Congress of Councils in Berlin

At 10 a.m. on 16 December 1918, in the building of the Prussian House of Representatives in Berlin, the first all-German congress of workers’ and soldiers’ councils (Reichsrätekongress) met. It had been convened by the Berlin Executive Council, which regarded itself only as the provisional leadership of the council movement. Since the revolution of 9 November Germany had been governed by the Council of the People’s Deputies, made up of three Majority Social Democrats headed by Friedrich Ebert and three members of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). The congress was to decide whether Germany would become a council republic on the Russian model or a parliamentary democracy.

There was no uniform electoral law. Delegates were chosen by local and district councils, roughly one per 200,000 inhabitants and one per 100,000 soldiers. According to German studies, of about 490 voting delegates nearly 300 belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany, about a hundred to the USPD, and only about ten to the Spartacus League. There were only two women among the delegates. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had not won seats, and the congress rejected a motion to admit them as guests with an advisory voice. The proceedings were opened by the chairman of the Berlin Executive Council, the metalworker Richard Müller, leader of the Revolutionary Stewards from the Berlin factories. Ebert spoke after him. That day the Spartacists gathered a large demonstration outside the building, demanding power for the councils.

The most important decisions were taken over the following days. The motion of Ernst Däumig of the USPD to make the council system the basis of the constitution and to entrust the councils with supreme legislative and executive power was defeated by 344 votes to 98. On 19 December the congress, by an overwhelming majority, according to various accounts about 400 votes to 40–50, adopted the motion of the Social Democrat Max Cohen: elections to the National Assembly were to be held as early as 19 January 1919, earlier than the government itself had planned. The left objected that early elections were meant to end the revolution. The embittered Müller later called the congress a “club of political suicides”, and Luxemburg a “willing tool of the counter-revolution”.

On other matters the congress went further to the left than Ebert wanted. By a large majority it supported the immediate socialisation of the branches of industry “ripe” for it, above all mining. On 18 December, under pressure from the Berlin soldiers, whose delegation had earlier burst into the hall, it adopted the so-called Hamburg Points, put forward by the Hamburg delegate Walther Lampl. Command over the army was to be exercised by the People’s Deputies under the control of the councils, officers were to remove their badges of rank, soldiers were to elect their own commanders, and the soldiers’ councils were to be responsible for discipline. The standing army was to give way to a people’s militia. The Supreme Army Command regarded this as the end of the army. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Wilhelm Groener threatened to resign and forced Ebert to agree that the points would apply only to the troops at home, not to the field army. In practice they were never introduced.

The congress sat until 20 December (according to some accounts until 21 December). It elected a Central Council, which was to supervise the government until the National Assembly met. The USPD, having lost the dispute over its powers, boycotted the election, so only Majority Social Democrats sat on the council. The congress was a great victory for Ebert: the supreme body of the revolution had itself come out in favour of parliamentary democracy. The dispute over the Hamburg Points and the Central Council, however, deepened the mistrust between the two socialist parties, and their coalition in the government lasted only a few more days.