George Grosz

When Germany threatened to sink into inflation and political chaos in 1923, the KPD offered itself as a ‘lifebuoy in a hopeless situation’. At the same time, the situation seemed favourable for the longed-for coup against the hated Weimar Republic, modelled on the Russian October Revolution of 1917. In autumn 1923, a ‘German October’ planned by the KPD in collaboration with the Soviet leadership threatened the republic from Hamburg, Saxony and Thuringia, which Reich President Friedrich Ebert ended by force with the help of the Reichswehr. The subsequent nationwide ban on the KPD was lifted in March 1924. In the Reichstag elections on 4 May 1924, the Communists won an impressive 12.6 percent of the vote and thus 62 Reichstag seats. However, the onset of relative political and economic stabilisation from 1924 onwards and thus the turning away of many Germans from radical political slogans was already noticeable for the KPD in the following Reichstag election on 7 December 1924, when it received only nine percent of the vote. Its membership also fell over the next few years, to around 120,000 comrades by 1930.