Revolutionary Two-Step
If Fate had the sense of irony people ascribe to it, the German Revolution would have begun in and been directed from the Berlin Police Headquarters. The building was nondescript, slouching on the Alexandrplatz as it bent irresolutely from northwest to southwest. Its rusting brick façade sheltered a low door dominated by its posts and heavy lintel. Standing in front of the sporadically-restored museum it is today, it is easy to imagine the drafts and the dust that would have pervaded its poorly-insulated halls, and just as easy to conclude that the seventy revolutionary leaders who met there in the evening of January 5, 1919 would have wanted to leave as soon as possible. Richard Müller notes that despite its change of heart, sheltering men and women determined to bring down the government, he remembered only “the shouts and protestations of the desperate vagrants and sullen political prisoners who had been [its] recent tenants”. Overly romantic, perhaps, but illustrative of the fact that very few people wanted to remain there long.
The meeting had been called by Police Chief Emil Eichhorn in order to organize the opposition to his dismissal that had materialized that morning in the streets. Responding to the calls of the Independent Socialists and of the new Communist Party, the workers had surprised their political leaders with their reaction. Rather than the muted protest they had expected, crowds of hundreds of thousands had poured out of the eastern Red Belt of Berlin and into the center of the Imperial city. They had steered clear of the nightmares of the Social Democratic leaders had had refrained from linking up with the People’s Navy Division in the Marstall, or occupying the rest of the Stadtschloss, but had occupied the Vorwärts offices and had cut telegraph communications in and out of the city. This unexpected upsurge of revolutionary energy explains the urgency with which revolutionaries from the factories, from the Independent Socialist Party, and from the Communist Party converged on Police Headquarters.
In each case, the motivations were different. The Independent Socialists, who had been accused nonstop since the previous November and especially during the street fighting over Christmas of timidity and hesitation by the Obleute (the factory group leaders), were anxious to prove their mettle. Over time, the mid-level Independent Socialists had come to believe the propaganda of their rivals, and had developed an inferiority complex that demanded action at the nearest opportunity. This tendency was represented at the meeting by Emil Barth, who had represented the radical wing of the party in the Council of People’s Deputies before resigning—along with his fellows—in protest at the Council’s embrace of violent measures against demands made against it. Their other major tendency was represented by Georg Ledebour. He had stubbornly defended his party’s practice of participation in the Council, and opposed the “Sparticization” of the Independent party.
The Obleute dominated the meeting, with around seventy representatives from the Berlin factories to the two Communists and three Independents (Eichhorn was an Independent Socialist). However, most of them didn’t follow a political prescription of their own. They mostly sympathized with a political party, but were by no means dogmatic about it and were open to persuasion. It is for this reason that the only Obleute present who has entered the historical record is Richard Müller, who kept the minutes. Just days before, Müller had been involved in negotiations with Karl Liebknecht to affiliate the Obleute organization to the Communist Party, but these negotiations had come to nothing. Müller held Liebknecht in contempt and considered his strategy little better than putchism. Liebknecht, in turn, had his hands tied by the decisions that kept coming out of the Communists’ Congress: no participation in elections for the Constituent Assembly, preparation for the armed insurrection. Earlier he had clashed with the Independent current represented by Ledebour. He entered the meeting in a frame of mind suspicious to both political parties.
The Communists had sent Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Their presence at the meeting was largely accidental: Liebknecht couldn’t be found, so Luxemburg, the other co-Chair of the party, would go instead. Jogiches had been her chosen confederate. Other party leaders had wanted to send Wilhelm Pieck or Paul Levi, but Luxemburg had rudely refused to go unless she could pick her wingman. Not willing to slight the delegates by choosing a lesser personage, the other party leaders backed down. Her choice of Jogiches is not surprising. Their political positions were largely congruent, he had supported her (defeated) theses for electoral participation and against premature insurrection at the Congress, they had collaborated for many years, and, last but not least, they were lovers. Both had sat through the latter stages of the Congress in dread, shocked and alarmed by the recklessness of their comrades in proclaiming themselves and the workers ready for armed insurrection. Indeed, Jogiches had insisted that Luxemburg and Liebknecht flee to Switzerland before the Communists brought disaster upon themselves. They were also well aware that most of the delegates to the meeting shared their assessment of their party’s recklessness and immaturity, and were determined to combat this.
Under these circumstances, two conclusions were virtually inevitable. The first was that the personalities mentioned: Barth, Ledebour, Müller, Jogiches, and Luxemburg would decide the outcome of the meeting. Eichhorn, who presided, was swiftly relegated to mascot status, his political naivety and lack of direct influence in the world of Berlin’s revolutionary leaders taking their toll. The second was that the meeting would be tumultuous. The tendencies represented were too fractious, and especially the Independents and Communists had fought each other with bitterness even when the Communists had been a faction in the Independent party.
Indeed, the meeting opened with nothing productive accomplished except some backbiting by Ledebour and Luxemburg. Müller’s minutes omit references to what was actually said, as he seems to have considered note-taking a waste of time at this point in the meeting, but he does note that Eichhorn attempted to keep order and that Ledebour shouted him down. This incident serves to illustrate the powerlessness of Eichhorn and also the chaotic and unformed nature of the early meeting. Müller perks up only when a report arrives from the newspaper district that the workers are beginning to occupy other papers besides Vorwärts, and estimates that over two hundred thousand workers are in the streets begin to be flung around. Modern scholarship has estimated the number of workers involved as closer to one hundred twenty-five or one hundred fifty thousand, and Müller himself in a marginal note expresses some skepticism in this regard. However, the important consequense of this report, and one that followed confirming that the People’s Naval Division and several regiments stationed east of the city would support an uprising, was that it forced the meeting to abandon its agenda, such as it was, and openly consider the question of an immediate armed insurrection.
Barth immediately tabled a motion calling for insurrection, the establishment of a Revolutionary Committee, and the overthrow of the Council of People’s Commissars. Müller, heaping scorn on Barth, recalled in his memoirs how “The Independent Party had no clear political programme; but nothing lay further beyond its intentions than the idea of toppling the Ebert-Scheidemann government. At this conference, decisions lay in the hands of the Independents. And here it became clear that in particular those wavering figures who were sitting in the Berlin party committee, who normally did not like to put themselves in danger, but at the same time always wanted to participate in everything, turned out to be the wildest bawlers, presenting themselves in the most ‘revolutionary' manner possible.” He would have us believe he said as much at the conference, though no minutes survive which recorded this intervention. He was followed by Jogiches, who “declared” in Müller’s words “that neither the political nor the military preconditions existed” for a successful armed uprising. An Obleute named Scholze, defending Barth’s motion, pointed to the people in the streets and to the reports of the soldiers’ support. Jogiches urged caution, saying that such reports in such a precarious situation as theirs were bound to contain inaccuracies, and that at the very least they should wait for more information before coming to a decision.
Until this point, Jogiches and Ledebour had been on the defensive. Müller’s minutes record hisses and shouts during Jogiches’ speeches, and it is safe to assume from their similar content that his were received with just as much hostility. Then, however, Ledebour rose to speak. He defended his party comrade, defaming the Council of People’s Commissars for their actions over Christmas, claiming that he had received intelligence that Bremen, Leipzig, and the Ruhr would follow Berlin in revolt. Despite Ledebour’s offer of his cautious credentials as proof that he wouldn’t support an armed uprising unless there was no possibility of succeeding, Müller reports that Ledebour seemed to lose his head. Sensing her moment, Luxemburg rose to speak. She remarked upon the cunning that Ebert and Scheidemann had already shown in their management of the Imperial Council Convention (where voting procedures were set up so as to prevent Spartacists from entering and intervening, and which passed a resolution in favor of a parliamentary republic), and stated that it was her conclusion that the present situation was a trap. Müller reports the following lines: “The masses make revolution, but their leaders must avoid at all costs sticking their heads into the nooses of the counter-revolution. The German workers are not so spirited that they will press on when Comrade Ledebour and I hang side by side from the lamp-posts”. She tabled a motion of her own calling for the workers to arm themselves and to fraternize with the soldiers but to avoid confrontations with the police and the soldiers.
Ledebour’s and Luxemburg’s interventions served to tip the balance away from Barth, Ledebour by making his comrade’s position look like a caricature of itself, almost Anarchistic, and Luxemburg by providing a positive alternative that allowed the delegates to feel they were doing something. When Eichhorn called for a vote, Barth’s motion was defeated by forty-one votes to thirty-four, while Luxemburg’s squeaked through on the bare majority of thirty-nine to thirty-six.
