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Otto Wels
Otto Wels (15 September 1873 – 16 September 1939) was a German politician who served as a member of parliament from 1912 to 1933 and as the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1919 until his death in 1939. His 1933 speech in the Reichstag in opposition to Hitler and against the Enabling Act marked the end of the Weimar Republic prior to the Act passing into law. Life and career Born in Berlin on 15 September 1873, Wels was the son of an innkeeper (Johann Wels and his wife Johanne). The restaurant served as a meeting place for early SPD supporters exposing Wels to the workers movement at a young age. In 1891, he began an apprenticeship as a paper hanger and joined the SPD. Around 1893, he married Bertha Antonie Reske, a seamstress and they had two sons, Walter and Hugo. In the early 1890s, he represented other workers in the Berlin Craftsmens Chamber and was elected the first Chairman of the local SPD branch. From 1895 to 1897 he served his military s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Wels
Otto Wels (15 September 1873 – 16 September 1939) was a German politician who served as a member of parliament from 1912 to 1933 and as the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1919 until his death in 1939. His 1933 speech in the Reichstag in opposition to Hitler and against the Enabling Act marked the end of the Weimar Republic prior to the Act passing into law. Life and career Born in Berlin on 15 September 1873, Wels was the son of an innkeeper (Johann Wels and his wife Johanne). The restaurant served as a meeting place for early SPD supporters exposing Wels to the workers movement at a young age. In 1891, he began an apprenticeship as a paper hanger and joined the SPD. Around 1893, he married Bertha Antonie Reske, a seamstress and they had two sons, Walter and Hugo. In the early 1890s, he represented other workers in the Berlin Craftsmens Chamber and was elected the first Chairman of the local SPD branch. From 1895 to 1897 he served his military s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Democratic Party Of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together with Lars Klingbeil, who joined her in December 2021. After Olaf Scholz was elected chancellor in 2021 the SPD became the leading party of the federal government, which the SPD formed with the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, after the 2021 federal election. The SPD is a member of 11 of the 16 German state governments and is a leading partner in seven of them. The SPD was established in 1863. It was one of the earliest Marxist-influenced parties in the world. From the 1890s through the early 20th century, the SPD was Europe's largest Marxist party, and the most popular political party in Germany. During the First World War, the party split between a pro-war mainstream ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Trade Unions (Germany)
The Free Trade Unions (German: ''Freie Gewerkschaften''; sometimes also translated as Free Labor Unions or Free Labour Unions) comprised the socialist trade union movement in Germany from 1890 to 1933. The term distinguished them from the liberal ("yellow") and Christian labor unions in Germany. Coordinated by the General Commission of German Trade Unions until 1919 and later by the General German Trade Union Federation, the Free Trade Unions consisted of forty-six individual labor organizations with a total of 2.5 million members as of 1914."Free Trade Unions (Freie Gewerkschaften)". In Campbell, Joan (ed.): ''European labor unions''. 1992, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut The term "free" was to note that these unions were independent worker organizations. The liberal ("yellow") unions were considered to be controlled by management and the "Christian" trade unions by the Catholic Church. Later, the term "free trade unions" also indicated those that were not fronts for the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Legien
Carl Legien (1 December 1861 – 26 December 1920) was a German unionist, moderate Social Democratic politician and first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. Biography Legien was born in Marienburg, Province of Prussia, (now Malbork, Poland), to Rudolf, a tax official, and Maria Legien. His parents died in his childhood and Legien grew up in an orphanage in Thorn, Province of Prussia (now Toruń) from 1867 to 1875. He became a wood turner and served in the Prussian Army from 1881 to 1884. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1885, a wood turners’ union in 1886 and worked as a turner in several cities in Germany until 1891, since 1886 in Hamburg. In 1887 Legien became the first chairman of the German Association of Turners and of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions (Generalkommission der Gewerkschaften Deutschlands) in 1891, a position he would hold until its dissolution in 1919. He was elected a member of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Müller (politician)
Hermann Müller (18 May 1876 – 20 March 1931; ) was a German Social Democratic politician who served as the Foreign minister (1919–1920), and twice as the Chancellor of Germany (1920, 1928–1930) in the Weimar Republic. In his capacity as Foreign Minister, he was one of the German signatories of the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919). Early life Hermann Müller was born on 18 May 1876 in Mannheim, the son of Georg Jakob Müller (born 1843), a producer of sparkling wine and wine dealer from Güdingen near Saarbrücken, and his wife Karoline (née Vogt, born 1849, died after 1931), originally from Frankfurt am Main. Müller attended the ''Realgymnasium'' at Mannheim and after his father moved to Niederlößnitz in 1888 at Dresden. After his father died in 1892, Müller had to leave school due to financial difficulties and began an apprenticeship (''kaufmännische Lehre'') at Frankfurt. He worked in Frankfurt and Breslau, and in 1893 joined the Social Democratic Party of Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
President Of Germany (1919–1945)
The president of the Reich (german: Reichspräsident) was the German head of state under the Weimar constitution, which was officially in force from 1919 to 1945. In English he was usually simply referred to as the president of Germany. The Weimar constitution created a semi-presidential system in which power was divided between president, cabinet and parliament. The ''Reichspräsident'' was directly elected under universal adult suffrage for a seven-year term. It was intended that the president would rule in conjunction with the Reichstag (legislature) and that his emergency powers would be exercised only in extraordinary circumstances, but the political instability of the Weimar period, and a paralysing factionalism in the legislature, meant that the president came to occupy a position of considerable power, capable of legislating by decree and appointing and dismissing governments at will. In 1934, after the death of President Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freikorps
(, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenary or private armies, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries, the first so-called ("free regiments", Freie Regimenter) were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades, and deserters. These, sometimes exotically equipped, units served as infantry and cavalry (or, more rarely, as artillery); sometimes in just company strength and sometimes in formations of up to several thousand strong. There were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian included infantry, jäger, dragoons and hussars. The French '' Volontaires de Saxe'' combined uhlans and dragoons. In the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19, consisting largely of World War I veterans were raised as paramilitar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stadtschloss, Berlin
The Berlin Palace (german: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (german: Königliches Schloss), on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture. The former royal palace was one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its dome. Used for various government functions after the fall of the monarchy in 1918, it was damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, and was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, it became the location of the modernist East German Palace of the Republic (the central government building of East Germany). After German reunification and several years of debate and discussion, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both building ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independent Social Democratic Party Of Germany
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, USPD) was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of anti-war members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), from the left of the party as well as the centre and the right. The organization attempted to chart a course between electorally oriented reformism on the one hand and Bolshevist revolutionism on the other. The organization was terminated in 1931 through merger with the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). Organizational history Formation On 21 December 1915, several SPD members in the Reichstag, the German parliament, voted against the authorization of further credits to finance World War I, an incident that emphasized existing tensions between the party's leadership and the pacifists surrounding Hugo Haase and ultimately ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Workers' Council
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system. A variation is a soldiers' council, where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction (like the 1918 German ''Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat''). Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees, such as the Congress of Soviets. In such a system, the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Some socialists believe that workers' councils are necessary for the organization of a proletarian revolution and the implementation of a communist society. A works council is distinct from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Revolution Of 1918–1919
The German Revolution or November Revolution (german: Novemberrevolution) was a civil conflict in the German Empire at the end of the First World War that resulted in the replacement of the German federal constitutional monarchy with a democratic parliamentary republic that later became known as the Weimar Republic. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the adoption of the Weimar Constitution in August 1919. Among the factors leading to the revolution were the extreme burdens suffered by the German population during the four years of war, the economic and psychological impacts of the German Empire's defeat by the Allies, and growing social tensions between the general population and the aristocratic and bourgeois elite. The first acts of the revolution were triggered by the policies of the Supreme Command () of the German Army and its lack of coordination with the Naval Command (). In the face of defeat, the Naval Command insisted on trying to precipita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
August Bebel
Ferdinand August Bebel (22 February 1840 – 13 August 1913) was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association into the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). During the repression under the terms of the Anti-Socialist Laws, Bebel became the leading figure of the social democratic movement in Germany and from 1892 until his death served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Biography Early years Ferdinand August Bebel, known as August, was born on 22 February 1840, in Deutz, Germany, now a part of Cologne. He was the son of a Prussian noncommissioned officer in the Prussian infantry, initially from Ostrowo in the Province of Posen, and was born in military barracks. The father died in 1844. As a young man, Bebel apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner in Leipzig."August Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
