Read Online The Downfall of Money: Germanys Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class by Frederick Taylor - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Frederick Taylor
Tags: History, Germany, Europe, Economics, Finance, Professional & Technical, Business & Money, Money & Monetary Policy, Inflation, Accounting & Finance
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solid, conscientious, limited in his horizons but a master precisely within those limitations; modest and respectful in his dealings with genteel clients, taciturn and commanding in his own workshop. Social Democratic officials were a bit afraid of him, in the way that journeymen and apprentices are afraid of a strict master . . . 1
Becoming a convinced socialist and trade unionist, Ebert first worked as manager of a tavern in the northern port of Bremen (one that functioned as a social centre for political leftists), all the while working his way up the Social Democratic Party apparatus. He showed a strong talent for organisation, a taste for hard work and a firm attachment to the political centre. By the time he was in his thirties, ‘Fritz’ Ebert was a nationally known figure on the moderate German left, and at the age of thirty-four he became its national organising secretary and a member of the party’s central committee.
It was telling that Ebert put a stamp on his new position at party headquarters not by making great speeches or coming up with new political ideas – these were always tasks he tended to leave to others – but by ensuring that telephones and typewriters were installed in the offices, and a proper membership filing system instituted. 2 He was not elected to the Reichstag until the age of forty-one, in the socialists’ great victory of 1912, when the SPD became the largest party in the parliament. All the same, clearly the party wanted an organisation man at the top. When the veteran leader August Bebel died the following year, Ebert was elected to take his place as the party’s co-chairman.
Between 1878 and 1890 the German Social Democratic Party had been illegal. Bismarck’s attempt to crush the socialist left in his new Reich was, however, only very partially successful. Despite some of them being sentenced to terms of imprisonment, the party’s leadership and basic apparatus had remained intact. Social Democrat candidates continued to be elected to the Reichstag as supposedly ‘non-party’ individuals. In the January 1890 elections their vote reached almost 20 per cent, making this (officially non-existent) party the largest in terms of share of the popular vote, although because of the unfair way the seats were distributed it got a mere 35 seats out of 397.
The formal ban was lifted later in 1890, but for almost a quarter of a century thereafter the SPD was still considered ‘beyond the pale’ by the monarchist German establishment. In August 1914, so concerned were Germany’s socialists that war would bring a new political crackdown on their party that Ebert and a fellow committee member were delegated to head for Switzerland – along with a strongbox containing the party’s funds – and to wait out the immediate emergency.
In fact, Ebert, having got the party treasury to safety, returned to Berlin on 5 August. He found the Reich at war, and the vast majority of his party’s hitherto overwhelmingly internationalist and pacifist parliamentary representatives committed to supporting Germany’s cause. Ebert never voted for that near-unanimous acceptance by the Reichstag of the war credits (which turned out to be a virtual blank cheque for the German government), but he lost no time in leading his party in enthusiastic support for the Burgfrieden and for the war.
The Kaiser had declared at the onset of hostilities that he ‘no longer recognised parties, only Germans’. Ebert and the majority of German Social Democrats took him at his word. For more than four years, they loyally supported all of the government’s financial demands. They mediated conscientiously between restive war workers and their demanding employers, and though they nodded when required in favour of a peace more in accordance with their earlier internationalist convictions than with the keen annexationist demands of the right, and kept up the pressure for a full democratisation of the monarchical
Becoming a convinced socialist and trade unionist, Ebert first worked as manager of a tavern in the northern port of Bremen (one that functioned as a social centre for political leftists), all the while working his way up the Social Democratic Party apparatus. He showed a strong talent for organisation, a taste for hard work and a firm attachment to the political centre. By the time he was in his thirties, ‘Fritz’ Ebert was a nationally known figure on the moderate German left, and at the age of thirty-four he became its national organising secretary and a member of the party’s central committee.
It was telling that Ebert put a stamp on his new position at party headquarters not by making great speeches or coming up with new political ideas – these were always tasks he tended to leave to others – but by ensuring that telephones and typewriters were installed in the offices, and a proper membership filing system instituted. 2 He was not elected to the Reichstag until the age of forty-one, in the socialists’ great victory of 1912, when the SPD became the largest party in the parliament. All the same, clearly the party wanted an organisation man at the top. When the veteran leader August Bebel died the following year, Ebert was elected to take his place as the party’s co-chairman.
Between 1878 and 1890 the German Social Democratic Party had been illegal. Bismarck’s attempt to crush the socialist left in his new Reich was, however, only very partially successful. Despite some of them being sentenced to terms of imprisonment, the party’s leadership and basic apparatus had remained intact. Social Democrat candidates continued to be elected to the Reichstag as supposedly ‘non-party’ individuals. In the January 1890 elections their vote reached almost 20 per cent, making this (officially non-existent) party the largest in terms of share of the popular vote, although because of the unfair way the seats were distributed it got a mere 35 seats out of 397.
The formal ban was lifted later in 1890, but for almost a quarter of a century thereafter the SPD was still considered ‘beyond the pale’ by the monarchist German establishment. In August 1914, so concerned were Germany’s socialists that war would bring a new political crackdown on their party that Ebert and a fellow committee member were delegated to head for Switzerland – along with a strongbox containing the party’s funds – and to wait out the immediate emergency.
In fact, Ebert, having got the party treasury to safety, returned to Berlin on 5 August. He found the Reich at war, and the vast majority of his party’s hitherto overwhelmingly internationalist and pacifist parliamentary representatives committed to supporting Germany’s cause. Ebert never voted for that near-unanimous acceptance by the Reichstag of the war credits (which turned out to be a virtual blank cheque for the German government), but he lost no time in leading his party in enthusiastic support for the Burgfrieden and for the war.
The Kaiser had declared at the onset of hostilities that he ‘no longer recognised parties, only Germans’. Ebert and the majority of German Social Democrats took him at his word. For more than four years, they loyally supported all of the government’s financial demands. They mediated conscientiously between restive war workers and their demanding employers, and though they nodded when required in favour of a peace more in accordance with their earlier internationalist convictions than with the keen annexationist demands of the right, and kept up the pressure for a full democratisation of the monarchical
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