SPD politician who proclaimed the republic from a Reichstag window on 9 November 1918 and became Weimar’s first head of government
On 9 November 1918, he proclaimed Germany a republic from a Reichstag window. In June 1919, he resigned as head of government rather than sign the Treaty of Versailles.
A printer from Kassel who became an SPD journalist and Reichstag deputy, he joined Prince Max of Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. On 9 November, hearing that Liebknecht was about to proclaim a socialist republic, he proclaimed a republic first from a Reichstag window, to Ebert’s fury. A People’s Deputy, he became head of government in February 1919 but resigned in June rather than accept the Treaty of Versailles. He was mayor of Kassel in the 1920s, survived a far-right cyanide attack in 1922, went into exile in 1933 and died in Copenhagen.
Career timeline
- 1903Entered the Reichstag and served in the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary group.
- 1917Was elected chairman of the SPD.
- 1918Became vice president of the Reichstag in June and a Social Democratic minister in Max von Baden’s cabinet in October. Proclaimed the republic from a Reichstag window on 9 November and joined the revolutionary provisional government, the Council of the People’s Deputies.
- 1919Was appointed head of government of the Weimar Republic on 13 February. On 20 June, he refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and resigned with his cabinet.
Last chancellor of the German Empire, who sought the armistice, announced the emperor’s abdication and handed power to Ebert
On 9 November 1918, as revolutionary demonstrations spread in Berlin, Max von Baden announced the emperor’s abdication and transferred the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert.
Heir to the grand-ducal house of Baden and a former Prussian army officer, he won moderates’ respect in the war through Red Cross and prisoner-of-war relief work. Chancellor from 3 October 1918, he brought the SPD into government, asked the Allies for an armistice and carried the constitutional amendment that made the Empire a parliamentary monarchy. On 9 November, with Berlin full of demonstrators, he announced the emperor’s abdication without his consent, handed the chancellorship to Ebert and withdrew. In 1920 he founded the Salem boarding school with Kurt Hahn.
Career timeline
- 1918.10.03Became German Empire chancellor and brought the SPD and other majority-party representatives into the cabinet.
- 1918.10Sought an armistice from the Allies and advanced constitutional amendments shifting the Empire toward parliamentary government.
- 1918.11.09Announced the emperor’s abdication and transferred the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert.
Social Democratic chancellor whose government accepted the Treaty of Versailles under an Allied ultimatum
Born in Darkehmen in the Province of Prussia, he worked as a lawyer’s clerk, co-founded the office employees’ union and was second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions from 1908 to 1918. Elected to the Reichstag for the SPD in 1912, he became labour secretary in Max von Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. When Scheidemann resigned in protest at the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, Bauer, until then a vocal critic of the treaty, succeeded him and got it through the National Assembly. His government carried out tax reform and extended social insurance, but was forced out in March 1920 over the negotiations conducted with the Kapp putschists. He was later vice-chancellor and treasury minister, and the Barmat corruption scandal cost him his seat in 1925. He died in Berlin in 1944.
Career timeline
- 1908–1918Second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions
- 1912Reichstag deputy (SPD)
- 1918Labour secretary
- 1919–1920Chancellor of Germany
- 1921–1922Vice-chancellor and treasury minister
A Social Democratic politician of the Weimar Republic who served twice as chancellor.
Müller joined the Social Democratic Party in 1893 and rose to its leadership. As foreign minister from 1919 to 1920, he signed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany. His first chancellorship in 1920 combined the suppression of left-wing uprisings with reforms expanding disability employment, primary education, unemployment benefits and workers’ social protection. He returned as chancellor in 1928 to lead a grand coalition, which collapsed amid the Great Depression and disputes over financing unemployment insurance; he resigned in 1930.
Career timeline
- 1893Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
- 1916Elected to the Reichstag of the German Empire.
- 1919–1920Served as foreign minister and signed the Treaty of Versailles.
- 1920Served as chancellor.
- 1928–1930Served as chancellor of the grand coalition.
Non-party chancellor who answered the Ruhr occupation with passive resistance and fell amid hyperinflation
Born to a civil servant’s family in Suhl, he studied law and, as a Treasury official, helped organise Germany’s food supply early in the First World War. In 1917 he joined the Hamburg America shipping line, which he went on to head. In November 1922 he was appointed chancellor by presidential decree without a Reichstag vote, the first Weimar chancellor who belonged to no party, and formed a “business ministry”. When French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in January 1923 he called for passive resistance; paying for it, mostly by printing money, began the run-up to hyperinflation. Amid a wave of strikes his cabinet resigned in August in the face of a no-confidence vote initiated by the SPD. In 1932 he joined in advising Hitler on economics, and he died in January 1933.
Career timeline
- 1915–1916Head of the Imperial Grain Agency
- 1917Joined the Hamburg America Line
- 1922–1923Chancellor of Germany
- 1926Director general of the Hamburg America Line
The chancellor who made provisional statehood durable
As president of the Parliamentary Council, Adenauer helped present the Basic Law as a provisional settlement rather than a final constitution for a divided Germany.
Konrad Adenauer was a Catholic conservative statesman who helped shape the Federal Republic after the collapse of Nazism and the division of Germany. As president of the Parliamentary Council, he supported a provisional Basic Law rather than a permanent constitution, leaving open the possibility of reunification while establishing democratic institutions in the western zones. As the first Federal Chancellor, he pursued Westbindung, European integration, and a socially regulated market economy, while his anti-communist policy hardened the political division of the Cold War. His career thus joined parliamentary reconstruction with the consolidation of a state whose provisional founding became durable.
Career timeline
- 1906–1909Deputy mayor of Cologne
- 1917–1933Lord Mayor of Cologne
- 1921–1933President of the Prussian State Council
- 1948–1949President of the Parliamentary Council
- 1949–1963First Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1951–1955Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
- 1950–1966Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union
Weimar finance minister who founded the CDU in the Soviet zone in 1945 and was deposed for opposing the land reform
The son of a Cologne railway worker, he studied agriculture and from 1911 worked at the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome. A member of the Catholic Centre Party, he became Minister of Food in 1920 and was Minister of Finance from 1922 until the Cuno cabinet resigned in August 1923. Arrested after the Nazis took power, he later served as an economic adviser to the government of Colombia. Back in Germany he joined the resistance around Goerdeler, was arrested after 20 July 1944 and sentenced to death in January 1945, but his wife delayed the execution until the Red Army took Berlin. On 26 June 1945 he became the first chairman of the CDU of Berlin and the Soviet zone; because he refused to agree to the land reform without compensation, SMAD deposed him in December. In the West he founded the German Farmers’ Association and argued for reunification.
Career timeline
- 1911–1914Department director at the International Institute of Agriculture, Rome
- 1920Reich Minister of Food
- 1922–1923Reich Minister of Finance
- 1945Sentenced to death by a Nazi court
- 1945Chairman of the CDU in the Soviet zone; deposed in December
- 1948President of the German Farmers’ Association
Christian Democrat who led the CDU in the Soviet zone until SMAD removed him, then became West Germany’s minister for all-German affairs
A bookbinder from Hammelburg in Bavaria, he became a leader of the Catholic trade-union movement and was elected to the Reichstag for the Centre Party in 1933. He joined the resistance against the Nazis, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938, and went into hiding after the 20 July 1944 plot. After the war he co-founded the CDU in the Soviet zone and became its co-chairman with Ernst Lemmer; as a Christian Socialist he called for the nationalisation of key industries. Critical of the Communists, he and Lemmer were removed as chairmen by the Soviet Military Administration in December 1947, and he moved to West Berlin. He opposed Adenauer’s Western integration in favour of a neutral, united Germany, and was minister for all-German affairs from 1949 to 1957. He died in Berlin in 1961.
Career timeline
- 1933Reichstag deputy for the Centre Party
- 1938Arrested by the Gestapo
- 1945–1947Co-chairman of the CDU in the Soviet zone
- 1947Removed by the Soviet Military Administration
- 1949–1957Federal Minister of All-German Affairs
The social democrat who became the voice of divided Berlin
“People of the world, look upon this city! You cannot, you must not, forsake us!”
Ernst Reuter was a German politician whose path from social democracy through communism and back reflected the upheavals of twentieth-century Europe. After Nazi persecution and exile in Turkey, he returned to Berlin and joined municipal administration to a practical social-democratic politics. During the Berlin Blockade, he gave West Berliners’ resolve an international voice and helped make the divided city a symbol of freedom and self-government. His career also reveals the tensions of a generation that moved from revolutionary radicalism toward democratic local government.
Career timeline
- 1912Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
- 1918–1919First chairman of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
- 1921First secretary of the Berlin district of the Communist Party of Germany
- 1926–1931Berlin city councillor for transport
- 1931–1933Mayor of Magdeburg
- 1935–1946Lecturer in urban planning at Ankara University and adviser to the Turkish government
- 1947Elected mayor of Berlin, without Soviet consent
- 1948–1953Mayor of West Berlin, Governing Mayor from 1951
Baltic German Nazi ideologue from Reval who served as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories in 1941–1945
Born in 1893 in Reval (Tallinn), in the Governorate of Estonia of the Russian Empire, he studied architecture at the Riga Polytechnical Institute. In 1918 he left for Germany with the retreating German army and in January 1919 joined the German Workers’ Party, eight months before Hitler; in 1923 he became editor of the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. In 1930 he published his racial treatise The Myth of the Twentieth Century, and he fed Hitler’s belief in Jewish conspiracies by introducing him to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941, he had Hinrich Lohse installed as Reichskommissar for Ostland, though his own authority was severely limited. He saw the Baltic lands as German “Lebensraum”. Found guilty on all four counts at Nuremberg, he was hanged on 16 October 1946.
Career timeline
- 1919Joined the German Workers’ Party
- 1923Editor of the Völkischer Beobachter
- 1930Published The Myth of the Twentieth Century
- 1941–1945Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
- 1946Sentenced to death at Nuremberg and executed
Nazi Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein who, as Reichskommissar for Ostland in 1941–1944, ordered the ghettoisation and expropriation of Jews
Born into a peasant family in Schleswig-Holstein, he was severely wounded in the First World War. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923, became Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein in 1925 and in 1933 also Oberpräsident of the province. Appointed Reichskommissar for Ostland on 25 July 1941, he shuttled between Riga and Kiel; his decree of 27 July ordered lists of Jews, the yellow badge, the confiscation of their property and their concentration in ghettos. Asked to explain his order forbidding the execution of Jews in Libau (Liepāja), he wrote on 15 November asking whether all Jews were to be liquidated regardless of economic interests, yet he stayed at his post for three more years. He fled Ostland without authorisation on 13 August 1944 and was removed. Sentenced in 1948 to ten years, he was released for ill health in 1951 and died in his home village in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1923Joined the Nazi Party
- 1925Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein
- 1933Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein
- 1941–1944Reichskommissar for Ostland
- 1948–1951Sentenced to ten years; released 1951
A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
After the Wall was built, he said: “The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live.”
Willy Brandt was a German social-democratic politician shaped by exile and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. As Governing Mayor of West Berlin, he defended the city’s morale after the Wall was built and pressed the West to honor its responsibilities, helping popularize the name “Wall of Shame.” As chancellor, he pursued Ostpolitik and “change through rapprochement,” easing Cold War confrontation and earning the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
- 1933–1945Exile and resistance activist against the Nazi dictatorship
- 1948–1953SPD representative in Berlin
- 1957–1966Governing Mayor of West Berlin
- 1964–1987Chairman of the SPD
- 1966–1969Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
- 1969–1974Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1976–1992President of the Socialist International
The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta
On 28 November 1989, Kohl rose in the Bundestag without having told his allies, or even his own foreign minister. President Bush received Kohl's letter summarizing the Ten-Point Plan just as the chancellor was already speaking in Bonn.
A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who served sixteen years as chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany, leading both European integration and German reunification. On 28 November 1989, without consulting his allies, he presented a 'Ten-Point Plan' for German unity to the Bundestag; days later, at the Malta summit, the German question dominated the proceedings on his terms. The following year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified; together with French president François Mitterrand, Kohl drove the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro. He achieved reunification by extending the West German system into the former East, and after his long tenure ended with electoral defeat in 1998, he resigned as CDU honorary chairman amid a party donations scandal.
Career timeline
- 1959Elected to the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate (youngest member)
- 1969–1976Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
- 1973–1998Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
- 1976–1982Leader of the CDU/CSU opposition in the Bundestag
- 1982–1998Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1989.11.28Presented the Ten-Point Plan for German unity to the Bundestag
- 1990.10.03Presided over German reunification
- 1998Defeated in federal elections; resigned as CDU chairman
