Constantly exposed to personal attacks from rightist groups, in 1924 he was forced to defend himself in court against the accusation of treason during the war, when he had participated in a strike of munitions workers. In a judgment that exemplified the right-wing bias of the judiciary, his accuser was found guilty of lying, but Ebert was not cleared of treason. The trial strained his health, and he died soon afterwards.