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Conference Group for Central European History of the American
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Ernst Dumig and the German Revolution of 1918 Author(s): David
W. Morgan Source: Central European History, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec.,
1982), pp. 303-331Published by: on behalf of Cambridge University
Press Conference Group for Central European
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Ernst Daumig and the
German Revolution of 1918
DAVID W. MORGAN
ONE
ofthe oldest commonplaces about the German Revolu? tion of 1918
is that the leadership of the revolutionary left was
ineffectual?that the revolution never found its Lenin.
Yet any one who seeks insight into particular leaders of this
revolution will find little to go on. Apart from the peripheral but
ever-popular Spartacist leaders and Kurt Eisner, only a handful of
leading radicals and revolutionaries have been studied in any
depth.1 Others, however im?
portant they were then, are shadowy figures to history. Among
these is Ernst Daumig, intellectual leader ofthe Berlin Executive
Council, fore- most spokesman ofthe German workers' council
movement, and some- time chairman of two important political
parties during the revolution?
ary years: the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and
the United Communist Party (VKPD).
Yet Daumig is one ofthe most interesting personalities on the
socialist left in the years around 1918, with an unusual career,
personality, and convictions. At the outbreak ofthe war he was
middle-aged and middle-
ranking, but then, under the special conditions of war and
revolution, he rose rapidly to the top. He won national prominence
only after the
war, and even then he was distinguished from most of the faction
he led by age?only a handful of other key revolutionary figures
were over fifty years old?and a certain ethical traditionalism.
Some two and a half years later, when he failed in his last, almost
desperate effort to
regenerate the revolution?through Communism?he was left
disillu-
sioned, weakened, and on the downward slope to an early death.
The
l. See Ursula Ratz, Georg Ledebour 1850-1947 (Berlin, 1969);
Helmuth Stoecker, Walter Stoecker: Die Fruhzeit eines deutschen
Arbeiterfuhrers 1891-1920 (Berlin, 1970); Kenneth R. Calkins, Hugo
Haase: Democrat and Revolutionary (Durham, N.C., 1979; orig. German
ed. 1976). Among shorter studies see esp. Robert F. Wheeler's
biographical preface to Curt Geyer, Die revolutiondre Illusion
(Stuttgart, 1976).
303
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304 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of igi8
rise and decline of Ernst Daumig, in fact, is coextensive with
the history ofthe German revolution, and perhaps as illustrative
ofthe problems of the radical left in those years as the life of
any one man could be.
Daumig, born in Merseburg on November 25,1866, had unusual
be-
ginnings for a leading socialist.2 His family background is not
definitely known, but his Gymnasium education suggests the middle
or lower mid? dle class, most likely the latter.3 He is said to
have prepared himself to
study theology.4 At the age of twenty, however, he went into
military service, first in the French Foreign Legion in North
Africa and Indo- china (where he rose to noncommissioned officer
and was decorated twice) and then in the German army (again as
noncommissioned officer, serving with an artillery unit at Metz).
His military career lasted eleven years, until 1898, and left a
lasting mark on his interests, for he devel?
oped and kept up a competence in military studies in spite of
his subse?
quent revulsion against militarism and war.5 He was therefore at
least in his thirty-second year when he joined the German Social
Demo? cratic Party (SPD). Whatever jobs he may have held after
leaving the army?he was a sleeping-car conductor for a time?it
seems that he never had a trade or profession other than writing.
By 1900 he was
struggling to earn his living as a freelance writer on military
subjects, publishing fiction as well as journalistic pieces. Early
the following year
2. The previously collected data about Daumig's career are
sparse. There are quasi- autobiographical entries under his name in
the Handbuch des Vereins Arbeiterpresse, Dritter Jahrgang (Berlin,
1914) and Reichstags-Handbuch, 1. Wahlperiode, 1920 (Berlin, 1920);
unattributed biographical details in the text are from these
sources. Johannes Fischart (pseud. of Erich Dombrowski), Das alte
und das neue System, Dritte Folge: Kopfe der Gegenwart (Berlin,
1920), pp. 257-61, and Emil Unger, Politische Kopfe des
sozialistischen Deutschlands (Leipzig, n.d. [1920]), pp. 121-24,
are brief studies by contemporaries. The best personal appreciation
is by "P.L." (undoubtedly Paul Levi) in Freiheit, July 6,1922. See
also the recent brief treatments in Neue Deutsche Biographie and
Biographisches Lexikon zur deutschen Geschichte.
3. Colin Ross, "Die ersten Tage der Revolution," Das Tagebuch 1
(1920): 287, asserts that Daumig's father was an army sergeant,
which is plausible but unconfirmed. Accord? ing to P.L. in
Freiheit, July 6,1922, Daumig never talked about himself; even his
friends knew only scanty details about his early life.
4. Obituaries in Freiheit, July 6, 1922. The "religious" quality
of his convictions is repeatedly mentioned by contemporaries.
5. Details of his military service are in letters from Daumig to
Karl Kautsky in 1900: Karl Kautsky papers (International Institute
of Social History, Amsterdam), D VII 237- 241. Kautsky published
two of Daumig's articles in Neue Zeit in 1900; see also the
fictional pieces Daumig collected as Moderne Landsknechte:
Erzahlungen aus dem Kolonial-Soldaten- leben (Halle, n.d. [ca.
1904]).
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David W. Morgan 305
he settled into his ultimate career when he took a job with the
socialist newspaper in Gera.6
The next thirteen years saw a steady but undramatic rise for
Daumig. Within a few months he moved from Gera to the larger Halle
paper, and by 1908 he not only was in charge ofthe cultural page
(Feuilleton), presumably his original job, but was also second
political editor. In 1909 he moved to the Erfurt party paper as
editor-in-chief.7 In both cities he became chairman ofthe workers'
education committee (a characteristic and lasting interest of his)
and member ofthe local party leadership; he was also known for work
among the socialist youth. In the spring of
1911 he was honored by selection as one ofthe political editors
of Vor? wdrts in Berlin, with special responsibility for military
and educational
questions. Here, too, he quickly established himself, in
particular as a
speaker in party assemblies. He excelled in workers' education,
lecturing at the Workers' Educational Institute?a course in the
history of litera? ture was one of his offerings?and helping to set
up a workers' educa? tion committee for Greater Berlin, becoming
its first chairman at the end of 1912.8 By the spring of 1913 he
was highly enough regarded to be offered a nomination for the
elections to the Prussian House of Dep? uties, an offer he refused,
apparently unwilling (as so often in his career) to be pushed into
prominent positions, particularly positions outside the
party.9 Daumig was thus still a rising man when the war broke
out in the
forty-eighth year of his life. He was little known nationally?he
had never had a seat in a parliament, he had spoken only once at a
party con?
gress, and he wrote little for national journals?but his
handsome, sol- idly built figure was familiar both on public
platforms and in inner
party circles in the capital. He was known as sober, steady,
even some? what pedantic in manner; he himself said that he could
only lecture, not make a rousing speech.10 He was a pronounced
radical, but not one
6. On Daumig as sleeping-car conductor see Philipp Scheidemann,
Memoiren eines Sozialdemokraten, 2 vols. (Dresden, 1928), 1 1269;
Hermann MUller, Die November-Revolu- tion (Berlin, 1928), p. 102;
and Geyer, p. 159. For his struggles to establish himself as a
writer see the letters to Kautsky cited in n. 5.
7. See fahrbuch fiir Partei- und Gewerkschafts-Angestellte for
1908, entry under Halle Volksblatt, and for 1910, entry under
Erfurt Tribune.
8. See the issues of Mitteilungs-Blatt des Verbandes der
sozialdemokratischen Wahlvereine Berlins und Umgegend for the
autumn of 1912. He held this office until 1918.
9. Ibid., Apr. 9, 1913, p. 5. 10. Unger, Politische Kopfe, p.
122.
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306 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
who, as Germans say, storms the heavens; rather he was a party
man,
organization-oriented, and in a controversy with some of Rosa
Luxem-
burg's associates on the very eve ofthe war he staunchly
defended the
party's existing methods and purposes.11 But his methodical,
bureau- cratic side?his later friend Paul Levi was often reminded
ofthe Prussian
corporal Daumig had once been12?was offset by an underlying emo-
tionalism that seems to have been felt readily enough by his
audiences and colleagues. The romanticism that impelled him into
the Foreign Legion and infused his early writings,13 the ethical
idealism shown by his regular Sunday lectures for a humanist
society,14 were largely leashed, or sublimated into political
commitment and administrative energy. Yet they gave a special
quality to Daumig's devotion to the cause.
The tensions in Daumig's career might or might not have worked
themselves out fruitfiilly in normal times. The war changed his
life,
breaking the old molds, releasing his idealistic energies, and
propelling him rapidly to the forefront of radical socialist
politics.
The change in him was not immediate. Though he opposed Social
Democratic support of Germany's war effort, he did so, for over
two
years, within the framework of conventional radicalism. In
August 1914, for instance, Daumig joined other Vorwdrts editors in
protesting that the SPD's vote for war credits violated the party's
long-standing taboo on support for the military, damaged the
International and the SPD's position within it, and burdened the
party needlessly with respon- sibility for the war and its
consequences.15 In coming months he agitated against the
"passivity" of the party line, demanding an active peace program;16
but at the same time he repudiated the hyperradicalism and
break-awav tendencies of the nascent Soartacist Grouo. insistino:
on
li. See [Daumig,] "Organisationskritik," Mitteilungs-Blatt, June
10, 1914, pp. 1-3, and his defense ofthe article, ibid., July 8,
1914, pp. 6-7.
12. P.L. in Freiheit, July 6, 1922. 13. See not only his letters
to Kautsky in 1900 and Moderne Landsknechte but his propa?
ganda play Maifeier (Berlin, 1901). 14. P.L. in Freiheit, July
6,1922. Two published works derive from his concerns as an
ethical humanist, or freethinker: Wanderungen durch die
Kirchengeschichte: Eine Vortrags- folge, gehalten in der
freireligiosen Gemeinde (Berlin, 1917) and Freier
Volks-Katechismus: Ein Wegweiser zur echten Nachstenliebe undfreien
Menschenwiirde (Berlin, n.d. [1918]).
15. Text in Eugen Prager, Geschichte der U.S.P.D. (Berlin,
1921), pp. 30-31. 16. See his remarks of Feb. 1915 reported in
Deutsches Zentralarchiv Potsdam, Reichs?
kanzlei 1395/9, pp. 190-91; also Das Kriegstagebuch des
Reichstagsabgeordneten Eduard David 1914 bis 1918, ed. Susanne
Miller with Erich Matthias (Diisseldorf, 1966), p. 38, and letter
from Wilhelm Pieck to Karl Schroder, Feb. 21, 1915, in the Karl
Schroder papers (Archiv der Sozialen Demokratie, Bonn-Bad
Godesberg), 22.
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Davii W. Morgan 3?7
working strictly within the party organization as long as
possible.17 He
continued as chairman of the workers' education committee and
lec?
turer in the Workers' Educational Institute, on new topics: the
history of war and colonial policy. All in all, he was not one
ofthe most prom? inent of Berlin's oppositional socialists. If the
war had ended within
two years, Daumig might have remained a figure of the second
rank.
The first critical break in his life came in 1916, in his job at
Vorwdrts. During the war Daumig, as the editor charged with
observance ofthe
military censorship regulations?no doubt because of his
steadiness as
well as his knowledge of the military?had gradually become
first
among equals on the staff. Then in October 1916 the Party
Executive
seized control ofthe paper from its oppositional editors, with
an assist
firom the censors, and Daumig lost his job.18 The bitterness
which en-
suecl?Daumig, who usually eschewed personal attacks, called the
Party Executive "dishonest," "hypocritical," and
"unscrupulous"19?helped
precipitate the schism in the party and the formation of the
USPD in
April 1917. Meanwhile the oppositional Berlin socialists
converted their
monthly bulletin (Mitteilungs-Blatt) into a weekly political
paper meant to serve the opposition, and later the USPD, throughout
the Reich.
Daumig became its leading editor in November 1916, in the midst
of
turmoil that was breaking up the old ways of the party. Further
impetus came from the revolution in Russia, which Daumig
later called the "beacon light" by which he and his friends
"oriented
themselves in the to-and-fro ofthe subsequent events ofthe
war."20 On
Russia Daumig first showed how much his outlook had changed.
His
paper, having followed the revolution closely from March on,
openly
adopted the cause of the Bolsheviks in September, well before
their
seizure of power.21 In November the Mitteilungs-Blatt greeted
the tri-
umph of "the determinedly socialist elements" in the Russian
labor
17. See anti-Spartacist resolutions proposed by Daumig in Max
Groger, ed., Zur Abwehr (Berlin, n.d. [1916]), p. 6, and Vorwdrts,
Sept. 11, 1916.
18. On this conflict see Zum Vorwdrts-Konflikt (Berlin, 1916),
for the Party Executive's version; Der Gewaltstreich des
Parteivorstandesgegen den "Vorwdrts" und die Berliner Partei-
organisation (n.p., n.d. [1916]), for the opposition viewpoint; and
Kurt Koszyk, Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur (Heidelberg, 1958),
pp. 45~48 and 79-85-
19. Mitteilungs-Blatt, Nov. 19, 1916, p. 8. 20. Freiheit, Dec.
24, 1919 (m.=morning ed.). 21. Mitteilungs-Blatt, Sept. 30, 1917.
That Daumig was behind certain unsigned edito-
rials is likely from suggestions in the style, comments of
contemporaries, other indications of his views at the time and
later, and of course the fact that he was chief editor ofthe
paper.
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308 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of1918
movement who were finally putting into practice what socialists
had
always preached.22 "In Russia," the paper observed in December,
"the socialist proletariat has captured political power, has the
powers of the
government in its hands, and is going on to realize all the
great socialist and political goals."23
Wrapping the Bolsheviks in the mantle of true socialism implied
a
challenge to German socialists to emulate them. In fact, as
early as March 1917 Daumig had begun to tell closed party circles
that revolu? tion was a strong possibility in Germany after the
war, or perhaps even before it was over.24 During 1917, Daumig
became a revolutionary? something quite different from a radical
Social Democrat. Other radi? cals underwent the same evolution, but
not many of Daumig's age or level of responsibility in the party;
few can have had such strong chili- astic tendencies in them
waiting to be mobilized. It was not an easy process; he wrote
expressively and painfully of how "the most frightful of all wars
has brought all economic, political, social, and intellectual
questions into flux and will keep them in flux for a long time
to come."25 With the old verities gone, he fastened onto the vision
of revolution that opened itself to him during 1917. He talked
often about revolution in Russia, as one ofthe most engaged
observers of Russian events in the whole of German socialism, and
he always spoke implicitly of Germany as well. He declared, "We
mean to learn from what happens there and then apply the lessons
fruitfully to the coming struggles for the salva- tion of humanity
from the claws of capitalism."26 Revolution?the imminent prospect
of creating a new social order?became for Daumig the measure of all
things.
This is not to say that Daumig gave up the party activities that
had been the substance of his political life. He still lectured at
the Workers' Educational Institute and to youth groups?though his
subject was now the Russian revolution. He was still active in the
Berlin party or?
ganization. In fact, during 1918 Daumig took his first position
with the national organization: at the beginning of May he was
co-opted into the
22. Ibid., Nov. 18, 1917. 23. Ibid., Dec. 16, 1917. 24. Speech
reported in Die Auswirkungen der grossen sozialistischen
Oktoberrevolution auf
Deutschland, ed. Leo Stern, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1959), 2:388. His
newspaper at this time was still far more cautious.
25. Daumig, Wanderungen durch die Kirchengeschichte, p. 3. 26.
Speech of Aug. 1918 reported in Die Auswirkungen, 3:1494. See also
Mitteilungs-
Blatt, Feb. 24 and Mar. 31, 1918.
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Davii W. Morgan 309
central office ofthe USPD as a salaried national secretary.27
Hardly any- thing is known about his work in this post, save that
he had to operate a replacement for the party's press service,
closed down by the censors on June 22.28
Daumig's new direction, however, also took him into the
under?
ground movement of radical workers from the Berlin munitions
indus?
try, the group later known as the "revolutionary shop stewards."
To? ward the end ofthe war this circle, which had mounted strikes
in April 1917 and January 1918, had explicitly revolutionary goals,
and Daumig's participation?starting in the summer of 1918?involved
him in the kind of conspiratorial activities party officials hardly
ever practiced, however much they might talk revolution. His
combination of sober, organizational qualities with revolutionary
fervor made him an excel? lent choice as one of only two party
officials admitted to the workers' committee, and he quickly became
a leading figure.29 He approached revolution (as did the trade
union militants on the committee) as a problem of patient, detailed
preparation, and therefore resisted as waste- ful and dangerous
Karl Liebknecht's efforts to whip up emotions by street
demonstrations; but as the moment approached he showed him? self as
active and impatient as any one.30 In fact, it was Daumig's arrest
on November 8, with a briefcase full of insurrectionary plans, that
pre- cipitated the shop stewards' final decision to set their
machine in motion.31 The following day?though only in part because
ofthe shop stewards' efforts?revolution came to Berlin.
Daumig did not join the new provisional government, manned by
the two socialist parties; he condemned his party's efforts to
direct the revolution jointly with the profoundly un-radical SPD,
and held that the USPD should either run the government alone or go
into opposi-
27- Leipziger Volkszeitung, May 3, 1918. 28. Koszyk, p. 96. 29.
Richard Miiller, Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik, 2 vols. (Vienna,
1924), 1:127; and
Emil Barth, Aus der Werkstatt der deutschen Revolution (Berlin,
n.d. [1919]), pp. 30, 32, and 35-36. The other party figure was
Georg Ledebour.
30. See Liebknecht's diary entry for Oct. 28,1918, in
Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Revolution (Berlin, 1929), p-
203; and the sources on the meeting of Nov. 2, cited in David W.
Morgan, The Socialist Left and the German Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1975), p. 113. According to R. Miiller, Vom Kaiserreich, 1:138,
Daumig had the risky task of trying to establish contacts with the
garrison.
31. R. Miiller, Vom Kaiserreich, 1:141; Barth, p. 52; Ledebour
in Der Ledebour-Prozess (Berlin, 1919), p. 30; unpublished memoirs
of Wilhelm Dittmann (typescript in IISH, Amsterdam), pp.
862-63.
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310 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of1918
tion. Named to a supervisory position in the War Ministry
because of his special knowledge of military affairs, he refused
the office, as he also
rejected suggestions on two occasions that he himself become war
min? ister, saying that he would not let himself "be buried in the
War Min?
istry."32 He also began to withdraw from his party positions. He
seems to have become inactive in the daily affairs ofthe Party
Executive soon after the revolution; while he may still have been a
member as late as
mid-December, he must have resigned soon afterwards?quietly,
with? out making an issue of it, as was his usual modest way in
such matters.33 At some time in November he left the
Mitteilungs-Blatt, and in Decem? ber he turned aside a proposal
that he should replace Rudolf Hilferding as editor-in-chief of
Freiheit, the USPD's new flagship daily, on the
ground that neither the national nor the local USPD shared his
political commitments.34 What remained was the revolutionary
committee, whose leaders had joined the newly elected Executive
Council of the Berlin workers' and soldiers' councils. Daumig chose
this as his forum, and made its cause his cause.
Daumig made his national reputation as spokesman for the council
movement over the next year, and it is for this that he is now
principally known. He was one of the first respected socialists to
see the workers'
councils, not just as a revolutionary expedient, but as a
potential alter- native form of governance, in both the political
and the economic
spheres; and the fervor, resourcefulness, and intellectual
seriousness with which he promoted his conception ofa new society
governed through councils are noteworthy. Here Daumig's visionary
side reached the fullest expression it ever had in politics: the
teacher and preacher were
merged for once with the political organizer. He could see the
severe limitations ofthe actual revolution he was experiencing; but
the mil? lenarian spirit evoked in him by the war led him
nevertheless to treat these events as a critical opportunity which
could and must be exploited to create a new world.
The place ofthe councils in this new order, as Daumig saw it,
was to
32. Dittmann memoirs, pp. 927-29; H. Miiller, Die
November-Revolution, p. 103; Die Regierung der Volksbeauftragten
1918/19, ed. Susanne Miller with Heinrich Potthoff, 2 vols.
(Diisseldorf, 1969), 1:83 and 88.
33. Daumig himself said he was still a member in mid-December;
USPD, Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des ausserordentlichen
Parteitages vom 2. bis 6. Mdrz 1919 in Berlin (hereafter cited as:
USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919), p. 263. His resignation was not
reported in the press.
34. Freiheit, Dec. 16, 1918 (m.).
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Davii W. Morgan 311
render men truly self-governing?to bring social, economic, and
politi? cal institutions under the tangible control of the
citizenry, and involve each person in responsibility for his or her
immediate world.35 This, and nothing less, was what the revolution
was about. Liberal democ?
racy had nothing to contribute here; from the outset Daumig, in
con? trast to many members of his party, resolutely regarded
"formal de?
mocracy," or "bourgeois democracy," as merely a facade for
unchanged relations of domination in political and economic life.
Workers' coun-
cils, the spontaneous product of revolutions in Russia and
Germany? and therefore "the given form of organization ofthe modern
revolu? tion"36?offered a fundamental alternative. The issue was
not, as for
many radical socialists, how to find a place for councils within
the democratic order; the issue was councils or liberal democracy,
"pro? letarian or bourgeois-liberal democracy."37 Alternatively one
could
speak of two forms of dictatorship: the dictatorship of capital,
masked by parliamentary institutions, and the dictatorship ofthe
proletariat, which he saw not as a party dictatorship but as
"equivalent" to the council
system, and thus profoundly democratic in essence.38 Daumig was
one of the very first (apart from the small factions of the
sectarian left) to proclaim this choice as the central issue ofthe
revolution, and he strove
uncompromisingly for the full realization of his ideal?the "pure
coun? cil system," as it is commonly called.
Daumig saw council rule not just as an ideal or a program, but
as a necessity. It was in the first place a moral necessity: "in
these days, out of an ocean of blood and tears, a new world must
arise."39 "The col-
35- The formal content of Daumig's conception is described and
evaluated in Franz Gutmann, Das Ratesystem: Seine Verfechter
undseine Probleme (Munich, 1922), pp. 61-66; Peter von Oertzen,
Betriebsrdte in der Novemberrevolution (Diisseldorf, 1963), pp.
89-99; and Horst Dahn, Rdtedemokratische Modelle: Studien zur
Ratediskussion in Deutschland 1918- 1919 (Meisenheim am Glan,
1975), pp. 44-56. It was a model of direct democracy based on the
constant active participation ofthe working population (in a broad
sense) through their places of work (where possible), or at least
their occupational groupings. Councils would operate in both
political and economic matters, combining policy-making and
administrative functions. This model seems to have been suggested
both by Daumig's direct experience of shop-floor political activism
and by his understanding ofthe soviets in Russia.
36. Allgemeiner Kongress der Arbeiter- und Soldatenrate
Deutschlands vom 16. bis 21. Dezember 1918 (Berlin, n.d.), p.
114.
37. USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919, p. 95. 38. Ibid., pp. 95-96; see
also Allgemeiner Kongress, p. 117. 39. Allgemeiner Kongress, p.
113.
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312 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
lapse ofthe capitalist economy and civilization in the world
war" meant that
the old capitalist production, the old ways of governing, the
old cultural
perspectives founded on individualism and egotism are no longer
viable. We intend to and must realize socialism in Germany because
otherwise the great masses of the working people, all who must earn
their bread with hand or brain, will not escape from economic
hardship and spiritual and cultural narrowness and torpor. We must
have socialism because only then will our
people's demoralization, bitterness, and disinclination to work
be overcome, only then will there spring up in the working class
feelings of self-confidence, responsibility, andjoy in labor,
stripped of its character as capitalist bondage.40 The historical
epoch of capitalism, which had brought a catastrophe on the world,
was past; it would be a tragedy if capitalism should somehow
reestablish its dominance?if indeed this were possible at all. For
Dau?
mig believed that the revolution had planted itself ineradicably
in the will ofthe workers, though perhaps not at first on the
conscious level. Thanks to the war, "the psyches ofthe peoples are
in constant stormy movement and will not come to rest until a new
foundation has actually been created on which we can build anew."41
His premise was that revolution was on the march in the world, in
spite of all difficulties and
temporary setbacks; and "we here in Germany are in the midst
ofthe final struggle between capital and labor."42
This conviction was strong enough to outweigh Daumig's intense
awareness of the weaknesses of the German revolution. After a few
weeks of bitter experience he denounced events up to then as "a
purely bourgeois revolution with purely bourgeois results."43 What
was worse, the main obstacle to revolutionary advance was the
failure ofthe work? ers to free themselves from old habits of mind
and recognize their his- toric task. He declared to an assembly:
"Comrades, I tell you, the worst
thing now threatening us is ultimately not economic collapse,
but the damned trustfulness ofthe German, which he has taken along
into the
40. Freiheit, Nov. 27, 1919 (e.=evening ed.). 41. Unpublished
minutes of the general assemblies of the Berlin councils (Institut
fur
Marxismus-Leninismus, Zentrales Parteiarchiv, East Berlin), Mar.
7, 1919, St. 11/13, P- 174.
42. Der Arbeiter-Rat 1 (1919), no. 28:2. 43. Daumig, Der erste
Akt der deutschen Revolution! (Berlin, n.d.), p. 1. This is the
text
ofa speech delivered on Dec. 27, 1918.
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David W. Morgan 313
revolution with him."44 The problem was "to break finally with
all the
decaying perspectives that sit so deep in all of us that the
individual doesn't even notice it. The entire feeling of
dependence, the pettiness of thought, are the kind of thing against
which we must fight."45 Look-
ing back from a year later he summed up:
Rarely can a working class have gone into a revolution so little
predisposed psychically . . . because the German proletariat has
neither a revolutionary tradition nor revolutionary temperament,
because the German proletariat is infected right into its
class-conscious ranks with the spirit of subjection in which the
German people has been raised for generations. . . . Such a pro?
letariat, which was hurled into a revolutionary situation by the
upheavals of the world war and which was not strong enough nor
trained enough in revo? lution to hold onto the revolutionary gains
ofthe first days in November of last year, must be schooled and
formed for its revolutionary task in the course of the revolution
itself.46
Nor could the parties and trade unions be expected to help in
the
revolutionary schooling. Here is Daumig's thoroughly
disillusioned view of the old conventional labor movement he had
once served so
faithfully:
The organized masses without any revolutionary tradition and
training, drilled on party discipline, punctual payment of dues,
propagandistic chores, etc, the organization itself a rigid,
bureaucratically elaborated structure with real assets like
buildings, presses, newspaper offices, etc, further the trade union
welfare institutions with their millions in dues. The leaders
almost
exclusively dominated by the reformist outlook, accustomed on
the one side to regard all events solely from a parliamentary
perspective, on the other side
proud of the unions* great collective bargaining agreements,
which impose certain contractual obligations on the employers
without in any way threat-
ening the private profit economy of capitalism.47
Changes in these organizations since 1914 had been slow, very
incom-
plete, and partly undesirable, for there were now three
socialist parties, fighting among themselves. The parties and
unions would not serve: it was necessary to "bring in a
revolutionary organization of struggle
44- Minutes ofthe Berlin general assembly of Jan. 31, 1919, St.
11/12, pp. 73-74. 45. Unpublished minutes ofthe Berlin Executive
Council (IML-ZPA, Berlin), Jan.
28, 1919, St. 11/5, p. 216. 46. USPD, Protokoll iiber die
Verhandlungen des ausserordentlichen Parteitages in Leipzig
vom 30. November bis 6. Dezember 1919, pp. 239-40. 47. Freiheit,
Dec. 21, 1919.
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314 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
that has grown up on the soil of the social revolution and is
made for the demands of this revolution"?the councils.48 Daumig
never actually advocated the dissolution of parties or unions; but
his allegiance, for over a year after the revolution, was to the
councils.
For Daumig all this was not just a program or a doctrine; it was
a vision. His language in presenting it tended to be urgent,
metaphorical, sometimes rhapsodic. There is at the same time an
element of pathos in these speeches and writings. Even as Daumig
proclaims dogmatic cer- tainties and iron determination, he allows
us to feel an underlying doubt as to whether the German masses
would grasp their tasks before the
revolutionary moment ended in chaos. An elegiac tone creeps into
the exhortation. Even at the peak of his activity, Daumig seems
always to have lived with possibility of failure?including, one
senses, personal failure. This helps us understand the odd moments
of tentativeness and
episodes of avoidance in his career from the revolution to the
collapse of his hopes in 1921.
As mentioned above, the manner of Daumig's entry into the
council movement was conditioned by political and personal ties. At
first he refused to serve on the Berlin Executive Council, a
mixture of Inde?
pendent Socialists, Majority Socialists, and soldiers?the kind
of alliance of opposites he hated.49 But the other leaders ofthe
shop stewards' com? mittee joined, and Daumig could hardly abandon
his close connection with the organized factory militants, Berlin's
most promising revolu?
tionary force. He went in with his eyes open, noting
sardonically that even his militant friends sometimes treated the
Executive Council as a branch of the Metal Workers' Union, from
which they nearly all came.50 Here, as on other occasions?notably
in his dealings with the Communist International?he showed himself
totally committed to the
cause, while reserved or sceptical about particular institutions
that were
supposed to embody the cause. But his work in the Executive
Council cemented a relationship that was to last. The shop
stewards, an informal but potent network, were Daumig's truest
allies for many months to
come, accepting him as spokesman in ideological matters and
generally
48. Ibid., Nov. 27, 1919 (e.). 49. Details in Ingo Materna, "Der
Vollzugsrat der Berliner Arbeiter- und Soldatenrate
in der Novemberrevolution" (unpubl. diss., Humboldt University,
Berlin, 1969), pp. 88 and 101-2.
50. Minutes ofthe Berlin Executive Council, Nov. 19 and 23,
1918, St. 11/1, pp. 35 and 62.
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David W. Morgan 315
showing a like mind in practical politics. With some, like
Richard
Miiller, the lathe operator who was chairman ofthe Executive
Council,
Daumig established bonds that endured through drastic political
vicis-
situdes until nearly the end of his life.
Daumig's first instinct was correct; the Executive Council was
doomed to dismal failure.51 He must bear a share ofthe blame, in
that he influ? enced the council to aspire to goals beyond its
limited sphere of effective
authority, which helped earn it a reputation for presumption,
mis-
management, and futility. It was soon clear that most workers
still
expected more from the government and the socialist parties than
from the councils. Within a week of the revolution Daumig had begun
to show the irritated depression and bitterness which found
expression in his powerful speech at the national workers' and
soldiers' congress in the third week of December.52 This congress
confirmed that the coun? cils themselves wanted a parliamentary
democratic order for Germany. It thereby liquidated the original
hopes ofthe council-oriented revolu-
tionaries, and forced them to turn toward a new revolution?in
Dau?
mig's words, to open "the second act ofthe revolution."53 Even
after these early defeats Daumig and his allies, including
leading
socialists and militants from other cities, continued to put
their faith in the councils, which Daumig called the "sole
achievement" ofthe No? vember revolution.54 They accordingly took
on an absorbing, creative task of propaganda and construction, with
some imposing results: an
agreement on detailed goals and structures by summer of 1919;
the smooth transition to factory councils when the original
workers' coun? cils lost their political functions; and above all
the conversion of many industrial workers to belief in council
rule, a process that continued well into 1920. Daumig was a central
figure in all this, as editor ofthe weekly journal Der Arbeiter-Rat
(which first appeared late in January 1919), principal spokesman
for the council system at USPD party congresses and other major
gatherings, and a leading organizer of the expanding but fragile
network connecting the councils in different cities. But
despite all advances, the attempt to assert practical council
authority against the exclusive claims of Weimar's conventional
democratic sys-
51. The classic account ofthe Executive Council is Eberhard
Kolb, Die Arbeiterrate in der deutschen Innenpolitik 1918-19
(Diisseldorf, 1962), pp. 125-37; see also Erich Matthias's
introduction to Die Regierung der Volksbeauftragten, 1 :xcii-cvii,
and Materna.
52. Allgemeiner Kongress, pp. 113-18. 53. Der erste Akt, p. 6.
54. Ibid., p. 1.
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316 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
tem collapsed, overwhelmed by bureaucratic fiat, legislative
enactment, and military action. By the summer of 1920 a large
dissatisfied sector of the workers had endorsed the revolutionary
demand for socialism
through the council system; but the actual institutions of the
revolu?
tionary council system lay in ruins in all but a few localities.
The pursuit of its aims involved the radical council movement in
a
series of clashes, often violent; in consequence, Daumig lived a
semi-
underground existence for much of the next two years. Between
De? cember 1918 and March 1920 Berlin was mostly under martial law,
with intermittent street fighting and bitter strikes. The Executive
Coun? cil was raided and searched more than once, then abruptly
closed down
by the government in August 1919. Its successor was also
suppressed for several weeks, starting in November. Daumig was
under arrest at least twice for brief periods, and was held for six
weeks in January and Feb?
ruary of 1920. Conditions for him and his associates were thus
more like the wartime state of siege than like life under a
democratic order.55 This was real revolutionary schooling.
Daumig did not play an insurrectionist's role in these events.
For one
thing, he strongly preferred nonviolent methods on ethical
grounds. He
objected to what he called "putsch tactics," meaning armed
uprising on every plausible occasion, giving as his reason that
"workers' blood is a very precious substance that must be
especially thriftily handled after this world war."56 He repudiated
the shop stewards' only actual
attempt to overthrow the government by force, in the
misnamed
"Spartacus week" of January 1919;?though his abstention was
dictated more by political judgement than by concern about
bloodshed.57 He hoped that
the path which the council idea, under immutable laws, still has
to travel may not be spattered with blood. . . . The political
schooling of the masses, pro- ceeding at a rapid pace in
revolutionary times, lets us anticipate a victory of the council
idea even without brutal use of force.58
55- A rare surviving private letter of Daumig's has bitter
comments on the govern- ment's "persecution" of him and his
friends; letter to Hans Ostwald, Sept. 13, 1919, in ASD, Bonn-Bad
Godesberg, collection: Verschiedene Originalbriefe und Dokumente,
12.
56. Der erste Akt, p. 6. 57. Richard Miiller, Der Biirgerkrieg
in Deutschland: Geburtswehen der Republik (Berlin,
1925), pp. 33-34; Ledebour in Der Ledebour-Prozess, p. 53;
Daumig's own account in Protokoll der Reichskonferenz vom 1. bis 3.
September 1920 zu Berlin, pp. 179-80.
58. Daumig's preface to Richard Miiller, Was die Arbeiterrdte
wollen und sollen (Berlin, n.d. [1919]), P- 4-
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Davii W. Morgan 317
But he was ready for conflict, caused (as he saw it) by the
other side's blind refusal to bow to historical necessity. He was
one ofthe originators of the ill-fated general strike of March
1919, which was intended to force socialist concessions from the
government without violence, but ended instead in street
fighting.59 The general strike remained his model of revolutionary
action, though there seems to have been no other occasion in the
next two years (apart from the Kapp Putsch) when he advocated one.
At some point he also began a different kind of revolu?
tionary preparation: the organization of armed, underground
cadres that could go into action in case a resort to force became
unavoidable. Little is known about these activities?which probably
began in the winter of 1919-20?nor about Daumig's role in them, but
he has been identified as the chief organizer.60 He played no part,
however, on either occasion when elements of this network, or some
such network, went into action: the days of the Kapp Putsch, when
he counseled
against armed action by the Berlin workers; and the VKPD's March
Action in 1921, which Daumig, by then no longer in a leading
position, outspokenly condemned.
In this and other ways Daumig's activities changed in the second
half of 1919, as confidence in an early revolutionary success began
to drain out ofthe movement. There was a greater stress on
organization: on
thoroughness, system, and structure. Immediate opportunities for
posi? tive political action might be lacking, but at least one
could try to build
up the underlying framework ofthe councils in preparation for
coming crises. Daumig, in a reversion to bureaucratic type, spoke
at times as
though system was the key to the situation?"a council
organization built according to plan and acting from a uniform
outlook, which
[has] its affiliates in every workplace, in every office."61 He
also began to stress the importance of creating a reliable elite of
conscious revolu? tionaries in the factories. As early as March
1919 he had begun a speakers' course for selected members of the
workers' councils.62 As the year
59- See Morgan, The Socialist Left, pp. 230 and 232-36. 60. Ruth
Fischer, Stalin and German Communism (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p.
173;
Gunther Nollau, International Communism and World Revolution
(London, 1969), p. 68. The scanty evidence about the preparations
is cited in Morgan, The Socialist Left, p. 333. Daumig several
times made vague public references to this side of his activity;
see USPD Reichskonferenz, Sept. 1920, p. 184; Verhandlungen des
Reichstages, vol. 345, p. 925, and vol. 347, p. 2242.
61. Daumig in Die Revolution: Unabhdngiges sozialdemokratisches
Jahrbuch fur Politik und proletarische Kultur 1920 (Berlin, 1920),
p. 90.
62. Mentioned by him in USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919, p. 232.
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318 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of 1918
wore on the elitist element in his thought became more
pronounced; he once even called for "a proletarian
intelligentsia."63 His experience as leader of a small vanguard was
turning into acceptance of the prin? ciple ofa vanguard, in a form
new to his thinking.
Similarly, towards the end of 1919 the "world revolution" began
to feature in Daumig's formulations as it had not while the
vitality ofthe German revolution itself seemed sufficient. On the
anniversary of the November revolution?which he now called a mere
collapse, not a true revolution at all64?he elaborated on his
understanding of "the
revolutionary epoch in which we find ourselves":
The catastrophe of the world war with all its side effects and
consequences, even today scarcely graspable, has created the
preconditions from which the world revolution is now setting out on
its march through all countries. . . . Here in Germany this
revolution assumed acute forms in the November days of 1918, after
it had entered the stage of feverish intensity a year earlier in
the former Tsarist Empire, while in the countries ofthe West just
the preliminary spasms of proletarian rebellion against capitalist
power are showing them? selves. The world revolution is here!... As
a social revolution it goes through the different lands and
everywhere sharpens the class conflict between the
previously ruling and privileged classes and the proletarian
forces, which
partly instinctively, partly purposefully aim to dig the grave
of the old economic and social order.65
Germany's beleaguered revolutionaries took comfort in seeing
their efforts as part ofa wider movement whose ultimate success was
prom? ised by the Russian experience. But for many this was more
than a
platonic vision. A growing part ofthe USPD, including Daumig,
con- cluded that being truly a part of the world revolution meant
seeking alliance with the Bolsheviks through the new Communist
International.
Daumig, unlike many others, showed no hesitation about his
inter? national loyalties. He had no interest in efforts to revive
an inclusive Second International containing reformist as well as
revolutionary so?
cialists, while his longstanding sympathy and admiration for the
Bol? sheviks made him immediately ready to join the Third
International,
63. See especially his comments at the USPD's September
conference, reported in Freiheit, Sept. 11,1919 (m.); and in Die
Revolution, pp. 95-97. The quoted words are from the announcement
of a new school for training members of the councils of which
Daumig was cosponsor; Die Rateschule, no. 2 (Jan. 1920), p. 3.
64. Freiheit,Nov. 11, 1919 (m.). 65. Metallarbeiter-Zeitung,
Nov. 15, 1919.
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Davii W. Morgan 319
founded in Moscow in March 1919.66 But if his choice was easy,
the tone in which he addressed such matters was unusual. His
support for the Bolsheviks was steady and loyal rather than
effusive; he recom- mended the Bolshevik experience for study and
constructive evaluation rather than for simple emulation. Here is a
typical passage, from June: The much-abused Bolshevism was the
first to call a halt to the mad slaughter ofthe nations and to try
to replace a shattered state and ruined economy with a form of
society that meets the requirements of socialism. Many a false
step, many an error may have been made, but the greatness ofthe
enterprise cannot be diminished thereby. . . .
The history of Soviet Russia up to now offers us enormously
valuable lessons for the construction of the council system, for
the establishment of the
dictatorship ofthe proletariat: lessons also in that we can
avoid many a mis? take that our Russian friends had to make under
the pressure of circumstances.67
The Bolsheviks had no firmer German defender of their
achievement than Daumig, but also no friend who referred more often
to their mis? takes and to how Germans must modify Russian
practices to fit their own needs.68 What he admired was their
boldness in ending the war,
breaking with the halfhearted "Kerenskis," and devising new
political and economic institutions intended to embody socialism.
He seems to have been aware that the Bolshevik leaders during most
of 1919 spoke only abusively of him and other left-wing
Independents;69 perhaps it was partly for this reason that he
allowed others to lead the campaign for affiliation to the Third
International. But where he stood was clear: "The unambiguously
revolutionary elements ofthe world revolution have already
crystalized in the Third International, and we regard it as our
duty to join these picked forces at once."70
The last, and most momentous, ofthe changes in Daumig's activity
at the end of 1919 was his assumption of a leading party office. It
hap-
66. A good guide to his thinking is his May Day article in Die
Republik, May l, 1919. 67. Daumig's preface to Philips Price, Die
Wahrheit iiber Sowjet-Russland (Berlin, n.d.
[1919]), p. 5. 68. See for instance Allgemeiner Kongress, p.
116; USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919, pp. 96-
97 and 228-29; L>er Arbeiter-Rat 1 (1919), no. 20:3; USPD
Parteitag, Dec. 1919, p. 372. The only "error" he specified was the
Bolsheviks' use of political repression and terror. Daumig's
reticence is also noted in Peter Losche, Der Bolschewismus im
Urteil der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1903-1920 (Berlin, 1967), pp.
228-29.
69. See Lenin's comments in Die Kommunistische Internationale,
no. 2, pp. 76-77, and no. 3, p. 29. Daumig's article in Die
Republik, May 1,1919, appears to reflect knowledge of such
comments.
70. USPD Parteitag, Dec. 1919, p. 371.
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320 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of 1918
pened dramatically, with little prelude: on December 6, at the
USPD's second postwar congress, he was elected one of the party's
two chair-
men, and was abruptly catapulted into the world of high party
politics, toward which he had shown little but repugnance for over
a year.
Daumig had never entirely ceased his party activity after giving
up his official positions in November and December of 1918, but his
ties were tenuous. He detested the USPD's policies during these
months of coalition socialist government, which he once compared
with Kerenski's doomed regime.71 Relations between the party left
and the leadership almost reached the breaking point. At a Berlin
party assembly on De? cember 28, 1918, several shop steward
leaders, including Daumig, de? clared themselves willing to run for
election to the National Assembly only if party chairman Hugo Haase
were excluded from the list.72 When the assembly opted for Haase,
the disgruntled radicals gave thought to pulling out ofthe party
altogether. They were unable, how?
ever, to arrange an accommodation with Karl Liebknecht and his
asso-
ciates, who were just then founding the Communist Party (KPD),
and the idea of yet another new party, alongside the Communists,
was
unappealing. Daumig made his decision at this time to stay with
the
large, growing USPD and wait for it to be radicalized by the
further
development of the revolution.73 For most of 1919 he waited. By
spring he was the best-known mem?
ber ofthe party's left wing?apart from Georg Ledebour, who was
in
jail?and he regularly appeared at major party conclaves. But he
hardly ever wrote for the party press, publishing instead in his
own Der Arbeiter- Rat and in the daily Die Republik, which he also
edited for a time; and he held no party office.74 At one point he
almost ended his abstention: a party congress in March elected him
cochairman with Haase, seeking to reconcile the party's wings. But
Haase balked, reminding the con?
gress that not only had Daumig repudiated him, Haase, in
December, but he had just refused to endorse the USPD's latest
program, which
71. Die Republik, Dec. 8, 1918. His reasons for disaffection are
best expressed in Der erste Akt, pp. 4-5.
72. Freiheit, Dec. 29, 1918, and Jan. 3, 1919 (m.); USPD
Parteitag, Mar. 1919, pp. 263-64.
73. Der Grundungsparteitag der KPD: Protokoll und Materialien,
ed. Hermann Weber (Frankfurt, 1969), pp. 270-80; Freiheit, Jan. 3,
1919 (e.); R. Miiller, Burgerkrieg, pp. 86-89; USPD Parteitag, Mar.
1919, p. 263; USPD Reichskonferenz, Sept. 1920, pp. 180-81.
74. Daumig wrote regularly for Die Republik from April on, and
was coeditor from the beginning of June until the paper's
suppression by the government on June 23.
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Davii W. Morgan 321
was much radicalized but still a compromise product.75 Like the
earlier
assembly, the congress opted for Haase, choosing Artur Crispien
in
Daumig's place, while Daumig returned to his labors in the
council
movement, probably with relief.
Daumig was in fact deeply ambivalent about parties in the
revolution. In his work in the councils the narrow partisanship
ofthe three socialist
parties?"party egotism," he called it?was a curse. At times he
sug? gested that common labors in the council system would lead the
different socialists to overcome organizational differences and
merge the parties on a new basis.76 But he knew the parties were a
powerful force for
good or ill as long as they lasted. He had no use for the SPD,
as a party; it was not part ofthe movement (though many of its
followers were), it was part ofthe enemy, and he always denounced
coalitions between USPD and SPD as inadmissible.77 The Communists
were different;
Daumig saw them as fellow revolutionaries, regrettably divided
from the main body of revolutionary socialists by their
"putschism," their
tendency to pander to their wildest followers in tactics, and
their con? stant pursuit of narrow party interests.78 The USPD was
the party where the bulk ofthe revolutionaries were gathered; but
its inherited forms and procedures and the outlook of many members,
including most of the higher leaders, made it still "a radical
opposition party" and not a revolutionary party.79 Until this was
changed Daumig's in? volvement in the party could never be
wholehearted.
Younger, more aggressive and single-minded men took the lead
in
trying to transform the party?men such as Curt Geyer, Otto
Brass, Bernhard Diiwell, and their allies in the Party Executive,
Walter S toecker and Wilhelm Koenen. Daumig collaborated with this
faction without
quite being a member of it.80 But the program points used in its
cam?
paign were ones long associated with Daumig: dictatorship ofthe
pro? letariat through the councils, a principle that had won
majority support in the party after ten months of brutal and
unimaginative rule under the
75- USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919, p. 254. 76. See for instance
ibid., p. 105. 77. In March 1919 Daumig strenuously resisted an
attempt to renew the coalition of
the two socialist parties; see Das Kabinett Scheidemann: 15.
Februar bis 20. Juni 1919, ed. Hagen Schulze (Boppard am Rhein,
1971), p. 4111.
78. Minutes ofthe Berlin general assembly of Mar. 7, 1919, St.
11/13, p. 182; USPD Parteitag, Mar. 1919, p. 106; Ernst Daumig and
Richard Miiller, Hie Gewerkschaft! Hie Betriebsorganisation! Zwei
Reden (Berlin, n.d. [1919]), pp. 15 and 18-19.
79. Daumig in Freiheit, Dec. 21, 1919. 80. This relationship is
evident from Geyer, pp. 128 and 159.
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322 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of 1918
new democracy; and affiliation with the Communist International.
With Ledebour heterodox on both points, Daumig was now more than
ever the outstanding figure ofthe left wing, as well as one ofthe
most pop? ular personalities in the party. When the left wing
mobilized a voting majority at the Leipzig party congress in
December, Daumig was its natural choice for the chairmanship.
However reluctantly, he accepted.81
The chairmanship (which he shared with Crispien) meant a
displace- ment of Daumig's efforts from the council system?which he
still de? clared to be a more important revolutionary instrument
than the party82 ?into conventional politics. His goal, he wrote a
few weeks later, was to see to it "that the Independent Party not
merely calls itself a revolution?
ary party and parades around with a revolutionary program, but
acts in a Marxist-revolutionary sense without timid
reservations."83 But as it turned out, Daumig had been thrust into
a position he detested: nomi- nal head of an institution which
ultimately would not lend itself to his
purposes. The USPD did not become truly revolutionary just
because the left wing passed its resolutions and elected its men at
a party con?
gress. Not even the new Party Executive was revolutionary in
Daumig's sense, for some ofthe radical majority proved to be
conventional party men, even if ideologically advanced. Ultimately,
the USPD was under- stood by much of its rank and file and most of
its middle leadership, parliamentary representatives, and newspaper
editors not as an agent of immediate social revolution, but as the
continuator of the old Social Democratic orthodoxy in a somewhat
more radical form. True, another
part of the rank and file, the majority in several important
cities, was highly radicalized, and Daumig obviously hoped that the
balance ofthe
party had changed, or was about to change. It had not, and would
not.
Daumig was in for a miserable time. The confident advance of the
USPD's left wing ended in January
1920 after a bloodbath at a big public demonstration in Berlin,
blamed
by many socialists partly on the demonstration's sponsors, the
council movement. Daumig, who was in detention from January 19 to
March 4, was powerless to resist as a counteroffensive by the
moderates halted the leftward trend in the party leadership.84
Meanwhile the revolution-
8i. The words Geyer puts in Daumig's mouth as the latter tried
to resist being nomi- nated?"I am not the man you think I am" (pp.
159-60)?may or may not be historical, but the fact of his
resistance surely is.
82. USPD Parteitag, Dec. 1919, esp. p. 243. 83. Freiheit, Dec.
24, 1919. 84. On this whole affair see Morgan, The Socialist Left,
pp. 311-20.
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Davii W. Morgan 323
ary council movement decayed, being undermined by new
legislation and then slowly emasculated by the jealous trade
unions. Daumig was at liberty again (though ill from his
imprisonment) in time to join in the one great mass action of 1920,
the popular resistance to the Kapp Putsch, which began on March 13;
but he was able to play almost no
positive role.85 A united working-class front against the putsch
was the
goal of all socialists; however, while Daumig aimed to unite the
workers
by reviving workers' councils with political powers, many of his
fellow
Independents instead sought an all-socialist Reich government
incor-
porating the USPD, the SPD, and the unions. The USPD leadership
was so miserably divided that it fell into agonizing, embittering
paral? ysis. Daumig himself twice threatened to resign when
coalition with the SPD seemed near.86 Many people saw Daumig's
position as essentially abstentionist and obstructive (which was
far from his intention), and his reputation suffered.87
By comparison with its failure in March, the USPD's great
success in the Reichstag elections of June 6 meant little, at least
to a revolu?
tionary, and Daumig, who won his first parliamentary seat,
showed his indifference by refusing election as chairman of the
party's Reichstag delegation.88 Daumig and his friends were
looking, not for parliamen? tary action, but for ways to get the
revolution moving again. In this
spirit they turned toward the Communist International and the
suc? cessful revolutionaries behind it, the Bolsheviks.
Until circumstances forced the role on him in the summer, Daumig
was not publicly a leader in the drive for affiliation with Moscow;
his views are therefore not known in detail. Those who led the
drive, such as Stoecker and Geyer, believed that the International
could help them
finally to transform their party as well as to revive the
revolutionary
85. The illness is mentioned in Geyer, p. 180. On the USPD
leadership in the Kapp Putsch see Morgan, The Socialist Left, pp.
320-32.
86. Luise Zietz in Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des
ausserordentlichen Parteitages in Halle vom 12. bis 17. Oktober
1920, p. 64; Wilhelm Koenen, "Zur Frage der Moglichkeit einer
Arbeiterregierung nach dem Kapp-Putsch," Beitrage zur Geschichte
der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 4 (1962): 348.
87. See Arthur Rosenberg, Geschichte der deutschen Republik
(Karlsbad, 1935), pp. 114 and 136.
88. Protokoll der Fraktion der U.S.P. (unpubl. minute book, IISH
Amsterdam), minutes for June 21, 1920. His maiden speech in the
Reichstag, on October 30, began with words on the futility of
parliamentary speechmaking; Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 345,
p. 918. In two years in the Reichstag he made only three speeches,
the last in March 1921.
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324 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
spirit in Germany. Moreover, joining the Comintern was popular
with a clear majority ofthe party's rank and file, which offered
the left wing an advantage in its intraparty power struggle. The
more conventional
party leaders and their following were suspicious of the
Comintern's
tendency to dictate to member parties, but did not dare to
oppose affili- ation outright.89 Both sides understood that control
of the USPD's future was potentially at stake when Daumig and three
others departed on July 13 to take the USPD's application for
admission to the Inter- national's Second World Congress in
Moscow.
Within the larger doings of the congress, the story of the
USPD's
delegation represents a small personal drama of fatal importance
to the
party.90 It was a balanced delegation, two supporters of joining
the International (Daumig and Stoecker) and two sceptics (Crispien
and Wilhelm Dittmann), and the members made an honest effort to
preserve their common front. The front held for a while; even
Daumig's speech to the congress represented a defense of the USPD's
autonomy, and
gave nothing away.91 But Daumig and Stoecker finally could not
main? tain the reserve of their colleagues. In important ways this
was their
milieu, a source of revolutionary strength from which they could
not cut themselves off.92 They were openly distressed at some ofthe
Inter- national's new Twenty-One Conditions for admission, and
Daumig, at least, strongly opposed the Bolshevik intention to
reform the USPD
by splitting it. In the end, however, both men found they could
accept the Twenty-One Conditions; and Russian pressure brought them
to declare their views before leaving Moscow. A split in the USPD
became inevi table.
Before leaving Moscow Daumig and Stoecker concerted the main
lines of their coming campaign in the USPD with the Comintern's
leaders and Paul Levi ofthe KPD; and on their return Daumig opened
the controversy with a piece in Freiheit.93 Through much ofthe
ensuing
89. On the development of the issue in the spring of 1920, see
Robert F. Wheeler, USPD und Internationale (Frankfurt, 1975), chap.
VII.
90. The best source is accounts given by the four delegates,
especially those in USPD Reichskonferenz, Sept. 1920. See also
Wheeler, USPD und Internationale, chap. VIII.
91. Der zweite Kongress der Kommunist. Internationale: Protokoll
der Verhandlungen vom I9.fuli in Petrograd und vom. 23. Juli bis 7.
August 1920 inMoskau (Hamburg, 1921), pp. 366-73.
92. See Stoecker's letter to his wife, July 28, 1920, in H.
Stoecker, p. 231. 93. See Levi's report of Aug. 25, 1920, in Levi
papers (ASD, Bonn-Bad Godesberg),
P 27; Dittmann memoirs, pp. 1150-51. Daumig's article appeared
in Freiheit, Aug. 26, 1920 (e.).
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David W. Morgan 325
debate, however, his voice was oddly muted. His basic position
was
plain: with the help of the International and its conditions of
entry, "the USPD in theory, practice, and organization will finally
be what it has so far only claimed to be: a genuinely purposeful,
organizationally unified and combative revolutionary party, a
battle-ready army in the front ranks of the revolutionary world
proletariat."94 Details were
unimportant:
Petty formalism may object to this or that in the superficial
confusion ofthe congress, but nothing can change the fact that
people were working there with honest effort to create a firm
fighting unity for the international pro? letariat. In detail there
will have to be a good deal of polishing and rebuilding in this
young institution. But I for one have no doubt that the Communist
International will embrace all parties that have the will to carry
on the struggle against capitalism and reaction to the very
end.95
He pressed unwaveringly for adherence to the International under
the
Twenty-One Conditions; but he did so, until late in the
campaign, without endorsing the conditions in detail.96
Daumig at any rate had no serious inhibitions about merger with
the Communist Party and adoption ofthe Communist name; he had
always regarded the Communists less as party rivals than as allies
in the councils
(though often exasperating ones). And affiliation with Russia
was natu? ral for him, in fact virtually inescapable. It was a
point of honor to join the Bolsheviks in the world struggle,
especially now that they were so hard pressed by international
capitalist reaction; he could not under-
stand, he said, how anyone could claim to support the defense of
Soviet Russia (a slogan used by all Independents) while opposing
the Com? munist International.97 He even declared that, when the
Bolsheviks claimed leadership over would-be revolutionary parties
abroad, they had clearly earned this right.98
This was new; Daumig had been an admirer of the Russians, but
never a disciple. Other new elements crept into his discourse in
the
94- Daumig's preface to Fiir die dritte Internationale! by Curt
Geyer et al. (Berlin, 1920), p. 5.
95. Freiheit, Aug. 26, 1920 (e.). 96. See his speeches in USPD
Reichskonferenz, Sept. 1920, pp. 37-52 and 178-93, where
an underlying ambivalence is unmistakable. He justified the
conditions in detail only in Fur die dritte Internationale! pp.
5-8.
97. USPD Reichskonferenz, Sept. 1920, pp. 40 and 42. 98.
Kommunistische Rundschau, Oct. 1,1920, pp. 9-10, and Oct. 14, 1920,
p. 3; USPD
Parteitag, Oct. 1920, pp. 104-5.
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326 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
latter stages ofthe campaign. He had invested a great deal in
the deci? sion for Moscow, and he was presumably trying to adapt to
the con?
sequences of his choice. In line with his new allegiances,
throughout the
campaign he hardly ever spoke ofthe councils, and when he did,
he no
longer accorded them primacy over the party?a concession to the
extreme party-centered outlook of the Communists which must have
been difficult for him.99 The idea of a vanguard or elite, which he
had earlier used for the council leadership, was now applied to the
party's role.100 He justified the rigorous centralization demanded
by the Inter? national, often using military metaphors for the
party's tasks, a way of
talking foreign to him and in fact adopted directly from the
Comin? tern's language ofthe day.101 In another small but telling
way he broke with his past: he declared that the party must cease
bringing general culture to the workers and educate them
exclusively for immediate
revolutionary tasks.102 All this was couched at times in a new,
harsh
language, routine in Leninist circles but not heard from Daumig
before. His first piece for the new Kommunistische Rundschau, which
he edited with Geyer and Stoecker, featured unprecedentedly brutal
and sarcastic turns of phrase, including attacks on the private
motives ofthe Comin? tern's opponents.103 Daumig had come a long
way in a few weeks; he was becoming "Bolshevized"?though only
superficially, as time would show. But there were also revealing
flashes of his old self, even as late as the Halle party congress
where the USPD finally split:
And since for a year and a half now we have all of us together,
myself included, been bunglers, myself also included, yes indeed,
and since Russia has shown us how hard it is to wage war against
world capitalism, therefore I am for adherence to the Third
International.104
Whatever struggles Daumig may have experienced within
himself,
99- For the sole significant mention of the councils, see USPD
Parteitag, Oct. 1920, p. 111.
100. Ibid., p. 101. 101. Freiheit, Aug. 26, 1920 (e.), and Sept.
13, 1920 (e.). 102. See Daumig's preface to Fritz Fricke, Die
Rdtebildung im Klassenkampf der Gegen-
wart (Berlin, 1920), p. 6; Kommunistische Rundschau, Dec. 6,
1920, p. 2; Bericht iiber die Verhandlungen des
Vereinigungsparteitages der U.S.P.D. (Linke) und der K.P.D.
(Sparta- kusbund), abgehalten in Berlin vom 4. bis 7. Dezember
1920, p. 46.
103. Kommunistische Rundschau, Oct. 1,1920, pp. 6-11, esp. p. 9;
these imputations were rather graciously withdrawn in the second
issue (Oct. 14, 1920, pp. 5-6). But see other uncharacteristically
personal aspersions in Fiir die dritte Internationale! pp. 6 and
8.
104. USPD Parteitag, Oct. 1920, p. 108.
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Davii W. Morgan 327
he remained the most respected ofthe USPD's advocates ofthe Com?
munist International; and he became cochairman (with Paul Levi) of
the new United Communist Party formed by merger of the left-wing
Independents with the Communists early in December 1920. He was to
hold this office for a mere eleven weeks. His role in the
intraparty dis?
putes of this time is obscure, but was probably close to that of
his friend and ally Levi, about which much more is known.105 Levi
was then resisting the Comintern's efforts to radicalize its West
European member parties by whatever means it could find, even at
the cost of
greatly reducing these parties' mass following, which would
mean?in Levi's (and Daumig's) eyes?condemning them to impotence.
Levi's independence of mind provoked Moscow into mounting an
intrigue against him, reinforcing anti-Levi sentiment that was
already present among many militants. These conflicts had their
dramatic outcome on
February 23,1921, when several prominent members resigned from
the VKPD Central Committee, among them both party chairmen.
Levi and Daumig did not resign in order to start a faction
fight; they only wanted to escape from presiding over the execution
of disastrous Comintern policies.106 Daumig was still prepared to
act as official spokes- man for the party in the Reichstag on March
18.107 But within days of this speech the predicted disaster struck
in the form of the notorious March Action, a semi-insurrectionary
movement launched without any particular goals on the instance of
representatives of the International from Moscow. This was the
old
"putsch tactics" with a vengeance, and much blood flowed to no
purpose. Daumig was affected most directly when the party attempted
by strong-arm methods to force a strike in the large Berlin
factories, his prime constituency since the revolution.108 These
events finally stirred the "Levite" circles to open protest. Levi's
classic polemics, Unser Weg and Was ist das Verbrechen?, led the
assault;
many others, including Daumig, Richard Miiller, and other
former
105- See Richard Lowenthal, "The Bolshevisation of the
Spartacist League," in St. Antony's Papers Number 9: International
Communism, ed. David Footman (London, 1960), pp. 23-71; Werner
Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bidfor Power in Ger?
many, 1921-1923 (Princeton, 1963), pp. 86-102.
106. This is the burden of their brief declaration in Rote
Fahne, Feb. 28, 1921. Levi, like Daumig, was always ambivalent
about the leadership positions he occupied.
107. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 348, pp. 3207-10. 108.
For the story ofthe March Action see Angress, chaps. 4 and 5;
Lowenthal, pp.
57-64; and Willy Brandt and Richard Lowenthal, Ernst Reuter: Ein
Leben fiir die Freiheit (Munich, 1957), pp. 151-59. On the Berlin
factories see Brandt and Lowenthal, p. 158, and Fischer, p.
176.
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328 Ernst Daumig and the Revolution of 1918
shop stewards, and even Clara Zetkin, also spoke out.109 But the
party leadership remained intransigent. Levi, too loud to be
ignored, was
expelled, with a few others; still others, like Miiller, lost
their party jobs. The dissidents clustered around Levi, and waited
for improvement. But when a Comintern congress and then a party
congress in the sum? mer brought no relief, resignations began.110
On September 26, 1921, nine months after beginning his new life as
a Communist, Daumig too left the party.111
The failure of his hopes for Communism seems to have wounded
Daumig in a mortal spot, robbing him of the sustaining belief
that he was participating in the historic transition to
socialism.112 He was not
among the more vocal members ofthe disaffected group?perhaps be?
cause he deplored polemic, perhaps because he no longer had a
positive program to put forward. But he soldiered on. When Levi's
associates founded a new parliamentary group, the Communist
Alliance (KAG), at the time of Daumig's resignation from the KPD,
Daumig (with Adolph Hoffman) took on the editorship of its weekly
bulletin, and filled this post until the paper shut down the
following March. At the KAG's first formal conference in November
he was elected to its na? tional directorate.113 But the group's
only raison d'etre was to regenerate Communism from the outside,
and the KPD leadership frustrated this
hope by fending off the dissidents and stabilizing the party in
its own fashion. By February 1922 the KAG had no reason for
carrying on. At the end of March, after some hesitation on both
sides, most of its mem? bers entered (or reentered) the USPD, Ernst
Daumig among them.114
The return to the USPD must have been profoundly humiliating
for
Daumig. So far as we know, he played no role in the party during
the remainder ofthe spring except as a member of its Reichstag
delegation,
109- See Daumig's letter of March 28 to the Central Committee,
in Sowjet, May 1, 1921, pp. 9-10; and a protest letter cosigned by
him, ibid., May 15, 1921, p. 57.
110. Daumig was specially invited to attend the Comintern
congress in Moscow: letter from Levi to Mathilde Jacob, Aug.
5,1921, in Levi papers, P 84. He was too ill to go. In spite of his
robust appearance Daumig was subject to recurrent ill health which
seems to have become more frequent from this time onward.
111. Declaration by Daumig and Adolph Horfmann in
Mitteilungsblatt der Kommuni? stischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Oct. 1,
1921.
112. The obituaries in Freiheit and Leipziger Volkszeitung, July
6,1922, stress how much weakened in every respect Daumig seemed
after his breach with the Communist Party. Dittmann, p. 1236, says
he was a "spiritually broken man" at the end.
113. Mitteilungsblatt der Kommunistischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft,
Nov. 25, 1921. 114. See Morgan, The Socialist Left, pp. 412-14.
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David W. Morgan 329
and even there he was absent for several weeks because of
illness. On
June 13, in the middle ofa Reichstag session, he collapsed in
his seat. At about midnight on the night of July 4,1922, at the age
of 55, he died.115
Daumig, at one time a dominant, emblematic figure, no longer
mattered politically at the end; few in high places stopped long to
mourn him. Yet he remains, at the least, a remarkable political
per? sonality. He was modest, and markedly selfless in his work.
His convic- tions were strong, but all who dealt with him testify
to his friendliness, his consideration for others, his readiness to
listen to the views of those who differed with him. He was a
wheelhorse of any enterprise to which he lent himself, with a
pronounced, even painful sense of responsibility. But he was
ultimately a deeply divided personality.116 On the one hand, he was
an organizer and manager, with a clear eye for what needed to be
done and the will to do it. The taste for organizational solutions
to
problems never entirely left him, even during his passionate
involve- ment in the council movement, and people still remarked on
his sober, bureaucratic style. Along with this went an unusually
realistic aware- ness of the weaknesses the movement needed to
overcome?including his own weaknesses. But at the same time he had
a deep inner need for faith in higher things. The central mission
of his life from around 1900 to the middle of the war, and in a
sense even afterwards, was to help elevate the consciousness of the
workers, to help them raise the level of their humanity. This was
Daumig the evening teacher and Sunday lecturer, and it led, under
the peculiar circumstances of 1917 and 1918, to Daumig the prophet.
Here his sustaining beliefs became directly mil?
lenarian, and however much he might apply his formidable
practical gifts to realizing his vision, he was caught in a
dangerous tension between commitment and reality that ultimately
left him vulnerable.
As a revolutionary leader, Daumig had many valuable qualities:
energy, conviction, commitment, high intelligence, independence
of
mind, a sense of responsibility toward his followers, and a good
measure of charisma. But his peculiar psychological formation set
limits to his effectiveness. His revolutionary fervor was bought at
the price of chili- astic urgency that could not sustain repeated
shocks of frustration. He lacked the balance needed for a long
career as a professional revolu?
tionary. And the narrow focus of his revolutionary
commitments?the
115- Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 355, p. 7795, and vol.
356, p. 8287. 116. Only P.L. (Levi), in Freiheit, July 6, 1922, has
done justice to the duality of
Daumig's personality and character.
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330 Ernst Daumig ani the Revolution 0/1918
council system, in the particular way in which he conceived
it?restricted his range of fruitful activity. He functioned well as
both colleague and leader in a milieu where his central beliefs
were common to all, as in the council movement during 1919; but
when forced into harness with
persons of different perspectives?as in the Berlin Executive
Council, or later in the USPD Party Executive?he could become dour,
with- drawn, and ineffective. He was prey to the impulse to retire
onto the secure (if lonely) ground defined by his central
beliefs?and this warred with his sense of responsibility, with
sometimes the one winning, some? times the other. Though he put so
much of himself into his politics, there was something remote about
him as a leader, and something brittle.
Even before his late, dramatic conversions, Daumig must always
have been a man at war with himself. The stages of his career were
a succes? sion of self-repudiations, renunciations of his previous
life. His entry into the Foreign Legion may have been the first of
these, though we have too little information to know. A clearer
case is his transformation from career soldier to antimilitarist
and socialist, which moreover ap? parently meant a rupture with his
relatives.117 His later metamorphosis from conventional radical to
revolutionary was a genuine conversion
experience, which entailed repudiating Social Democratic
perspectives and committing himself to something substantially new.
The final re- nunciation was his turning from a belief in the
spontaneous revolu?
tionary potential ofthe German workers through their own
institutions, to reliance on the principle of a tight revolutionary
vanguard largely directed from abroad. This last, willed conversion
remained incomplete and psychologically unsuccessful; in that it is
particularly revealing.
Throughout the most creative phase of his life Daumig held that
the German proletariat would rise to the needs of its times and
build a new human society on the ruins of the old world that had
failed mankind so badly. It was almost a willed belief; Daumig,
after all, saw so clearly the lack of revolutionary drive in the
German socialist parties and the German workers. But given the
historical and moral necessity of revo?
lution, surely the masses would respond. In this way Daumig was
at once a leader ofthe German revolution and one of its most
illuminating
117- Daumig to Karl Kautsky, Aug. 3, 1900, in Kautsky papers, D
VII 241. In his early play Maifeier (1901) there is a
petty-bourgeois convert to socialism whose resulting family
conflicts are particularly vividly portrayed; this may be a piece
of reworked autobiography.
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David W. Morgan 331
critics. He recognized the distortions of the conventionally
radical so? cialist movement far better than most contemporaries,
and separated himself from them more completely. But like his
fellow revolutionaries, in their great majority, he remained
committed to reaching his socialist end by essentially democratic
means, by evoking the spontaneous revo?
lutionary energies which he saw lying latent in the German
workers. Like his friends he was caught in the dilemma of trying to
mobilize for socialist revolution a working class which in its mass
would not tran- scend its deep-rooted democratic hopes to embrace
the transforming vision of socialism. But because of the particular
nature and sources of his convictions, Daumig, unlike the others,
was destroyed by the dilemma.
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Article Contentsp. 303p. 304p. 305p. 306p. 307p. 308p. 309p.
310p. 311p. 312p. 313p. 314p. 315p. 316p. 317p. 318p. 319p. 320p.
321p. 322p. 323p. 324p. 325p. 326p. 327p. 328p. 329p. 330p. 331
Issue Table of ContentsCentral European History, Vol. 15, No. 4
(Dec., 1982), pp. 303-399Volume InformationFront Matter [pp.
399-399]Ernst Dumig and the German Revolution of 1918 [pp.
303-331]Heute Deutschland! Marx as Provincial Politician [pp.
332-350]The Roots of Crime in Imperial Germany [pp. 351-376]The
Great Berlin Beer Boycott of 1894 [pp. 377-397]News [p.
398]Erratum: Cotta and Napoleon: The French Pursuit of the
Allgemeine Zeitung