Abstract
This cry, with which on 5 November children in England celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of the great Gunpowder Plot of 1605, can now receive its counterpart in Germany. A cry that would apply to a matter of quite another significance than the rescue of a king and his parliament from a politically hopeless attack of a small band of religious fanatics. For Germany, 9 November 1918 is the birthday of the democratic Republic, that means, of the self-government of its people.
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Notes
- 1.
Ernst Däumig (1866–1922), German journalist and socialist politician, strong supporter of councildemocracy and the October 1917 Russian Revolution, close ally of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards but opposed the Spartacist uprising, led the USPD left wing into unification with the KPD in 1920.
- 2.
The Revolutionary Shop Stewards (Revolutionäre Obleute) were freely-elected representatives of the workers of various German industries, independent of the trade union movement. Founded during the anti-war strike of January 1918, they opposed the Wilhelmine regime’s war conduct, and advocated the reconstitution of Germany as a council republic during the Revolution. Losing momentum after the defeat of the Spartacist uprising, which they helped to instigate, and the crushing of the Bremen and Bavarian Soviet Republics in 1919, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards faded into insignificance by 1920.
- 3.
Georg Ledebour (1850–1947), German journalist, anti-militarist, and socialist politician, member of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, member of the Executive Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, refused to work with the SPD as a USPD member of the Rat der Volksbeauftragten.
- 4.
[Ed. B.—The author of this work here cannot suppress a personal remark. Up to this point I had had, despite far-reaching differences of opinion between us, much sympathy for Karl Liebknecht. But when he set about dictating the Bolshevist system to the party in the way I have described, one thought flashed through my mind like lightning: “He will bring us the counter-revolution.”]
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Ostrowski, M.S. (2020). 9 November 1918 in Berlin. In: Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27719-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27719-2_7
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