German Revolution

German authors, especially from the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, are usually quite well known in the Anglophone world. This is particularly the case with regard to English-speaking socialists, given that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were German and that, before German fascism came to power in 1933, the German labor movement had been the strongest worldwide. Early 20th-century German authors like Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, and Anna Seghers therefore have a high currency and enjoy an ongoing interest in the U.S., the U.K. and beyond, especially now that the global financial crisis has led to the global rise of the far right which bears eerie similarities with the inter-war period, energizing a return to that time’s anti-fascist authors for guidance in the historic moment we are in.

In Germany itself, one of the key authors of the period was Kurt Tucholsky. The man with the unpronounceable Slavic name is surprisingly unknown and unacknowledged in the Anglophone world, even though he ranks among the most cited and best-loved German authors to this day. And few could know who he was, because the few translated works of his that do exist, such as the bestselling novella Castle Gripsholm, 2 his magnificent Deutschland, Deutschland über alles picture book (published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1972), 3 and the selected Satirical Writings, 4 which are essentially identical with the edited volume Germany? Germany!, 5 are long out of print (helped in this, I must admit, by my buying as many copies as I could in order to distribute them among my York University comrades). This year (2020), the 130th anniversary of Tucholsky’s birth and 85th anniversary of his death, is a good time to remember him and to promote new translations of his work.

In order to introduce Kurt Tucholsky, let us begin with a few superlatives: Tucholsky ranked among the best-paid critics during Germany’s short-lived Weimar Republic (1918–33). Even now, his wit – always political, usually funny, often sarcastic, sometimes cynical, frequently melancholic, and increasingly embittered – is unmatched in German-speaking countries. Through the decades, authors have attempted to emulate it but never succeeded. Tucholsky created thousands of bonmots. And until today, his humor – sometimes undermining the ruling class with one swipe, sometimes plain silly – creates the sentiment captured by one of his books’ titles: Learn to Laugh Without Crying (1931).

Allegedly the shortest book in the world is the Comprehensive Book of German Humor. Kurt Tucholsky was living proof that Germans can actually be amusing. Some of his texts are legendary: as evidenced by most scholarly conferences, millions of academics have undoubtedly followed his “Advice for a Bad Speaker” (GW8: 290–292 and 1967: 109–111); tens of thousands of people have followed his “Creed of the Bourgeoisie” (GW6: 251–254 and 1990: 48–50), while millions of workers and traitors to their class of origin found solace and comfort in his ceaseless mockery of it, both petit et grand. Furthermore, billions of dog-hating people have found solace and comfort in his “Treatise on the Dog, As Well as On Noise and Sound” (GW5: 324–35), while tens of thousands must have been buried while someone read Tucholsky’s poem “Last Ride” (1967: 147–151).

At the same time, Tucholsky was one of the most service-oriented writers ever to emerge from the German mother tongue, advising his readers on “How to Travel Wrong” (1967: 49–53), how to do a “Crossword Puzzle by Force” (1967: 84–88), how to master the “Four Ways of Looking at a Squirrel” (1967: 112–115), and “How to Behave Yourself If You’re a Murderer” (GW6: 68–70). And Tucholsky, the journalist, not only mustered the courage to ask the hard questions including “Do You Use a Bathing Thermometer?” (GW4: 538–540), but also provided answers to eternal questions such as “What Do Women Do Before Going Out?” (1967: 105–106), “What Do Humans Do When They Are All Alone?” (GW4: 513–515), “Where Do the Holes in the Cheese Come From?” (GW6: 210–213), and “What Does the Inventor of the Zipper Look Like?” (GW6: 265–267). And Tucholsky’s journalistic skills and networks stretched so far that he could report on those alien life forms from Mars who observed planet Earth, observed the soldiers marching in unison, and then concluded “with absolute certainty: ‘There may be life on earth. But human beings – no, there are no human beings’” (1972: 6).

In fact, Tucholsky was a formidable humanist and occasional moralist and his observations of the neuroses, follies, and weaknesses of alienated human beings and the various classes and class fractions they belonged to – for instance in his “Pictures from Business Life” (GW3: 490–495), his Herr Wendriner stories, or his poems on relationships such as “Every Night after Six o’clock” (GW6: 469–471), “After the Happy Ending” (1967: 214–215), and “Marital Quarrel” (GW6: 48–49) – rival the work of supreme sociologists, while his mastery of the German language is almost unrivaled.

In short, Tucholsky was most likely the best stylist ever to write in German. Still today, millions of German-speaking authors try and emulate Tucholsky’s style but they always fail. Even the best contemporary left-wing stylists – Hermann L. Gremliza, Georg Fülberth, Otto Köhler, Stefanie Sargnagel, etc. – never quite reach it. And therefore it is no wonder that thousands of Tucholsky revues – including tunes that Hanns Eisler and other composers wrote on the basis of his many poems – take place all over Germany every year. The semi-annual programs of the Berlin Ensemble, Brecht’s old theater in East Berlin, for instance, are never complete without sold-out Kurt Tucholsky evenings.

Aus Dokumenten der Leipziger Bürger- und Menschenrechtsgruppen Arbeitskreis Gerechtigkeit, Arbeitsgruppe Menschenrechte, Sonnabendskreis sowie der Redaktion der Samisdat-Zeitschrift Grenzfall in Berlin.
Erstmals wird die Revolution von 1989 als ein politisch gewollter Weg transparent gemacht. Ab 1987 können die Bürger- und Menschenrechtsgruppen als Wegbereiter der Friedlichen Revolution verstanden werden. Subversive Aktionen werden dokumentiert und die Auseinandersetzung der Bürgerrechtsbewegung in und mit der evangelischen Kirche. Entstehung und Funktion des Sonnabendskreises in Leipzig, einer bisher nicht betrachteten Organisationsform, werden dokumentiert. Über den Sonnabendskreis wurden Gruppen von Greifswald bis Großhennersdorf koordiniert, ca. 20 Samisdat-Redaktionen, 15 alternative Bibliotheken sowie ca. 20 weitere Friedens- und Umweltgruppen in ca. 50 Orten der ehemaligen "DDR". Tagesereignisse werden aus Originaltexten aus dem Bestande des Archivs der Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte Sachsen e.V., aus Flugblättern, Pressemitteilungen, Tagebucheinträgen und teilweise aus Akten rekonstruiert.

Es ist eines der aussagekräftigsten Bildmotive aus dem Revolutionsgeschehen 1918/19 in Deutschland. Soldaten halten ein Schild, darauf unmissverständlich die Warnung aufgedruckt: »Wer weitergeht wird erschossen!« HALT! rufen sie und sperren damit öffentliche Plätze ab. Seit Januar 1919 finden sich solche Aufforderungen in Deutschland. Dass es dazu kommen würde, war zwei Monate zuvor nicht abzusehen gewesen.

This chapter demonstrates the pivotal importance of the German Revolution on the development of council communist thought. It claims that differences between the Bolsehviks and “left” or “council” communists occurred initially over the questions of revolutionary strategies for Europe and only later over a critique of the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the Russian Revolution. This chapter also traces a shift in theorists’ understanding of the workers’ councils during and after the German Revolution. It argues that while participants in the revolution such as the Revolutionary Shop Stewards were more inclined to view the councils as the initial structures of a post-capitalist society, this shifted in the later council communist ideology towards a more open principle of workers’ self-emancipation. The outlines of council communism did not emerge immediately during the experience of workers' councils in the Germany Revolution. Rather, they emerged gradually through theoretical debates within the Communist International.

This paper defends the idea that the only feasible and desirable alternative to bourgeois democracy in 1918 Germany was a parliamentary democracy supported by workers’ councils. This alternative, which I will call council Erfurtianism, blazed a trail of political possibility from late November 1918 to the summer of 1920 that was eminently desirable and politically accessible to the German revolutionary left. Council Erfurtianism was consistently undermined by the leadership of the majority social democrats, with some help from the far left. A mixture of sectarianism and mistrust made revolutionary compromise impossible and elevated the ‘parliament vs. councils’ polarity from a secondary strategic issue, into a supreme question of (putative) principle. That sectarianism also accounted for two failed attempts to rekindle the revolutionary fire: the pro-socialisation strikes of March 1919 and the strike that ended the Kapp putsch, one year later.

This article seeks to position gender theory as critical to making sense of one of the First World War’s largest remaining historical problems: the persistence of mass violence after November 1918. While Robert Gerwarth and John Horne’s pathbreaking work on veteran violence has challenged the standard 1914-18 periodisation of the war, their focus on military defeat and revolution obscures the centrality of gender relations to the continuation of violence after the formal end of hostilities. By putting their work into conversation with that of feminist theorists, I argue that countries which experienced more extreme gender dislocation or ‘gender trouble’ witnessed the greatest post-war violence, chiefly in the former German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. In states where women’s struggles were more successfully contained, patriarchal forces faced a less severe threat and thus responded with considerably less violence. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Laura Doan, Joanna Bourke, Klaus Theweleit, and Erika Kuhlman, this article shows how right-wing violence targeting ‘red women’ in this period was not a mere outgrowth of battles between competing nationalisms or communism and fascism, but, crucially, a military clash between feminism and anti-feminism. With revitalised feminist movements sweeping Europe today from Poland to Ireland, understanding the violent restoration of patriarchy in the early 1920s offers crucial lessons –and warnings – for our own dangerously promising political moment.

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943

After being defeated at the World War One, Germany plunged into a serious political, economic and social crisis, opening up one of the most troubled periods in its history. Between 1918 and 1923, there were a lot of failed attempts of left-wing groups to take the power and promote a socialist revolution. Although defeated, the “German Revolution” is a topic of interest to the present time, of capitalism’s crisis, because as today, many saw the time they were living as an opportunity to rethink the socioeconomic structures of which they were submitted or even try to build something different.

In einer historischen Trilogie unter dem Obertitel „Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik“ verfasste Richard Müller, Metallarbeiter und Vorsitzender des Vollzugsrats der Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte  einen ungewöhnlichen Zeitzeugenbericht zur deutschen Novemberrevolution. Seine packend erzählten Bände erschienen 1924-1925, inspirierten Historiker wie Sebastian Haffner und sind Standardwerk und Geheimtipp zugleich.  Die drei Werke erscheinen in dieser Neuausgabe erstmals gebündelt in einem Band, ergänzt um eine Historische Einführung, eine Chronologie der Ereignisse sowie ein Personenregister.

This chapter reads the German revolution through Miguel Abensour’s theory of insurgent democracy, and in the context of two major criticisms of radical democratic theory.  Insurgent democracy posits a radical version of democracy that exists against the state and is founded in the emergence of a subject (the demos) asserting its political capacity.  But two persistent and interlinked criticisms are levelled against this type of vision of democracy: it is inattentive to institutions and it lacks a mechanism for maintaining its radical or insurgent nature.  Abensour responds to these criticisms through a reconceptualization of institution and an exploration of the possibility of an institutional right to insurrection.  Drawing on these insights, this chapter suggests the need to think the German Revolution from the perspective of an insurgent institution which, by producing a sens (meaning and direction) to revolt, acts as the condition of possibility of revolutionary action.  But, in continuing to understand democracy against the state, the chapter considers the ways in which the revolutionary insurgence came up against the attempts to suppress its momentum in re-inaugurating new forms of a “state” politics.  It also considers the contours of the right of insurrection against such statist regressions.

This text, by Franz Seiwert (1894–1933) was published as ‘Offener Brief an den Genossen A. Bogdanow’ in the journal Die Aktion in July 1921 (Seiwert 1921). At the time Seiwert was aligned with this literary and political journal which was edited by Franz Pfemfert and published in Berlin between 1911 and 1932. From 1920 Die Aktion was supportive of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (KAPD) and was becoming increasingly critical not only of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), but also of the very concept of a political party. Earlier in 1921, in May and June respectively, Die Aktion had published two translations of Bogdanov: ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’ (Bogdanov 1921a) and ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’ (1921b).1

Der Briefwechsel zwischen dem bekannten Religionshistoriker Gershom Scholem und seinem Bruder Werner in den Jahren 1914–1919 besteht auch, aber nicht nur aus Berichten über persönliche Erfahrungen im Ersten Weltkrieg. Im Vordergrund steht ebenso eine intensive Debatte über die geistig-politische Bedeutung des Weltkrieges. Eine Debatte, die mit erstaunlicher Klarsicht geführt wurde von zwei Heranwachsenden, die sich mit jeweils unterschiedlicher Gewichtung als Zionisten und Sozialisten sahen.

Ausgehend vom Ansatz der akteurszentrierten Transitionstheorie sind die Interessenlagen der
Autoren der beiden Demonstrations-Texte sowie die perspektivengeleiteten Rationalitäten ihrer Intentionen zu reflektieren. Gemeinsam war "nur" der Wille zum gewaltlosen Ausgang der Demonstration.
Der nach den Tagen der Gewalt erstmals gelungene friedliche Verlauf einer Massendemonstration konnte am 9. Oktober 1989 angesichts der Situation auf beiden Seiten – sowohl seitens der lokalen Funktionselite wie seitens der subversiven Gruppen – (einstweilen) als Erfolg gelten. Letztlich besiegelte dieser Tag den Sieg des organisierten Widerstandes.

Methodological critique of the sociological theory »spontaneous cooperation« to explain the revolution in Germany in 1989. This approach represented the german sociologists Dieter Opp and Detlef Pollack.
The author reconstructs the two statements. Opp's approach is logically inconsistent. This approach is also unfit for scientific prediction, but Opp says the possibility of prediction is a necessary criterion for a scientific theory.
Pollack's systemtheoretical approach ignores the really existing organized resistance of the subversive groups in Leipzig, for example the »Working group for human rights« or the »Working group for Justice«.
Miracle or surprise chance are scientifically anacceptable models to explain a revolution.
Both economically and politically offered the capitalist welfare state more for the workers than the socialism. So people noticed socialism as a system with more work for less prosperity and without civil rights, as a system of »exploitation by inefficiency« (Hartmut Elsenhans).
The author describes the revolution as a result of very effective collaboration between people, who willing to take risks and wanted to emigrate from the GDR to West, and the subversive groups, that could organize the revolutionary resistance. - This is a possible interpretation of the revolution from the interaction of transition-theory and voice-and-exit-theory (Albert Otto Hirschman).

Quel 22 settembre1920  Lenin parlava ai circa duecento partecipanti alla IX Conferenza del partito, a Mosca. Dove sono? In una sala del Cremlino? Chi sono? Gli eletti al CC nel IX congresso del partito congresso del partito (25 marzo-5 aprile) erano solo 19, oltre ai 12 supplenti. Dunque non sono presenti solo loro, ma la maggioranza dei quadri dirigenti del partito ai livelli più alti.  Oltre ai dirigenti più noti Kamenev, Dzerzhinsky, Trotzskij, Stalin, Bucharin, molti altri intervengono in un dibattito affatto formale. Lenin parla della sconfitta nella guerra sovieto -polacca, della guerra civile tuttora in corso, del comunismo di guerra e della NEP, della rivoluzione in Germania e di quella mondiale. Uno dei discorsi di maggior respiro del dirigente comunista, mai pubblicato precedentemente nelle Opere Complete.e tradotto per la prima volta in italiano.

This text, by Franz Seiwert (1894–1933) was published as ‘Offener Brief an den Genossen A. Bogdanow’ in the journal Die Aktion in July 1921 (Seiwert 1921). At the time Seiwert was aligned with this literary and political journal which was edited by Franz Pfemfert and published in Berlin between 1911 and 1932. From 1920 Die Aktion was supportive of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (KAPD) and was becoming increasingly critical not only of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), but also of the very concept of a political party. Earlier in 1921, in May and June respectively, Die Aktion had published two translations of Bogdanov: ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’ (Bogdanov 1921a) and ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’ (1921b)

Im Jahr ihres Zentenariums hört die Novemberrevolution zusehends auf, eine „vergessene Revolution“ (Alexander Gallus, 2010) zu sein. In Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit wächst die Einsicht, dass der Aufbruch in die erste parlamentarische Demokratie Deutschlands mehr war als eine halbe, stecken gebliebene oder gar verratene Revolution. Stattdessen gelang es, unter der Last eines zu beendenden Krieges und seiner bedrohlichen Friedensverhandlungen, unter den Bedingungen sozialer Not und Ungewissheit und unter beständiger politischer Unruhe und der Gefahr eines revolutionären Bürgerkrieges die am 9. November 1918 ausgerufene ‚deutsche Republik‘ zu konsolidieren.

Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Bandes leisten eine interdisziplinäre Bestandsaufnahme der aktuellen Forschungen zur Novemberrevolution und weisen neue Fragestellungen und Herangehensweisen aus. Sie untersuchen zudem, warum die erste erfolgreiche demokratische Revolution bislang einen so schweren Stand im Erinnerungshaushalt der Deutschen hatte, und fragen danach, ob sie nicht doch ein demokratischer Erinnerungsort sein könnte.

Mit Beiträgen von Gleb J. Albert, Manfred Baldus, Andreas Braune & Michael Dreyer, Jens Hacke, Kirsten Heinsohn, Mark Jones, Heidrun Kämper, Peter Keller, Helmuth Kiesel, Detlev Lehnert, Lothar Machtan, Walter Mühlhausen, Nadine Rossol, Martin Sabrow, Daniel Siemens

Mit dem Näherrücken des Zentenariums der Novemberrevolution entwindet sich dieses herausragende Ereignis der deutschen Demokratiegeschichte mehr und mehr der Charakterisierung, die Alexander Gallus 2010 prägte. Denn sie hört zusehends auf, eine „vergessene Revolution“ zu sein. In Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit wächst die Einsicht, dass der Aufbruch in die erste parlamentarische Demokratie Deutschlands mehr war als eine halbe, stecken gebliebene oder gar verratene Revolution. Stattdessen gelang es, unter der Last eines zu beendenden Krieges und seiner bedrohlichen Friedensverhandlungen, unter den Bedingungen sozialer Not und Ungewissheit und unter beständiger politischer Unruhe und der Gefahr eines revolutionären Bürgerkrieges die erste erfolgreiche verfassunggebende Nationalversammlung nach allgemeinem und gleichen Männer- und Frauenwahlrecht einzuberufen.
Die Konferenz nutzt die Gelegenheit, um die Novemberrevolution in ihren sehr verschiedenen Kontexten und aus verschiedenen Perspektiven neu zu betrachten und ihr in einem umfassenden Sinne neue Konturen zu verleihen: als herausragendes und immer wieder umstrittenes und neu zu verhandelndes Ereignis der deutschen und europäischen Geschichte.

A recording of my BIICL talk on International Labour Law, Revolution and Public International Law can be found open access at the link below (copyright of my talk is asserted here, all rights reserved):

New Directions in Core Subjects of International Law Teaching
Day 4 | Friday 12 March 2021 | 11.00 - 12.45 (UK time)
Dr Vidya Kumar, Associate Professor, Law School, University of Leicester
'The Revolutionary and Utopic Place of International Labour Law in Public International Law'

https://www.biicl.org/events/11460/teaching-international-law-webinar-series

Eduard Bernstein, the instigator and primary advocate of ‘reformism’ within the social democratic movement, played a central part in the German Revolution and in the early months of the nascent Republic as a treasury minister in the interim Council of People’s Deputies. Bernstein revisited the ‘reform or revolution’ question in several theoretical and historical works, published in 1921-22. This chapter traces Bernstein’s arguments in these later writings for the urgency of reformism, and the reformist strategy he outlines to achieve socialism. It argues that in both respects, Bernstein makes significant advances relative to his early reformism that are of immediate importance to understanding the motivations of contemporary reformists, and the reasons for their dissociation from the perceived irresponsible risks of violent revolution. The chapter outlines Bernstein’s (highly prophetic) admonitory comments regarding the threats facing the Republic, and suggests that similar concerns continue to confront progressive politics today. A contribution to Gaard Kets and James Muldoon (eds.), The German Revolution and Political Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Hannah Arendt is known for her celebration and critical examination of modern revolutions. However, the relative absence of the German Revolution from Arendt’s writings has received little attention in scholarship, despite the major role it played in the development of her political thought. This chapter examines the distinctive influence the German Revolution had on Arendt through various personal and intellectual ties. It suggests that despite the little discussion Arendt devoted to it, it constituted an important part of a broader “silent dialogue” Arendt had with the European socialist left, in which she implicitly incorporated various lines of thought into her reflections on modern revolutions while reframing them along the lines of her own political theory.