On 9 November 1918, the hopes for a victorious German ‘October’ were initially very high. As with the February Revolution in Russia, the German masses poured onto the stage of history. They took destiny into their own hands. A red flag flew over every barracks and over every ship in the German Imperial Navy. Alongside a feeble bourgeois government, a network of workers’ and soldiers’ councils had sprung up in all the main cities and towns of Germany. The authority of the old state apparatus had collapsed and power was now in the streets, patrolled by armed workers and soldiers. It was a classic example of ‘dual power’, with the old and new class forces vying for dominance. In Berlin, a new government of People’s Commissars had been appointed by the Executive Committee of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. Events moved quickly as the Hohenzollern dynasty followed the Romanovs into oblivion. The Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, fled to the Netherlands, followed by the rulers of four German kingdoms, five Grand Duchies and twelve Principalities.
Following the example of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, another age-old absolutism, that of the Hohenzollerns, had been reduced to dust. Under the hot breath of revolution, King Ludwig III of Bavaria, whose House of Wittelsbach had ruled for more than a thousand years, simply packed his bags and departed. He had been deposed by a revolutionary Bavarian government, known as the ‘Council of Workers and Soldiers’. The King of Württemberg pleaded on his hands and knees that no red flag should fly over his vacated palace. The reason for this humble request was that the palace, despite his absence, should be respected as his private property. But the Revolution chose to ignore such formalities.
The Kaiser’s brother, Prince Heinrich was forced to flee for his life, disguised with false whiskers and a red flag flying on his automobile. In that way, under the cover of darkness, he was able to escape to Denmark undetected. The old order was at an end. Everywhere the imperial flags were being pulled down and replaced with red flags.
Kaiser[3] Wilhelm II, Emperor of all Germany, was forced to abandon his Royal palace at Potsdam and the question of his abdication was on everyone’s lips. Wilhelm had been reluctant to abandon his throne, but soon realised that this might be a lost cause. Initially he had some fleeting thought that he may have been allowed to remain as the King of Prussia, Germany’s largest state, but this illusion soon evaporated when the chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, appointed by Wilhelm, had the temerity to announce the Kaiser’s demise without the decency of telling him. After all, someone had to put the Hohenzollerns out of their misery, otherwise the workers and soldiers would take it upon themselves, as in Russia.
But the idea of playing the role of the sacrificial lamb did not sit well with the head of the most powerful monarch in Europe. “Treason, gentlemen, barefaced, outrageous treason!” cried Wilhelm as he tried to clutch onto power with the support of the generals, but they too soon disowned him.
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The title ‘Kaiser’ is the German word for ‘emperor’.