Bavarian republic

On 7 November 1918 the Wittelsbach monarchy fell in Munich. After a large peace rally a small group of radical socialists led by Kurt Eisner won over the city’s garrison, and during the night of 7–8 November Eisner proclaimed Bavaria a “free state” (Freistaat), that is a republic, and deposed the dynasty that had ruled the country for 738 years. King Ludwig III left the capital that same evening. He was the first German monarch to be overthrown by the revolution, two days before the fall of the Kaiser in Berlin.

The Bavarian coup took almost everyone by surprise. As late as 2 November the royal government had reached agreement with all the groups in the Landtag on a constitutional reform that was to turn Bavaria into a parliamentary monarchy, and the king had consented to it. But the war had exhausted the country: hunger demonstrations had been breaking out in Munich since 1916, and in January 1918 Eisner, leader of the Bavarian Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, organised a strike in the armaments works, for which he was sent to prison. He was released on 14 October. At the beginning of November news reached Munich of the sailors’ mutiny in Kiel.

On the afternoon of 7 November the Social Democrats, the Independent Socialists and the trade unions called a rally on the Theresienwiese meadow. According to official estimates 40,000–60,000 people came. Eisner demanded the abdication of the king and the Kaiser, the democratisation of Germany and the eight-hour working day. Most of the participants then marched peacefully through the city and dispersed, but a group of Eisner’s supporters, according to some studies about a thousand people, led by him, his associate Felix Fechenbach and the blind leader of the Bavarian Peasants’ League, Ludwig Gandorfer, set off for the barracks. The soldiers joined them one unit after another. By the evening there was no longer a unit in Munich that could be sent against the revolutionaries. The insurgents occupied the railway station, the telegraph office and the Landtag building, and in the Mathäser beer hall a workers’ council and a soldiers’ council were formed. It all happened without bloodshed.

The king reportedly learned of the revolution from a passer-by during his daily walk in the English Garden. The Residenz was almost empty, the servants and guards had dispersed, and the minister of war admitted that he had no troops with which to defend the throne. The prime minister, Otto von Dandl, and the minister of the interior persuaded Ludwig III to leave. At about 11 p.m. the king, in civilian clothes, with his sick wife, three daughters and a small retinue, drove off in three hired cars to his castle of Wildenwart near the Chiemsee. Meanwhile, at the first joint session of the councils in the Landtag building, Eisner proclaimed: “The Wittelsbach dynasty is deposed! Bavaria is henceforth a free state!” The council elected him prime minister.

On the morning of 8 November the people of Munich read on posters and in the newspapers a proclamation by Eisner, who promised to maintain order, protect property, keep officials in their posts and hold elections to a constituent assembly. That same day Erhard Auer’s Social Democrats, though unenthusiastic about the coup, joined his government and took most of the portfolios in it, and the revolution spread to Nuremberg, Augsburg, Würzburg and other cities. Ludwig III never returned to the capital. He fled further into the Alps and then across the border to Anif near Salzburg, where on 12 November he released officials and soldiers from their oath of allegiance, without, however, formally renouncing the throne. Eisner ruled Bavaria for a little over a hundred days. On 21 February 1919, on his way to the Landtag, where after his party’s electoral defeat he intended to announce his resignation, he was shot by a nationalist officer, Count Anton von Arco auf Valley.