1. Eduard Heinrich Rudolph David was a German politician.
13 Facts About Eduard David
1. 2.
Eduard David was an important figure in the history of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and of the German political labour movement.
3.
Eduard David was briefly the first president of the Weimar National Assembly which drew up the Weimar Constitution and ratified the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
4.
Eduard David worked as a teacher at a gymnasium and establishing a newspaper, the Mitteldeutsche Sonntagszeitung, in 1893.
5.
Eduard David argued against the traditional Marxist idea that small landholdings would increasingly be replaced by large estates, marking Eduard David as among the first Revisionists in his party.
6.
From 1896, Eduard David was a member of the Landtag of Hesse and after 1903 a member of the Reichstag for the SPD.
7.
Eduard David was one of the leading politicians of the "Majority" SPD when the party split during the First World War and was instrumental in framing his party's policy stand on the war.
8.
In October 1918, when the SPD became part of the Imperial government for the first time under the new chancellor Max von Baden, Eduard David became Under Secretary at the Foreign Office.
9.
In February 1919, Eduard David was elected president of the new National Assembly, but as part of a deal establishing the first democratically elected government, the Scheidemann cabinet, he relinquished that post in favour of Constantin Fehrenbach and became Minister without Portfolio under the new Ministerprasident, Philipp Scheidemann.
10.
Erich Koch-Weser took over as Minister of the Interior and Eduard David was Minister without Portfolio.
11.
Eduard David retained this position in the first cabinet of Hermann Muller, who formed the new government when the Cabinet Bauer resigned in March 1920.
12.
In 1922, Eduard David was appointed Reichsbevollmachtigter in Hesse and from 1923 to 1927 he taught political sciences at what was then the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt.
13.
Eduard David is today considered a key figure in the history of the political labour movement in Germany as he influenced the development of the SPD in the pre-World War I period as one of the leading advocates of reformist policies.