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Friedrich Ebert Biography

Friedrich Ebert was born on February 4, 1871, as the son of a tailor in Heidelberg. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1889, even before he had finished his apprenticeship as a saddler.

Within the SPD Ebert was regarded as a conciliatory and pragmatic personality with leadership qualities. He fought for a close relationship with trade unions and for a society based on social peace. He was elected as an SPD member to the German parliament in 1912, and became 1913 chairman of the Social Democratic party.
He also held the position of leader of the SPD
fraction in the parliament. He soon became a leading personality in the German
social democratic movement.

He fought as a protagonist of parliamentary democracy for the introduction of a republican system. During the Berlin Congress of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in December 1918, immediately after the end of World War I, he managed to push through the idea of a multi-party system with general, secret and free parliamentary elections.
He thus contributed vitally to the democratic construction
of the first German republic.

On February 11, 1919, the National Assembly elected Ebert as the first president of the new Weimar Republic. His presidency, which concentrated on equality and reconciliation, had a stabilizing effect on the young democracy, which came under threat in its earliest years from extremists of both the left and the right. In 1925, shortly before his term of office was due to finish, Ebert died as a consequence of a medical operation.

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