Year: 1968
Type: article
Abstract: Friedrich Ebert participated in a critical period of history.His decisions as co-leader of German Social Democracy, chairman of the 1918-1919 government and Reichsprasident extended beyond class and nation to international significance.Yet he remains surprisingly unknown.Though subject to emotional attack or to artificial glorification, 1 thorough research and dispassionate analysis have not been applied in estimating his aims and methods, his contributions and shortcomings.2 Party-stained glasses and democratic-tradition-seeking blinders have not been the only reason why Ebert has been subject to label-pinning or hero-worship.Pertinent sources have not been found, brought forward or evaluated.Not evaluated are the three volumes of speeches, 1 Examples are the Stalinist implications -C.Schorske, German Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1955), p. 124 -or the Lincolnian equations -T.Heuss, "Friedrich Ebert zum Gedachtnis", in: M. Peters, Friedrich Ebert (Berlin, 1954). 2 Neither W. Besson, Friedrich Ebert (Berlin, 1963), which remains the most insightful biography to date, nor G. Kotowski, Friedrich Ebert, I: Aufstiegeines deutschen Arbeiterfuhrers (Berlin, 1963) go much beyond the general presentations of the 1920s: E. Felden, Eines Menschen Weg (Bremen, 1927) and Friedrich Ebert und seine Zeit, ein Gedenkwerk (Charlottenburg, 1928).Kotowski's first part of a full-scale biography is particularly disappointing in that though some novel information is presented about the Bremen period, Ebert as man and party politician does not emerge from the background.The idea that Ebert "only in 1917 began to exert decisive influence on the whole politic of his party" (p.xii) is placed in doubt by much evidence Kotowski himself presents from the memoirs of Scheidemann or the minutes of the Parteiausschuss; it is contradicted by the diary published below and by E. Matthias and S. Miller, eds, Das Kriegstagebuch des Reichstagesabgeordneten Eduard David (Diisseldorf, 1966), pp.50, 53, 57, 62, 70, which shows, by the difficulties the rightists had in gaining Ebert and Scheidemann for their plans and policies, that the latter not only had their own aims and methods but that power in the party central lay with them or it would not have been necessary to gain their support.Kotowski's assertion that Ebert was known neither to the public nor to the leading men of the Wilhelmian state (p.xi) is an acceptance of a myth Scheidemann created but contradicted by the diary below and David, Kriegstagebuch, pp.6 note 12, 141, 127, passim.Ebert's shortcomings only are emphasized by R. N.
Author: D. K. Buse
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2155622290