Kurt Eisner, born on this day in 1867, was a German socialist revolutionary and radical journalist who was assassinated by a far-right nationalist while serving as head of the People’s State of Bavaria.

Kurt Eisner, born to a Jewish family in Berlin, was a revolutionary German socialist, radical journalist, and theater critic. Before leading the People’s State of Bavaria, he worked as a journalist in Marburg, Nuremberg, and Munich. In the early 1890s, Eisner served nine months in prison for writing an article that attacked Kaiser Wilhelm II.

In 1918, Eisner was convicted of treason for his role in inciting a strike of munitions workers. He spent nine months in Cell 70 of Stadelheim Prison, but was released during the General Amnesty in October of that year.

Following his release from prison, Eisner helped organize the revolution that overthrew the Bavarian monarchy, declaring Bavaria to be a free state and republic. Despite Eisner’s socialist politics, he explicitly distanced the movement from the Bolsheviks and promised to uphold property rights.

On February 21st, 1919, while on his way to deliver his resignation to Parliament, Eisner was assassinated in Munich by a far-right German nationalist. Eisner’s murder made him a martyr for left-wing causes, and a period of lawlessness in Bavaria followed his death.

On the night of April 6th-7th, 1919, communists, encouraged by the news of the communist revolution in Hungary, declared a Soviet Republic, with Ernst Toller as chief of state. The Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed by the right-wing German Freikorps.

Some of the military leaders of the Freikorps, including Rudolf Hess and Franz Ritter von Epp, would go on to become powerful figures in the Nazi Party. Ironically, Adolf Hitler himself marched in the funeral procession for Eisner, a Jew, wearing a red armband as a display of sympathy.

“Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse.”

  • Kurt Eisner

https://spartacus-educational.com/GEReisner.htm

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