Bavarian Soviet Republic

The Bavarian Soviet Republic (or Bavarian Council Republic), also known as the Munich Soviet Republic (German: Räterepublik Baiern, Münchner Räterepublik), was a short-lived unrecognised socialist state in Bavaria during the German revolution of 1918–1919.

A group of communists and anarchists declared the Bavarian Soviet Republic on 6 April 1919, forcing the government of the existing People's State of Bavaria to flee to Bamberg in northern Bavaria. The members of the new government, led by playwright Ernst Toller, had no political or administrative experience, and after just six days in power they were ousted in a putsch organized by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The new head of state, the Russian-German Bolshevik Eugen Leviné, quickly instituted communist measures such as worker control of factories. Food shortages led to popular unrest, and on 3 May the People's State was put down by soldiers of the German Army supported by paramilitary Freikorps troops. Some 600 people died in the fighting.

On 14 August 1919, the democratic Free State of Bavaria was established as a constituent state of the Weimar Republic.

The roots of the Bavarian Soviet Republic lay in the German Empire's defeat in the First World War and the ensuing German revolution of 1918–1919. Faced with demonstrations and growing unrest in Munich, King Ludwig III of Bavaria fled the city on 7 November 1918. Kurt Eisner of the left-wing Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), with the support of local revolutionary workers' and soldiers' councils, then became minister-president of the newly proclaimed People's State of Bavaria. In January, Bavarian voters elected a Landtag (parliament) to draft a republican constitution for Bavaria. On 21 February 1919, the day of the Landtag's first meeting, Eisner was assassinated by a right-wing extremist while on his way to the assembly. After a period during which the workers' councils attempted to form a new government, the Landtag met again on 17 March and chose Johannes Hoffmann of the moderate Social Democratic Party as the new minister-president. He then put together a minority cabinet to govern the People's State along with the Landtag.

On the night of 6–7 April, communists and anarchists, energized by the news of a communist revolution in Hungary, declared a soviet republic, with Ernst Toller as chief of state. Toller called on the non-existent Bavarian Red Army to support the new dictatorship of the proletariat and ruthlessly deal with any counter-revolutionary behaviour. The KPD reluctantly took part in the newly formed soviet republic, although the party's chairman, Paul Levi, denounced the republic as "revolutionary adventurism".

The Hoffmann government fled to Bamberg in northern Bavaria, which it declared the new seat of government.

Initially, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was ruled by USPD members such as Ernst Toller and anarchists like writer Gustav Landauer, economist Silvio Gesell and playwright Erich Mühsam. Toller, who was also a playwright, described the revolution as the "Bavarian Revolution of Love". Among the café society of Schwabing, the new government became known as "the regime of the coffeehouse anarchists".

Toller's cabinet picks were controversial. For instance, a burglar with a conviction for moral turpitude was chosen as police president of Munich. Most infamous was the Commissar of Foreign Affairs Dr. Franz Lipp, who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals. He declared war on Württemberg and Switzerland over the Swiss refusal to lend 60 locomotives to the Republic. He claimed to be well acquainted with Pope Benedict XV and informed Vladimir Lenin and the Pope by cable that the ousted former Minister-President Hoffmann had fled to Bamberg and taken the key to the ministry toilet with him.

Toller's brief government was characterized by bold declarations without real enforcement. The minister for public housing published a decree saying that no house could thereafter contain more than three rooms and that the living room must always be above the kitchen and bedroom. It was also declared that Finance Minister Silvio Gesell's concept of Freigeld (lit. 'free money') would be implemented, although it never was.

Members of the Toller cabinet were:

On Saturday 12 April 1919, only six days into Toller's regime, the KPD seized power, led by three Russian-German Bolsheviks, with Eugen Leviné as head of state and Max Levien as the chairman of the Bavarian KPD. The communists managed to secure power after the Palm Sunday Putsch, when the Bavarian Red Army – which consisted of factory workers and members of the workers' and soldiers' councils under the command of Rudolf Egelhofer – defeated the Bavarian militia forces of the Republican Defense Troop. Twenty men died in the fighting.

Having received the blessings of Lenin – who at the annual May Day celebration in Red Square said: "The liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary not only in Soviet Russia but in ... Soviet Bavaria" – Leviné began to enact more communist reforms, which included forming a "Red Army" from factory workers, seizing cash, food supplies, and privately owned guns, expropriating luxurious apartments and giving them to the homeless, and placing factories under the ownership and control of their workers. One of Munich's main churches was taken over and made into a revolutionary temple which would be presided over by "Goddess Reason". Bavaria was to be in the vanguard of the Bolshevization of central Europe, with all workers to receive military training.

Leviné also had plans to abolish paper money and reform the education system, but he did not have time to implement them. There was time, however, for Max Levien, following Lenin's orders, to arrest aristocrats and members of the middle class as hostages.

During Leviné's short reign, food shortages quickly became a problem, especially the absence of milk. Public criticism over the milk shortage turned political, precipitating the communist government to publicly declare: "What does it matter? ... Most of it goes to the children of the bourgeoisie anyway. We are not interested in keeping them alive. No harm if they die – they'd only grow into enemies of the proletariat."

On 27 April, due to disputes over whether negotiations should be held with Hoffmann's People's State of Bavaria, Leviné's committee resigned and re-elected Toller to lead the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

The rival governments – Hoffmann's People's State of Bavaria seated in Bamberg and the Bavarian Soviet Republic located in Munich – clashed militarily at Dachau on 18 April when Hoffmann's 8,000 soldiers met the Soviet Republic's 30,000. The BSR forces led by Ernst Toller were victorious in the first battle at Dachau, but Hoffmann made a deal that gave him the services of 20,000 men of the Freikorps under Lt. General Burghard von Oven [de]. Oven and the Freikorps, along with loyalist elements of the German Army – called the "White Guards of Capitalism" by the communists – then took Dachau and surrounded Munich. In the meantime, supporters of the BSR had occupied the rooms of the Thule Society in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten on 26 April and arrested Countess Hella von Westarp, the society's secretary, and six others, who were to be held as hostages. Rudolf Egelhofer, panicked by Munich being surrounded by Hoffmann's forces, had these seven and three other hostages executed on 30 April. They included the well-connected Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. The executions were carried out despite Toller's efforts to prevent them.

The Freikorps broke through the Munich defences on 1 May, leading to bitter street fighting that involved "flame-throwers, heavy artillery, armoured vehicles, even aircraft". At least 606 people were killed, of whom 335 were civilians. Leviné was later condemned to death for treason and shot by a firing squad in Stadelheim Prison. Gustav Landauer was killed by the Freikorps, and Egelhofer was murdered without trial after being arrested. Numerous others were given prison sentences, such as Toller (5 years) and the anarchist writer Erich Mühsam (15 years); others received longer sentences, 6,000 years' worth in all, some of it to hard labour.

General von Oven declared the city secured on 6 May, ending the reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Although the Hoffmann government was restored, power in Munich had shifted to the right.

The republican Bamberg Constitution [de] was enacted on 14 August 1919, creating the Free State of Bavaria as a constituent state of the new Weimar Republic.

The tumultuous period of the People's State of Bavaria and the Bavarian Soviet Republic was used by conservative and far-right circles to stoke fear and hatred of "Bolshevism" among Bavarian society. The period during which the two states existed was popularly remembered as one of shortages, censorship, restrictions on freedom, violence and general disorder. The many separate strands of Bavarian conservatism found a common enemy in the far left, and Bavaria became profoundly "reactionary, anti-Republican, [and] counter-revolutionary". The fact that some of the prominent figures of the People's State and the Soviet Republic were Jewish was used to push the conspiracy theory of "Jewish Bolshevism" in Bavaria.

One notable supporter of the Soviet Republic was the artist Georg Schrimpf, then aged 30, who was arrested when the movement was crushed. His friend, the writer Oskar Maria Graf, who was also arrested, wrote about the events in his 1927 autobiographical novel, Wir sind Gefangene (Prisoners All). The famed anarchist novelist Ret Marut (later known as B. Traven) was an active participant in the establishment of soviet power and worked as head of the Press Department of the Soviet Republic. During the early days of the Soviet Republic, representatives of cultural life also played an important role in the revolution. Some intellectuals such as the economist Lujo Brentano, the conductor Bruno Walter and the writers Heinrich Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke formed the Rat der geistigen Arbeit (Council of Intellectual Work) with Mann as its chairman.

Adolf Hitler's longstanding chauffeur and first leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS) Julius Schreck signed up and served as a member of the Red Army in late April 1919. Balthasar Brandmayer, one of Hitler's closest wartime friends, remarked "how he at first welcomed the end of the monarchies" and the establishment of the republic in Bavaria.

Hitler himself acted as a liaison between his army battalion – he had been elected "deputy battalion representative" – and the Soviet Republic's Department of Propaganda. Both newsreel film footage and a still photograph show Hitler marching in Eisner's funeral procession. He wears both a black mourning band and a red band showing support for the Government. It is uncertain whether this indicated that Hitler was a true supporter of the Soviet Republic, or that he was simply taking an available opportunity not to return to his impoverished pre-war civilian life. Befitting what is now known about his character, Hitler's so-called left-wing politics may have been purely opportunistic, rather than reflecting a deeper political belief. It is also known that once the Soviet Republic had fallen to government troops and the Freikorps, Hitler immediately changed his loyalties, aligning himself with the Weimar Republic and – as part of a three-man committee assigned to investigate the behavior of his regiment's soldiers – informed on other soldiers who had shown sympathy for the soviet government.

Active participants in the Freikorps units – those of Oven, Franz Ritter von Epp, and Hermann Erhardt – that suppressed the Bavarian Soviet Republic included future powerful members of the Nazi Party, including Rudolf Hess, a member of the Freikorps Epp.

In his 1952 memoir Witness, Whittaker Chambers named Eugene Leviné as one of three people whom he most admired as he joined the Communist Party USA, along with Felix Dzerzhinsky and Igor Sazonov:

• Lenin: Message of Greetings to the Bavarian Soviet Republic

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