Libcom.org's reading guide on the German Revolution of 1918, which ended the First World War and saw soldiers' and workers' councils spread throughout the country before being crushed by an alliance of the Social Democratic Party and the right-wing Freikorps.
Key texts
- All power to the councils!: A documentary history of the German revolution of 1918–1919 - An anthology collecting manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from the German Revolution—Rosa Luxemburg, the Revolutionary Stewards, and Gustav Landauer amongst others—introduced and annotated by the editor.
- Failure of a revolution: Germany 1918-1919 - Sebastian Haffner Written in a gripping, journalistic style, Haffner's account brutally captures the bloody repression of the Revolution.
- The communist left in Germany 1918-1921 - Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier Dauve and Authier's history of the Revolution and the turbulent years following it, with an emphasis on the role played by left communists.
- The German revolution, 1917-1923 - Pierre Broue Extensive account of the revolution and the years afterwards. Written from a Trotskyist perspective.
Other recommended reading
- Working-class activity and councils - Germany 1918‑1923 - Peter Rachleff - A survey of the main events and the limits of working class activity during the Revolution.
- Spartakism to National Bolshevism - the KPD 1918-24 - Solidarity An account of the emergence of the KPD (the Communist Party of Germany) in the early days of the German Revolution - as a break from the Social Democratic Party - through its decline and transformation into a tool of the Russian Bolshevik regime.
- Anti-Bolshevist Communism in Germany - Paul Mattick - Council communist Paul Mattick's reflections on the German Revolution, which he participated in, and the communist currents that emerged from it in opposition to Bolshevism.
- Germany 1918-19 - International Communist Current A history of the Revolution with a focus on the different organizations involved.
- Origins of the Movement for Workers' Councils in Germany - Pamphlet on the origins of the movement for workers' councils in Germany, covering the 1918 revolution and its aftermath and activities and reactions of left and libertarian communists.
- Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21 - Wild Socialism examines the rise, development, and decline of revolutionary councils of industrial workers in Berlin at the end of the First World War. This popular movement spread throughout Germany, and was without precedent in either the theory or practice of the Social Democratic party and the trade unions allied to it.
Other media
- German Revolution 1918 photo gallery - Images from the German Revolution, including the Wilhelmshaven Revolt.
- Printer-friendly version
- Login or register to post comments
Comments
I would suggest adding:
Wild Socialism: Workers Councils in Revolutionary Berlin, 1918-21 - Martin Commack
The German-Dutch communist left - Philippe Bourrinet
The workers' councils in the theory of the Dutch-German communist left - Philippe Bourrinet
Pannekoek and Workers' Councils - Serge Bricianer
Just added the Wild Socialism book. For those who don't know, Amazon lets you return ebooks, making it easy to download an ebook, copy it, and then immediately return it for a full refund.
On copying legit ebooks, pretty sure ones bought from amazon et al contain metadata identifying the amazon user who purchased them. Anyone know of software to scrape off said metadata?
Adding this plug-in and then reconverting the ebook into mobi format (from the original mobi file) in calibre seems to do away with whatever DRM protections there are
cheers
How about these too?
The German Revolution 1918-1919 by Ralph Haswell Lutz (1922). A first-hand account by an America academic. Lots of excellent details, but rather dry and dispassionate.
German Social Democracy 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism by Carl E. Schorske (1955). An interesting historical survey.
The German Revolution of 1918: A Study of German Socialism in War and Revolt by A. J. Ryder (1967). This is a very thorough account.
unfortunately, many good books on the topic like the classical accounts and studies of Richard Mueller, Paul Froelich, Karl Retzlaw, Peter von Oertzen or Erhard Lucas are only available in German
- Werner T. Angress: Stillborn revolution: the Communist bid for power in Germany, 1921-1923 (1972). not from a particularly radical viewpoint but a solidly written scholarly study about the KPD and its internal structure
- Ernst Toller: A Youth in Germany/I was a German (1933/34) autobiography of the writer Ernst Toller who was with 26 years head of state of the Bavarian Soviet republic, he was in that period a member of the USPD and can generally described as an anti-authoritarian and humanistic socialist, the autobiography deals with the time from his childhood to his release from prison in 1924 and deals (sometimes sarcastically) extensively with the period 1918/19 in Munich
- Ernst Toller Masses Man/Masses of Man (1919), play, written by Toller in prison in a few days about the dangers of the revolution and the relationship between means and ends, the model for the main protagonist was Sarah Sonja Rabinowitz, a schoolteacher and USPD and Bund member who was one of the leaders of the January 1918 strikes in Munich, she committed suicide in prison in March 1918 after her husband, the famous linguist Eugen Lerch had announced in a newspaper article to divorce her for "patriotic reasons"
- Rosa Meyer-Leviné: Levine: the life of a revolutionary and Inside German Communism, Memoirs of Party Life in the Weimar Republic, two inside accounts by Rosa Meyer-Leviné who was first married to Eugen Leviné, the assassinated leader of the KPD during the Munich Soviet Republic and than from 1922 on to Ernst Meyer who lead the KPD 1921/22 and was one of the leading figures of the "conciliator" current up to his early death in 1930
haven't read the two novels by Theodor Plivier which deal with this period: The Kaiser Goes: The Generals Remain and The Kaiser’s Coolies, both written in the early 1930ies
available in Italian and French but the German original wasn't reprinted since 1929: http://collectif-smolny.org/article.php3?id_article=1858 ... most of the authors were "Brandlerites"
Any chance you could remind us what a "Brandlerite" is, in your view (rather than Wikipedia's for e.g.)?.
a pejorative term for those who were expelled from the Communist International 1928/29 and formed the International Association of the Communist Opposition, mainly groups in Germany (KPD-O around Brandler, Thalheimer, Froelich and Walcher), Sweden (around Kilbom), USA (the "Lovestonites") and Switzerland (Bringolf) plus smaller groups in a dozen other countries also labelled "Right Opposition", mostly skilled union activists, experienced local councillors and intellectuals who were opposed to some features which they perceived as ultra-leftist: splitting unions and setting up red unions, rejection of united fronts with other leftist parties, anti-Luxemburgism, lack of democracy and over-centralization of the Communist International, they regarded themselves as a kind of external faction up to 1936/37, most of them (re-)turned to social democratic parties during the 1930ies, a few succumbed to the official CPs after 1935 (while most were opposed to the concept of people's fronts), ... from my own experience with members of one of the still existing "Brandlerite" groups in Germany: hard-working and no-nonsense grass roots and union activists, generally trustworthy and friendly people who rarely talking initiatives on their own ("following the lead of the mass of workers"), more a rearguard than a vanguard org (despite their positive views about Lenin)
Just added Victor Serge's writings from his time in Germany in the aftermath of the revolution.
Just added to the library The German Revolution by French Trot Pierre Broue.
EDIT: I decided to add this to the key texts section. A fair amount of the book is taken up by descriptions of KPD internal wrangling, but it's the most extensive book on the revolution that I've been able to find in English.