The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Friedrich Ebert
A Short Look back in History

Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925) was a leather craftsman from Heidelberg. He was active in politics and trade unions in Bremen at an early age. After joining the steering committee of the Social Democratic Party in Berlin in 1905, he was elected to Parliament in 1912 and became a leader of the Social Democratic Caucus in 1916. He had been chairman of the Social Democratic Party since 1913 following the death of August Bebel.

After the Social Democratic Revolution in 1918 and the end of the monarchy, Friedrich Ebert assumed the co-leadership of the revolutionary government, the "Council of Peoples Representatives". He was a decisive opponent of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or a system of governance modeled upon the Russian system. Instead, he advocated a parliamentary democracy and saw that elections were held for the Weimar National Assembly, which subsequently elected him as President of the Reich.

In Ebert’s tenure he sought to achieve social and political equality between the upper and lower classes yet rejected the classical policy of class warfare, which caused considerable controversy within the party. It was the political right, however, which made him the object of slander and defamation targeting his person as well as the democratic character of the Republic. Their efforts contributed to the early death of the first democratically elected head of state in 1925.

Now, in a stable democracy, the results of his political achievements have come to bear beyond party lines.