Kaiser Albert I, born in 1895, a year after his brother, Edward, Prince
of Wales, came to maturity with a bad stammer, possibly engendered by
harsh childhood tutoring making him use his right hand rather than his
natural preferred left hand. He had gastric reflex disorder by his late
teens and ulcers in his intestines by age 25.
He also was kind-hearted, considerate, charitable and tolerant,
qualities that were not exhibited by his parents, George and Mary.
Albert alone befriended his younger brother. John, who from the
perspective of late 20th century experts had dyslexia and epilepsy, but
who was spurned by their frigid parents as if John was a freak.
The Hohenzollern prejudice against the new Kaiser and King of Prussia
interpreted Albert's stammer as proof of mental limitations. "The
British ursurper has the mind of a ten year old child," (1) a prominent
political commentator wrote for the ousted dynasty. Many observers
thought it ominous that leading members of the German Army (Ludendorff,
Hindenberg, Berlin garrison commander Walther von Luettwitz, and General
Staff Chief von Seeckt) failed to attend the coronation ceremonies of
the sjy young Englishman at Potsdam in December 1919.
Though not ready to pay Albert tribute, the Army was not ready to
overthrow him in favor of the mercurial and nottoriously ungrateful
William. Discipline held, even when the SPD Interior Minister Dr. Hugo
Pruss, a part Jew, released Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemberg, the
Communist leaders, from their year-long imprisonment.
Proclaiming that the future wwas being pioneered by the Bolsheviks of
Russia, the Liebknecht-Luxemberg team organized the Communist Party of
Germany (KPD). Ignoring the pro-autocrat, militaristic Nationalists
(DNVP) organized by Oscar Hergt, the KPD directed its fire against the
Socialists (SPD) lead by Chancellor Friedrich Ebert. Arguing that the
German Revolution must culminate in a worker's republic, the Communists
became a frequent and vocal sight in left-leaning Reichstag districts
(especially in the Berlin area).
SPD War Minister Gustav Noske. a master butcher by trade, ordered
General von Luettwitz, military commandant of Berlin's readiness
district, to disband the Ehrhardt brigade. That organization (closer in
size to a regiment than a brigade) had crushed a loosely organized
clique of journalists and academics who had momentarily held court in
Munich. Noske noticed that the Ehrhardt Brigade had no assignment yet
was drawing rations and other supplies, and ordered that group
dispersed.
On Friday the 12th of March 1920, a verdict came down in a defamation
lawsuit that politican Matthias Erzberger had filed against right-wing
commentator Helfferich, the critic against Kaiser Albert. The
Hohenzollern appointed judges ruled against Erzberger. Rightwingers had
spontaneous street parties over Erzberger's loss., and by that evening,
Ehrhardt's Brigade was approaching Berlin from its barracks some thirty
kilometers away.
To a call from War Minister Noske, General von Seeckt replied:
"Reichswehr does not fire upon Reichswehr" (2). Believing themselves
deserted by their own military, the Chancellor and most of his Cabinet
ran to the train stations to catch rides to Dresden. Among the abandoned
was Kaiser Albert, who had not yet completed his third month on the
German throne.
To the surprise of the putschists, they found lines of civilians and
police officers facing them behind scratch barricades on the morning of
Saturday the 13th. Shouting at them through a blow horn was Kaiser
Albert, who distinctinctly enunciated to them: "I am your Kaiser! Cease
this sedition!" (3)
Ehrhardt ordered gunfire against the resisters, but the Kaiser's line
held firm and unleashed a better barrage against the putschists. Within
45 minutes, the thugs had broken apart, fleeing and discarding their
uniforms. Meanwhile, both Ebertian Socialists and Communist hoisted
their new Kaiser on their shoulders and marched in celebration of the
defeat of the malcontents.
That confrontation ended rightist disorder in the streets, and the left
had discovered unexpectedly that Albert was bravely on the side of law
and order. On Sunday the 6th of June 1929, the election results were:
Social Democrats (SDP) 154
Center Party (Z) 184
German Nationalists (DNVP) 106
Bavarian Peoples Party (BVP) 14
Communist Party (KPD) 1
Again conducted in winner take all, single member electoral districts,
the election gave the Ebert Government Coalition of the Socialists, the
Center and the Bavarians a healthy majority. At that time and later, the
results were taken as public approval for Albert's rallying his capitol
against the putsch. The most ominous hint of the future was that many
successful SDP candidates had as their nearest challengers Communists,
who had sup****t among as many as a fifth of district voters.
Over many years of dissatisfaction with the old regime, the Socialists
had acquired as part of their party platform a belief in Pro****tional
Representation for Reichstag elections. Even though such a system would
reduce their numbers in favor of the Communists, most of the SPD
deputies voted for PR when the electoral law came up for a vote,
118-36. Their Coalition Partners were under no such delusion, and voted
for the Simple Plurality Single Member District status quo. The ayes and
the nays on PR were 64-120 Center, 5-101 Nationalists, 7-6 Bavarians,
and 0-1 for the Communist (who voted in favor of the rotten system
hoping that disgust with it would speed the Communist Revolution.)
On Saturday the 7th of August 1920, an Austrian national named Adolf
Hitler who had been attending a conference of National Socialists in
Salzburg, Austria, was refused permission to return to his residence in
Munich, Bavaria, Hitler's protest that he had been fighting for Germany
in the Great War attracted some attention and sympathy, but in the light
of the Ehrhardt would be coup, Hitler got no immediate permission to
return to Germany. (Hitler did sneak across the ****ous border illegally,
and became a joke in German popular culture of the 1920s, a "Hitler"
being an unwelcome guest who returns to the same place after each
eviction).
Over the next couple of years, Kaiser Albert visited England routinely
each summer to warm receptions. The British were wet blankets on French
expectations that 6 billion gold marks would be paid every year for the
next 42 years and the Americans were leaning towards taking up no
responsibilities in Europe at all. (In the 1920 election, the successful
Presidential candidate, Warren Harding, did not advocate US entry to the
League of Nations.)
In early spring, 1921, Walther Rathenau, Germany's special emissary on
the reparations question, persuaded Paris and London to reduce
Germany's reparations payments to twenty five billion goldmarks, payable
at a billion marks a year. Sixty five members of the Governing
Coalition in the Reichstag defied their whips and voted "no" on that
arrangement ---- luckily the Government Majority was 122.
In Munich in 1921, the notorious Mr. Hitler lead a street rally in
opposition to the payment of any reparations at all, and was sentenced
to nine months in prison for scoffing at the penalities of illegal entry
into Germany.
In November of 1922, a dissident Italian Socialist named Benito
Mussolini ordered his sup****ters, whom he dubbed the Fascists, to
congregate in Rome and take over the government of Italy. The Italian
monarch could have followed the German example set by Albert when he
faced down the Ehrhardt putsch, but Victor Emmanuel was made of less
stern stuff and bribed Mussolini away from violence by making the man
Italy's Prime Minister. As Albert's brother, the Prince of Wales
commented: "My brother or I would have never given in to such a bully,
but little King Victor is, after all, only a greaser" (4).
Notes:
(1) Dr. Karl Helfferich, Kruezzeitung (20 December 1919). Helfferich
has been a finance minister for Kaiser William II, and was a frequent
guest to William's homes.
(2) Von Seeckt quoted p. 64 in Andreas Gommerman, Gustav Noske: Enforcer
Of The Rule of Law (New York 1976).
(3) Albert quoted p. v in William ****rer, The Rise Of Constitutional
Germany (New York 1964).
(4) Edward VIII quoted p. 200 in Harold Nicholson, Kings And Quips
(London 1950).
|
