The Free State of Bavaria () (1919–1933) was one of the constituent states of the federally organized Weimar Republic. The Free State was established in November 1918 and lasted until the Nazi regime absorbed all of Germany's federal states in April 1933. Following the end of World War II, the name "Free State of Bavaria" was taken up again in the Bavarian constitution of 1946. It remains Bavaria's official name today.
The Free State of Bavaria grew out of the German Empire's defeat in World War I and the German revolution of 1918–1919. King Ludwig III of Bavaria fled in the face of mass protests in November 1918, and workers' and soldiers' councils under the leadership of Kurt Eisner took over in Munich and Bavaria's other large cities. The Eisner government promised a non-revolutionary transition to socialism. Shortly after Eisner's party placed last among the major parties in the election for a state constitutional assembly, he was assassinated by a right-wing extremist. In March 1919, a new government was formed under the moderate socialist Johannes Hoffmann, but on 6 April the declaration of the Bavarian Soviet Republic forced it to flee Munich. After government and Freikorps troops violently suppressed the soviets, the Hoffmann government returned to Munich and enacted a republican constitution which officially made the Free State of Bavaria part of the Weimar Republic.
During the March 1920 Kapp Putsch in Berlin, Hoffmann was replaced by Gustav Ritter von Kahr. Intent on creating a Bavarian "cell of order", Kahr sparked a crisis with the federal government when he refused to obey certain of its directives. In November 1923, Adolf Hitler initiated his Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, in part to forestall similar plans by Kahr. Although the putsch failed, Hitler won considerable sympathy in Bavaria. The Free State became a focal point for right-wing extremists from across Germany.
In the mid to late 1920s, Bavaria enjoyed a short-lived period of political and economic stability (the "Golden Twenties"). It ended in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression. High unemployment and economic privation led to a resurgence of radical parties, most notably the Nazis. After Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in January 1933, Bavaria's anti-Nazi political leadership was replaced by Franz von Epp as Reich commissioner for Bavaria. The two Gleichschaltung (synchronization) laws of March and April 1933 brought Bavaria and all the other German states fully under Nazi control and effectively ended both the Weimar Republic and the Free State of Bavaria.
World War I In the weeks leading up to the outbreak of World War I, the Kingdom of Bavaria was, for the most part, patriotic and pro-war in the spirit of 1914. When King Ludwig III mobilized the Bavarian Army on 1 August 1914, the crowd that had gathered to listen was jubilant. The popular mood soured rapidly as the expected quick victory failed to materialize and the war economy increasingly affected daily life. Coal and food shortages developed, and farmers struggled with the loss of their young men and horses and with shortages of fertilizer and farm equipment. Tensions mounted when city dwellers began going to the countryside to forage for food, and there were accusations of hoarding. To the farmers especially, the rationing of food amid local crop surpluses felt like harassment, and hatred of Prussia, the Empire's dominant state, grew.
Bavarians in its cities and towns suffered under not just the food and coal shortages but also the lack of workers and materials in industry and trade. Many women went to work to fill the open positions and to earn money to feed their families. The politics of the lower middle classes shifted to the left, generally to the moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD). The more leftist and anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) had relatively few followers in Bavaria, although its chairman, Kurt Eisner, was quite popular. He was arrested during the suppression of the January 1918 strike, which involved more than one million workers across Germany, including 10,000 from Munich's munitions plants. Eisner was released from prison in mid-October.
As the war neared its end, criticism of Bavaria's leaders for neglecting its interests and not standing up to Prussia increased. At the beginning of the war, King Ludwig had looked forward to Bavaria gaining territory, specifically hoping to acquire Alsace–Lorraine, part of which was adjacent to the Bavarian exclave of the Rhenish Palatinate. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who had originally favored German plans for annexations, began to call for a negotiated peace in 1916, but even in the summer of 1918, after the failure of the German spring offensive, King Ludwig was urging Bavarians to hold out: "It is important to continue to fight, to continue to take all hardships and deprivations upon ourselves in the certain confidence that God will lead our just cause to victory" (July 28).
Approximately 200,000 Bavarian soldiers lost their lives in the war.
German revolution
The German revolution of 1918–1919 began at the end of October 1918 with the Kiel mutiny. Rebellious sailors set up a revolutionary workers' and soldiers' council at Kiel and in early November spread the revolt across Germany. Councils took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed. The revolution reached Berlin on 9 November, and Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland the next day.
In Bavaria, protests initiated by the radical left Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) began in Munich on 3 November 1918, the first anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The demonstrators called for an immediate peace and demanded the release of detained leaders. On the afternoon of 7 November 1918, the moderate left Social Democratic Party (SPD), USPD and Free Trade Unions sponsored a mass rally on Munich's Theresienwiese estimated to have been attended by from 40,000 to 60,000 people. One of the speakers, Kurt Eisner of the USPD, demanded the abdications of King Ludwig III of Bavaria and German emperor Wilhelm II, the democratisation of Germany, comprehensive social welfare and an eight-hour workday. After the speeches, the SPD led a march through the city, then had its supporters disperse. Eisner, along with Felix Fechenbach (USPD) and of the Bavarian Peasants' League, used the opportunity to lead a band of about 1,000 to the army barracks in the north of Munich. There, they were able to convince the majority of the soldiers to join them. The strengthened group returned to the center of the city, where they occupied key locations such as the railway station, telegraph office and the Bavarian Landtag (parliament) building.
That evening, the revolutionary soldiers and workers formed a workers' and soldiers' council and elected Eisner its chairman. They then went to the Landtag building, where shortly before midnight Eisner proclaimed the formation of the Free State of Bavaria and the end of the Wittelsbach monarchy. He promised that the government would maintain order, call an election for a Bavarian constituent assembly, guarantee property and retain its civil servants. King Ludwig had already fled Munich in the evening. On 12 November, at the Anif Palace in Salzburg, Austria, he signed the Anif declaration in which he released all Bavarian civil servants and military personnel from their oath of loyalty to him. Although he did not use the word "abdication", his declaration ended the 738-year dynasty of the House of Wittelsbach.
The revolution spread within a few days to Bavaria's other large cities. Following the pattern set in Munich, workers' and soldiers' councils were set up in Nuremberg, Fürth, Erlangen, Augsburg, Würzburg and Ludwigshafen. Most of the cities' government officials cooperated with the councils and stayed in office. In Bavaria's rural areas, the revolution made few inroads. They remained almost fully under the old governmental structures.
The revolution in Bavaria took place so swiftly and peacefully in large part because the people were either indifferent to it or willing to let it happen. The great majority of Bavarians were still suffering under the war's hardships – the Allied blockade of Germany, which included foodstuffs, did not end until July 1919 – and were focused on seeing themselves and their families through the difficult times. King Ludwig had lost the people's trust because he was seen as weak and indecisive and had not been able to remedy the problem of food shortages. Many also thought that he had not done enough to protect the Kingdom's special sovereignty within the Empire. Hatred of Prussia, with its long history in Bavaria, had grown stronger during the war.
There were also structural issues pre-dating the war, which eased the course of the revolution across all of Germany. They included the social effects of industrialisation and the growth of the workers' and women's movements. The sudden and – for the German public – unexpected loss of the war was a shock to their confidence in the imperial and monarchical forms of government. That, combined with the hope that parliamentarization would help Germany secure better peace terms, played a significant role in the public's readiness to let the revolution happen.
Eisner government
In Munich, Erhard Auer at the head of the SPD leadership met with representatives of the unions on the morning of 8 November and decided that the best way to moderate the revolutionary forces under Eisner was to take part in his new government. Eisner agreed to work with the SPD and the middle-class parties as long as they accepted the new form of government and that the workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils were the holders of state power. After they reached an agreement, they filled out a list of ministers. It was completed the same afternoon and presented to the provisional National Council (), which was made up of members of the pre-revolutionary Landtag and of the workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils. The National Council had little function other than to give the new government a veneer of legitimacy. The new government consisted of three USPD members, with Eisner as minister-president, three SPD members and one independent.
The Eisner government quickly stated its goals. It renounced any significant state takeover of industry and emphasized urgent needs such as increasing the food supply, handling demobilization and creating jobs. It also advocated the separation of church and state and a strongly federal Germany which would include German-Austria. Even though Eisner was against a Soviet-style council republic, he saw a role for the workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils in his government. He pushed to have them oversee public administration, work towards a transformation to socialism and help to democratise the masses of the people. In an attempt to show the outside world the extent of the change in the new Germany, he published imperial files which showed the old regime's responsibility for the start of World War I. The political right saw his action as treasonous, and it roused considerable hatred against him.
+1919 Constituent Assembly election resultsPartySeatsPct. ofVotesBavarian People's Party (BVP)6635.0Social Democratic Party (SPD)6133.0German Democratic Party (DDP)2514.0Bavarian Peasants' League (BB)169.1National Liberal Party in Bavaria and Bavarian Middle Party95.8Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD)32.5Others00.6