Background
Philipp Scheidemann was born in Kassel on 26 July 1865, the son of Friedrich Scheidemann (1842–79) an upholsterer, and his wife Wilhelmine (née Pape; 1842-1907). He had two sisters.
Philipp Scheidemann was born in Kassel on 26 July 1865, the son of Friedrich Scheidemann (1842–79) an upholsterer, and his wife Wilhelmine (née Pape; 1842-1907). He had two sisters.
Scheidemann attended elementary and secondary schools between 1871 and 1879. After the death of his father, the family fell into poverty. In 1879-83, Scheidemann was apprenticed as a printer.
A typesetter by trade, Scheidemann joined the Social Democratic party (SPD) in his eighteenth year and later served the party as newspaper editor and journalist. He was elected parliamentary deputy for Solingen in 1903 and was to remain in the Reichstag for the next thirty years; in 1906 he served concurrently as city councillor in Kassel. Scheidemann generally avoided party debates, attending only three party congresses between 1906 and 1911, and specifically refused to become embroiled in the great revisionist debate. He described himself as a radical, perhaps thereby hoping to capture the attention of the party's venerable leader, August Bebel. The great SPD electoral victory in 1912 brought Scheidemann election as vice-president of the Reichstag, but he never occupied the office owing to his refusal to pay the obligatory call at court. A facile agitator, Scheidemann became one of the most effective speakers in Parliament, combining a ready wit with humor and sarcasm; vainly he reveled in his oratorical successes.
The July crisis of 1914 found Scheidemann, like Friedrich Ebert, on vacation; but on August 3 Scheidemann voted in the SPD caucus for war credits, seeing the looming struggle as primarily one against tsarist autocracy. Scheidemann basked in the limelight accorded him by various tours of the front as well as abroad, and the attention paid him by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who carefully sought to uphold the proclaimed Burgfrieden ("internal peace"). While generally opposed to vast German territorial annexations, Scheidemann nevertheless in the great debate of April 5/6, 1916, favored retention of Alsace-Lorraine as well as preservation of the territorial integrity of Turkey and Austria-Hungary.
In July 1917, he helped General Erich Ludendorff and Colonel Max Bauer to topple Bethmann Hollweg; in the following days, the Social Democrat actually worked with the general on a draft of a peace resolution specifically designed so that "necessary territorial gains and compensations are not precluded." Scheidemann also stated the SPD's position on the Brest-Litovsk peace in March 1918, announcing that his party would abstain from voting to show that while it did not condone all the terms of the Draconian peace, it nevertheless supported the agreement as it at least brought an end to the war in the east. When compared to the almost limitless annexationist schemes of the military and of the Conservative leader, Count Kuno von Westarp, Scheidemann's moderation on this issue quickly led those who opposed a peace of indemnities and annexations to rally to his side under the political banner of the "Scheidemann peace."
On October 3, 1918, Scheidemann joined Prince Max von Baden's caretaker government as state secretary without portfolio. At noon on November 9, against the will of Ebert, he announced from the balcony of the Reichstag the creation of a German republic, thereby effectively ending all speculation concerning a possible regency. With Ebert, he became coleader in the Council of People's Commissars and attended the Weimar National Assembly; in February 1919, he was elected first chancellor of the Weimar Republic. It was to be a short-lived tenure. The harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty on May 11 brought from Scheidemann the fateful comment: "What hand would not wither that joins us in this bondage?" He resigned in June 1919.
Philipp Scheidemann retained his parliamentary seat until 1933; from 1920 until 1925 he served also as lord mayor of Kassel. In 1920 he condemned Gustav Noske's forceful suppression of workers' revolts in Berlin and Munich; the following year Scheidemann narrowly escaped an attack with prussic acid. His sensational revelation in the Reichstag in 1926 that the German army was secretly training with the Red Army in the Soviet Union earned him the wrath of the right wing, and in 1933 Scheidemann was forced to leave his homeland, first for Czechoslovakia and then for Denmark. He died in exile in Copenhagen on November 29, 1939.
In 1883, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (the SPD) and became a union member (Buchdruckerverband).
Scheidemann married in 1889 at Kassel. His wife was Johanna (Hanne) Dibbern (1864–1926). They had three daughters: Lina (1889–1933), Liese (1891–1955) and Hedwig (1893–1935).