Communist who led the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and was shot after its fall
Born to a Jewish merchant family in St Petersburg, he moved to Germany with his mother after his father’s death and studied at Heidelberg. He returned to Russia to take part in the revolution of 1905 and was imprisoned. In Germany he worked in the USPD and the Spartacus League, and in 1919 the KPD sent him to Munich. When the KPD replaced Toller’s council government on 13 April he became its leader, raising a Red Army and putting factories under workers’ control. Captured after Munich fell in May, he was sentenced to death by a court martial and shot in Stadelheim prison on 5 June.