The German Revolution: From the Collapse of the Empire to the Rise of Hitler

2019/03/07

Now that nearly a fifth of the 21st century has already passed, "revolution" seems to have become almost a dead word.

I vividly remember visiting a classmate's house in the spring of 1954, when I was in my second year of Chutobu Junior High School, and seeing the headline "Fall of Dien Bien Phu" splashed across the morning newspaper in the room. As I later learned, it was the beginning of the Vietnamese Revolution.

I am still close with that classmate today, but now that Vietnamese food is easily available in Japan, few people likely give much thought to that country's independence and revolution. The tragic path the Soviet Union took following the Russian Revolution is now nothing more than a distant haze in history.

The German Revolution may be even more distant. When I told that old friend I was writing about the German Revolution, he murmured, "I understand the Russian Revolution, but I don't hear much about a German Revolution." Indeed, compared to the interest in Hitler and the Nazis, the German Revolution is so overshadowed that people are hardly even aware of its existence.

My interest in the German Revolution overlaps with my interest in the realms of literature and art. Why do humans care about novels and poems that are nothing more than fiction? It is because somewhere in our hearts, we feel that the real world we live in now is not the only possible world. Dreaming of another possible reality, or another reality that ought to be, is surely a remarkable human quality.

This dream of another reality sought not only political transformation in the German Revolution but also groundbreaking new expressions in the cultural sphere. This cultural revolution was embodied not by the factions that advocated for the maintenance of the capitalist system and parliamentary democracy, but by groups aiming for transformation through "Räte" (councils). And it was the faction that crushed these people with military force that enacted the "Weimar Constitution." This constitution paved the way for Hitler's dictatorship.

Hitler utilized the presidential emergency powers, which had been included in the Weimar Constitution to annihilate the Räte factions, to suppress critical forces. Thinking about the German Revolution may also mean fundamentally reconsidering Weimar democracy, which is often spoken of only in positive terms.

The German Revolution: From the Collapse of the Empire to the Rise of Hitler

Hiroshi Ikeda

Gendaishokan

384 pages, 3,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.