Word: ebert
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...saddle-maker's awl and, in his spare time, the pen, he forsook his trade, went to Bremen and became a journeyman. In Bremen, as is most of Germany's seaports, Socialism was finding hospitable entertainment in the hearts and minds of the common people. Young Ebert soon became identified with the Socialists and was to be seen most Sundays haranguing crowds on the merits of Marxian philosophy* but for all his energy he passed for a man of mediocre ability...
Years passed without significant event, although it is true that he had won a modest recognition from his party (Social Democratic) and had several times taken part in the international councils of the world's Socialists. On his foreign comrades, Ebert seemed to have made no impression. In 1912, he was elected a member of the Reichstag. There, also, Ebert was undistinguished. He, like all his brethren, was bitterly opposed to militarism and, like them, he supported the Kaiser in what many Germans believed-and many still believe- to be a war of self-defense. Even in 1917, when...
...brought Fritz Ebert to the front of his party. His voice was more than once heard in the support of militarism. If Germany won the War, the workers would share in the foreseen prosperity; if Germany lost, the workers would be rid of the Kaiser. Several times he sat in council with the All Highest; and when the War ended and the Kaiser fled, Ebert succeeded Prince Max von Baden as Chancellor. In such a position, he became the logical choice as President of the Republic...
...first President of Germany, Herr Ebert had to steer a difficult course. In the first place, there were no precedents upon which to fall back; he had to create them; and, in a country which for centuries had reveled in kingly glory, the lack was unusually difficult. It was said that he ate peas with his knife, that he was illiterate, that he dressed like a navvy, that his wife was "an old frump." A thousand jokes at his expense were born. Some said that Frau Ebert would sweep the Presidential Palace herself and that he would polish...
...that he unswervingly followed throughout his tenure of the Presidency. At that time and since, he might have made himself a dictator; and there were (and are) not a few who asserted that the republican régime might now be stronger if a dictator had arisen. But Herr Ebert, Social Democrat that he was, was more of a Democrat than a Socialist; and he waited the voice of the 11,000,000 people who elected him President through the Constituent National Assembly at Weimar...