Abstract
After USPD members Hugo Haase, Wilhelm Dittmann, and Emil Barth
resigned from the Council of People’s Deputies on December 28 in protest
over the Christmas Rebellion, they were replaced by SPD members Gustav
Noske and Rudolf Wissell. That meant five instead of six members of the
Council of People’s Deputies, all of them SPD politicians. The
proponents of Germany becoming a parliamentary democracy had won for the
time being, but the conflict with radical leftist-socialist elements of
the revolution was by no means over. This photograph shows the members
of the newly constituted Council. From left to right, they are Otto
Landsberg, Philipp Scheidemann, Gustav Noske, Friedrich Ebert, and
Rudolf Wissell. The image was taken in the Weimar Palace in January
1919, as the National Assembly convened in Weimar. Noske was later named
defense minister, while Wissell briefly held the office of economics
minister.