Hertling resigns

On 30 September 1918 at Spa Kaiser Wilhelm II signed a decree accepting the resignation of the Reich Chancellor and Prussian Minister-President, Count Georg von Hertling. In the same document he announced a change in the system of government: from now on the German people were to share more effectively than before in deciding the fate of the state, and men who enjoyed its confidence were to take a broad part in the rights and duties of government. It was the announcement of the parliamentary government that the majority parties in the Reichstag had been seeking for more than a year. The 75-year-old Hertling, who had headed the Reich government since 1 November 1917, did not want to lead such a cabinet and stepped down. He continued to carry out his duties until a successor was appointed.

A chancellor caught in a pincer

Hertling, a Catholic philosopher from the right wing of the Centre Party, had from the outset opposed parliamentarisation, in which he saw a threat to the federal structure of the Reich and to the monarchy. He took office with the support of the majority parties, but governed without handing power to them, and war policy was in any case decided by the Supreme Army Command of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. At the Spa conference on 14 August, when it was recognised that the war could not be won by force of arms, it was he who summed up that peace feelers should be put out at a “suitable moment”, preferably after further successes in the west. On 3 September, at a meeting of the Prussian Ministry of State, he rejected an immediate peace proposal, and in the middle of the month his government tried in vain to dissuade Austria-Hungary from a separate peace note.

Meanwhile impatience was growing at home. At the beginning of September the chancellor warned a committee of the Prussian House of Lords that the government would stand or fall with the reform of the Prussian franchise, which the Conservatives had been blocking for months. The left wing of the Centre, led by Matthias Erzberger, openly attacked the chancellor, which according to Ludendorff caused “a terrible storm”. At the end of September Hertling lost the last remnants of the confidence of the Social Democrats, who were prepared to join the government only on condition of a change of policy. According to the German historian Manfred Rauh, the governments of Bavaria and Baden also considered him the wrong man to conduct a peace policy, and the liberals of the Progressive People’s Party thought likewise, though they did not want to break up the coalition.

Decisions taken without the chancellor

Hertling’s fate was sealed by the military’s change of course. On 26 September officers of the Supreme Army Command informed the Foreign Secretary, Paul von Hintze, of the hopeless situation at the front, bypassing the chancellor. Hintze prepared a plan for a “revolution from above”. A memorandum of his office dated 28 September already assumed that by the following evening a telegram would reach Berlin announcing the acceptance of Hertling’s resignation, “tendered at his own request”, and instructing the Vice-Chancellor, Friedrich von Payer, to prepare the composition of a new government in agreement with the President of the Reichstag and the party leaders.

On the morning of 29 September at Spa Hindenburg and Ludendorff demanded an immediate request for an armistice, and the Kaiser accepted the proposals of the generals and of Hintze. The chancellor arrived at headquarters only in the afternoon and found matters already decided. According to Ludendorff, when the draft of an imperial proclamation introducing the parliamentary system was sent to him, Hertling decided that he was unable to carry it out and resigned. Some historians point out that the decision on his departure had in practice already been taken earlier, between Hintze and the generals.

The decree of 30 September

The next day the Kaiser signed the decree accepting the resignation and announced in it his will that men backed by the confidence of the nation should join the government. Vice-Chancellor Payer, a liberal from Württemberg, was to come to an understanding with the party leaders about a new cabinet. On the same day Bulgaria stopped fighting, and in the evening Hindenburg left with the Kaiser for Berlin to represent the Supreme Army Command there. Historians reproach Hertling for delaying too long over both reform and peace, and for being unable to assert himself against the Supreme Army Command. Klaus Epstein, the American historian of German parliamentarism, wrote that he was a politician whose strength lay in negotiation, not in action.

The successor

The search for a new chancellor took several days. On 3 October Prince Max von Baden, regarded as a liberal and Payer’s candidate, was appointed. For the first time Social Democrats joined the government, among them Philipp Scheidemann, and so did Erzberger. Hintze left, and foreign affairs were taken over by Wilhelm Solf. The new cabinet’s first task was to send President Wilson the request for an armistice that the army had demanded. Hertling returned to Bavaria and died on 4 January 1919 at Ruhpolding, after the fall of the monarchy whose reform he had tried to put off.