Palm Sunday Putsch

In the early weeks of the German revolution of 1918–1919, large-scale protests in Munich enabled Kurt Eisner, the leading representative of the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) in Bavaria, to declare the overthrow of the Kingdom of Bavaria and the establishment of the People's State of Bavaria.{{cite web |author=Schuler |first=Thomas |date=December 2008 |title=The Unsung Hero: Bavaria's amnesia about the man who abolished the monarchy |url=http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=1586 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219082340/http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=1586 |archive-date=2013-12-19 |website=The Atlantic Times}} Eisner was elected its first minister-president by the Munich Workers' and Soldiers' Council and formed a provisional government made up of members of the USPD and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the state parliamentary elections of January 1919, Eisner and the USPD suffered a major defeat. While he was on his way to the parliament building to resign on 21 February 1919, he was assassinated by the völkisch and antisemitic Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley.{{Sfn|Mitcham|1996|p=32}}

In March, the state parliament elected Johannes Hoffmann (SPD) minister-president of a new minority government. On 7 April, inspired by the communist revolution in Hungary, opposition communists proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and the playwright Ernst Toller was appointed head of state.{{Cite book |last=Mühsam |first=Erich |author-link=Erich Mühsam |title=von Eisner bis Leviné |publisher=Fanal Verlag |year=1929 |location=Berlin |pages=47 |language=de |trans-title=From Eisner to Leviné}}{{Sfn|Mitcham|1996|pp=32–33}} Hoffmann and the majority of his cabinet fled to Bamberg in northern Bavaria.{{Sfn|Mitcham|1996|p=33}}

{{Ill|Alfred Seyffertitz|de}}, commander of the Bavarian Republican Defense Troop, a volunteer militia originally formed to oust Eisner, immediately began to make plans to overthrow the Bavarian Soviet Republic.{{Cite web |last=Walter |first=Dirk |date=13 April 2019 |title=Der Palmsonntagsputsch |trans-title=The Palm Sunday Putsch |url=https://www.ovb-heimatzeitungen.de/bayern/2019/04/12/der-palmsonntagsputsch.ovb |access-date=8 April 2025 |website=OVB Heimatzeitungen |language=de}} He visited Johannes Hoffmann in Bamberg on 10 and 11 April 1919 and was formally commissioned to carry out a coup against the Soviet Republic.{{cite web |last1=Sepp |first1=Florian |last2=Bischel |first2=Matthias |date=11 May 2006 |title=Palmsonntagsputsch, 13 April 1919 |trans-title=The Palm Sunday Putsch, 13 April 1919 |url=https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Palmsonntagsputsch,_13._April_1919 |access-date=7 January 2024 |website=Historisches Lexikon Bayerns |language=de}} At dawn on Palm Sunday 13 April 1919, the Republican Defense Troop broke into the rooms of the Central Council of the Soviet Republic in the Wittelsbach Palace in Munich and arrested 13 people, including 8 members of the Central Council. Important decision-makers including Ernst Toller, Gustav Landauer and leading politicians of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), were able to evade arrest. The KPD politicians called for immediate street protests.

Seyffertitz's expectation that regular army troops in Munich would join his campaign was not fulfilled. In the hope of receiving reinforcements from outside, the Republican Defense Troop occupied Munich's central train station. There they were besieged by revolutionary militiamen of the Munich Red Army under its commander, Rudolf Egelhofer. Fighting ensued in which 20 men were killed.{{cite book |author-link=Richard J. Evans |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |date=2003 |title=The Coming of the Third Reich |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Books |pages=158–161 |isbn=0-14-303469-3}} At around 9 p.m. Seyffertitz gave up the battle and set off for Eichstätt by train with his remaining men.

On the afternoon of the fighting, the communist leadership of the Bavarian Soviet Republic had called for a meeting of the workers' and soldiers' councils at Munich's Hofbräuhaus. There Eugen Leviné proposed that Toller's government be dissolved by a vote of the councils and that it be replaced by a new action committee dominated by hardline communists. The councils' vote to approve the motion, together with the communists' military victory, meant that the immediate effect of the putsch was not the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic but a new and more radically leftist government under Leviné.

In early May 1919, soldiers of the German Army aided by units of the Freikorps overthrew the Bavarian Soviet Republic at the cost of over 600 lives. The Hoffmann government was reinstated, and in August 1919 the republican Free State of Bavaria was established as a constituent member of the Weimar Republic.{{Cite book |last=Winkler |first=Heinrich August |author-link=Heinrich August Winkler |title=Weimar 1918–1933. Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie |publisher=C.H. Beck |year=1993 |isbn=3-406-37646-0 |location=Munich |page=81 |language=de |trans-title=Weimar 1918–1933. The History of the FIrst German Democracy}}{{Cite web |last=Löffler |first=Bernhard |title=Kabinett Hoffmann II, 1919/20 |url=https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Kabinett_Hoffmann_II,_1919/20 |access-date=8 April 2025 |website=Historisches Lexikon Bayerns |language=de}}

{{Notelist}}

• Allan Mitchell: Revolution in Bayern 1918/1919. Die Eisner-Regierung und die Räterepublik. Beck, München 1967, 2. Auflage 1982, ISBN 3-406-02003-8 (S. 277 f.)
• Bracher, Karl Dietrich (1970) The German Dictatorship. Steinberg, Jean (translator). New York: Penguin Books. {{isbn|0-14-013724-6}}
• Burleigh, Michael (2000) The Third Reich: A New History, New York: Hill and Wang, p. 40 {{isbn|0-8090-9325-1}}
• {{cite book |last1=Gaab |first1=Jeffrey S. |title=Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History: Beer, Culture, and Politics |publisher=Peter Lang / International Academic Publishers |year=2006 |isbn=978-0820486062}}
• Kershaw, Ian (1999) Hitler: 1889–1936 Hubris, New York: W. W. Norton & Company. {{isbn|0-393-04671-0}}
• {{cite mitcham}}{{sfn whitelist|CITEREFMitcham1996}}

{{Reflist}}

Category:Anti-communism in Germany

Category:Attempted coups in Germany

Category:Bavarian Soviet Republic

Category:1919 in Germany

Category:1910s coups d'état and coup attempts