Philipp Heinrich Scheidemann is a German politician, long-time member of the SPD and one of the most influential German social democrats of the 1910s and 1920s.
History[]
Early Life[]
Philipp Scheidemann was born in Kassel on 26 July 1865, the son of Friedrich Scheidemann, an upholsterer, and his wife Wilhelmine Pape. After finishing school in 1879, he was apprenticed as a book printer, as the death of his father in the same year had plunged his family into poverty.
In 1883, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and became a union member. At the time, Otto von Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws were still in force and the SPD was essentially an underground organisation. Until 1895, Scheidemann worked as a printer and proofreader. From 1895 to 1903, he worked as an editor at social democratic newspapers at Gießen, Nürnberg, Offenbach and Kassel. Additionally, he published humoristic books in his local North Hessian dialect.
Political Career[]
In the German federal election of 1903, Scheidemann was elected from the SPD to the German Reichstag for a constituency in Solingen in the Prussian Rhineland; he retained this seat until 1918. In 1906, he also became a member of the city council of Kassel, a position he held until 1911, when he became part of the executive committee of the SPD party secretariat and moved to Berlin.
After the German federal election of 1912, Scheidemann was the first social democrat to become "1st Vice-President" of the Reichstag. When August Bebel, long-time leader of the SPD, died in 1913, Scheidemann and Hugo Haase became joint chairmen of the SPD parliamentary group. His oratory skills, pragmatism, sense of humour and middle-class manners won him appreciation beyond his own party.
The Weltkrieg[]
Although he voted for the Imperial war loans in 1914 at the start of the Weltkrieg, Scheidemann later argued for a Verständigungsfrieden (compromise peace) without annexations or reparation demands, which became known as Scheidemannfrieden. Scheidemann tried to mediate between the moderate and more extreme left of his party, but could not prevent the eventual split into MSPD and USPD. In 1917, the SPD split on the issue of continued funding for the war effort and Scheidemann became chairman of the more moderate MSPD, alongside Friedrich Ebert. In January 1918, during the great January Strikes, he was a member of the "Executive Council" in Berlin, bringing him the hatred of the German far right.
WIP