Communist turmoil

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin The building of the socialdemocratic Vorwärts, destroyed during the turmoil January 1919

In early January 1919, the Prussian government dismisses Berlin’s police superintendent Emil Eichhorn, a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). He is accused of having supported the revolutionary sailors who rebelled in 1918 during the „Christmas Conflict“. In reaction, adherents of the USPD and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which had emerged from the Spartacus League and Revolutionary Chairmen, instigate an armed uprising on 5 January 1919 in Berlin. The following day a revolutionary committee is formed under the leadership of the USPD politician Georg Ledebour and the Spartacist Karl Liebknecht. The committee announces that it is taking over the business of government in Germany, is preventing the elections for a national assembly planned for 19 January, and is establishing a Communist republic of councils. On 8 January 1919, government troops under the command of the people’s representative Gustav Noske (SPD) begin to put down the uprising. The conflict claims 165 lives. A few days later, in the course of anti-revolutionary „cleansing actions“ by government troops and volunteer corps, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are murdered.