The delegates who had been elected to the National Assembly in mid-January [1919] assembled a month later in Weimar, the home of Goethe and his patron Carl August and of the mighty poet who had sought to teach his countrymen that greatness should be defined not in terms of material power but of moral stature and devotion to liberty. (Germany)
Those in power play the familiar game of musical chairs. Ebert becomes Reichsprasident, Scheidemann, chancellor, and our "community activist" in Kiel, Gustav Noske, takes over the Ministry of Defense. What follows?--s omething very familiar to us in the 21st Century after the events of September 11, 2001. Article 48 of the Weimar constitution!
"Should public order and safety be seriously disturbed or threatened, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public order and safety; in case of need, he may use armed force"and he may, for the time being, declare fundamental rights of the citizen to be wholly or partly in abeyance.' (Germany)
The "Socialists" in power now declared the socialists/communists "evil doers," agitators of the workers. Ebert and Noske called upon the Supreme Command to cleanse the Republic of the disease of liberty. Noske said he was up to the task. He turned to General Ludwig von Maercher , who in turn sent a memorandum to "former officers": recruit volunteer forces!" Freedom-loving officers [11] and fellow citizens from "demobilized lieutenants and N.C.O.s who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life," to university students, to adventurers, patriots and drifters (Germany) responded, swelling the ranks of the free corps (Freikorps).
To Luxemburg's horror, not a few were pulled from the soldiers' councils!
The sore spot in the revolutionary cause at this moment--the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers who, even now, are still letting themselves be misused by their officers for hostile, counterrevolutionary purposes ("Order Begins in Berlin," The Reader).
This development, she continues, is "proof that a lasting victory of the revolution" is "not possible in this encounter."
The Freikorps and the army under the command of the Ebert- Scheidemann government are crushing the Spartacus Uprising. Four days before she and Karl Liebknecht are captured, Luxemburg writes to Clara Zetkin about what she observes among the workers. Unfortunately, she declares, the workers are not sufficiently prepared for the brutality of the government's armed thugs. But "the severe political crisis that we've experienced here in Berlin during all the past two weeks or even longer have blocked the way to the systematic organizational work of training our recruits" (January 11, 1919, The Letters). Nonetheless, she adds, "these events are a tremendous school for the masses." [12]
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