MULLER, HERMANN
Publié le 22/02/2012
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MULLER, HERMANN (1876–1931), politician; led the Republic's longlived
Great Coalition.* He was born in Mannheim to a middle-class home; his
father was a factory director. He studied business and then clerked for commercial
firms in Frankfurt and Breslau. In 1893 he joined the SPD; he became
editor in 1899 of the Go¨rlitzer Volkszeitung and served on the Go¨rlitz city
council in 1903–1906. He relocated to Berlin* in 1906 to join the SPD's Parteivorstand
and served in the Party's Press and Foreign Relations offices. A
Party moderate, he reported from Paris when war erupted the considerable support
among French workers in favor of war credits; thereafter he had no qualms
over supporting SPD policy.
Muller entered the Reichstag* in 1916. During the revolution he represented
the SPD on the Berlin executive of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils.* He
was elected to the National Assembly* and remained in the Reichstag from June
1920 until his death, serving as faction leader during 1920–1928. Clever and
influential, he became Foreign Minister in June 1919 and, with Transportation
Minister Johannes Bell of the Center Party,* assumed the burden of signing the
Versailles Treaty.* As Chancellor during March–June 1920, he led the last Weimar
Coalition.* A pragmatist, he believed that socialism was attainable only
through compromise with the liberal, middle-class parties. But his reputation
was damaged after the Kapp* Putsch when he was irresolute when faced with
Communist insurrection in the Ruhr. Atypically, it was Mu¨ ller who entered the
motion of no confidence in November 1923 that toppled the cabinet of Gustav
Stresemann.*
Mu¨ ller returned as Chancellor in the Great Coalition of June 1928 to March
1930. Buffeted by several frustrating episodes, his government was perpetually
spurned by at least one member of his broad-based coalition, including the SPD
(Otto Wels,* cochairman of the faction, remarked in January 1930 that the Party
and the government should not be confused with one another). The controversial
issues that rocked his government included construction of a pocket battleship
(permitted by Versailles), reform of reparations* via the Young Plan,* and funding
of unemployment insurance in the wake of the depression.* Ultimately, it
was the inability of the SPD and the DVP to compromise on a means to finance
unemployment insurance that ruined his coalition. Some time before he resigned,
Mu¨ ller (already quite ill) accurately predicted that his cabinet's collapse would
end parliamentary democracy in Germany. Hindenburg,* who otherwise loathed
the SPD, later claimed that Mu¨ ller was the best of his Chancellors.
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