23 - The Fantasies of a Visionary: Martyr of the Revolution (1918–1919)

Summary

ASSAILED BY LEFT AND RIGHT, Eisner struggled to maintain equilibrium. The Swiss press in particular regarded developments in Bavaria as ominous. “One watches with dismay,” the progressive National-Zeitung of Basel wrote, “as the hate campaign in the disheveled, so politically imprudent German nation turns on precisely the one man who thus far has demonstrated understanding of reality.” In Bern the democratic Freie Zeitung warned “if Eisner falls, the immensely polymorphous counterrevolution is victorious.” Amid the miasma of division and intrigue the Provisional National Council convened for its second session on Friday, 13 December 1918. Since 8 November the affairs of state had been conducted by Eisner and his cabinet ministers. Now that elections for the Bavarian National Assembly, the new Landtag, were set for 12 January 1919, the Provisional National Council—expanded to include 67 representatives from various professional organizations, 50 delegates from each branch of the Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Council, 29 members of the Social Democratic deputation from the old Landtag, 4 of their Liberal Union colleagues, and 6 from the Bavarian Peasants’ League—met four times over the course of six days.

Faced with imminent dissolution once the new Landtag was seated, the caretaker lawmakers pursued cross purposes, some pressing for immediate reform while others exhorted conscientious deference to their successors. Wednesday, 18 December, Minister of Education Johannes Hoffmann began the fifth session with the announcement of one of the most significant reforms undertaken by the Eisner government. Two days earlier the cabinet had approved the secularization of public-school administration, curriculum, and instruction by proscribing dominant clerical oversight of local and regional school boards and church funding for school inspectors. The costs previously borne by the parishes would be assumed by the state. “The seventh of November and the sixteenth of December,” Hoffmann declared, “mark the end of the Church and Center State of Bavaria. It would be a shame for Bavarian Social Democracy, a shame for the liberal Bavarian middle class, and a shame for Bavarian schoolteachers if it were ever to return.” The hall resounded with acclaim. In absence of industry to socialize, society itself might be reshaped.