Ralf Hoffrogge is a historian and editor of the journal Arbeit–Bewegung–Geschichte. His recent publications include A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany: The Life of Werner Scholem (1895–1940) and Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement.
This day in 1940, the Jewish communist Werner Scholem was murdered at Buchenwald concentration camp. A champion of socialism and democracy, his life was intimately tied up with the dramatic defeat of the interwar German left.
A public vote on expropriating the big landlords offers Berliners a chance to push down soaring rents.
The decisive battles of the German Revolution ended in March 1919 with the bloody crushing of the workers’ uprising. Why did it meet such a fate?
German socialists knew the craze for schnapps was a plague on working-class life. They fought it by building their organizations around beer.