title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: This blow would have been unnecessary anyway, because the convention that took up its work 16 December in the Prussian House of Representatives consisted mainly of SPD followers. Not even Karl Liebknecht had managed to get a seat. The Spartacist League was not granted any influence. On 19 December, the councils voted 344 to 98 against the creation of a council system as a basis for a new constitution. Instead, they supported the government's decision to call for elections for a constituent national assembly as soon as possible. This assembly was to decide upon the state system.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The convention disagreed with Ebert only on the issue of control of the army. The convention was demanding a say for the Central Council that it would elect, in the supreme command of the army, the free election of officers and the disciplinary powers for the Soldiers' Councils. That would have been contrary to the agreement between Ebert and General Groener. They both spared no effort to undo this decision. The Supreme Command (which in the meantime had moved from Spa to Kassel), began to raise loyal volunteer corps (the Freikorps) against the supposed Bolshevik menace. Unlike the revolutionary soldiers of November, these troops were monarchist-minded officers and men who feared the return into civil life.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: After 9 November, the government ordered the newly created People's Navy Division ("Volksmarinedivision") from Kiel to Berlin for its protection and stationed it in the Royal Stables ("Neuer Marstell") across from the Berlin City Palace ("Berlin Schloss" or "Berlin Stadtschloss"). The division was considered absolutely loyal and had indeed refused to participate in the coup attempt of 6 December. The sailors even deposed their commander because they saw him as involved in the affair. It was this loyalty that now gave them the reputation of being in favor of the Spartacists. Ebert demanded their disbanding and Otto Wels, as of 9 November the Commander of Berlin and in line with Ebert, refused the sailors' pay.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The dispute escalated on 23 December. After having been put off for days, the sailors occupied the Imperial Chancellery itself, cut the phone lines, put the Council of People's Representatives under house arrest and captured Otto Wels. The sailors did not exploit the situation to eliminate the Ebert government, as would have been expected from Spartacist revolutionaries. Instead, they just insisted on their pay. Nevertheless, Ebert, who was in touch with the Supreme Command in Kassel via a secret phone line, gave orders to attack the Residence with troops loyal to the government on the morning of 24 December. The sailors repelled the attack under their commander Heinrich Dorrenbach, losing about 30 men and civilians in the fight. The government troops had to withdraw from the center of Berlin. They themselves were now disbanded and integrated into the newly formed Freikorps. To make up for their humiliating withdrawal, they temporarily occupied the editor's offices of the "Red Flag". But military power in Berlin once more was in the hands of the People's Navy Division. Again, the sailors did not take advantage of the situation.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: On one side, this restraint demonstrates that the sailors were not Spartacists, on the other that the revolution had no guidance. Even if Liebknecht had been a revolutionary leader like Lenin, to which legend later made him, the sailors as well as the councils would not have accepted him as such. Thus the only result of the Christmas Crisis, which the Spartacists named "Ebert's Bloody Christmas", was that the Revolutionary Stewards called for a demonstration on Christmas Day and the USPD left the government in protest on 29 December. They could not have done Ebert a bigger favor, since he had let them participate only under the pressure of revolutionary events. Within a few days, the military defeat of the Ebert government had turned into a political victory.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: After their experiences with the SPD and the USPD, the Spartacists concluded that their goals could be met only by forming a party of their own, thus they joined with other left-socialist groups from the whole of Germany to found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Rosa Luxemburg drew up her founding programme and presented it on 31 December 1918. In this programme, she pointed out that the communists could never take power without the clear will of the people in the majority. On 1 January, she demanded that the KPD participate in the planned nationwide German elections, but was outvoted. The majority still hoped to gain power by continued agitation in the factories and from "pressure from the streets". After deliberations with the Spartacists, the Revolutionary Stewards decided to remain in the USPD. This was a first defeat.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The decisive defeat of the left occurred in the first days of the new year in 1919. As in the previous November, , a second revolutionary wave developed, but in this case, it was violently suppressed. The wave was started on 4 January, when the government dismissed the chief constable of Berlin, Emil Eichhorn. The latter was a member of the USPD who had refused to act against the demonstrating workers in the Christmas Crisis. This action resulted in the USPD, Revolutionary Stewards and the KPD chairmen Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck to call for a demonstration to take place on the following day.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: To the surprise of the initiators, the demonstration turned into an assembly of huge masses. On Sunday, 5 January, as on 9 November 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of Berlin, many of them armed. In the afternoon, the train stations and the newspaper district with the offices of the middle-class press and "Vorwärts" were occupied. Some of the middle-class papers in the previous days had called not only for the raising of more Freikorps, but also for the murder of the Spartacists.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The demonstrators were mainly the same ones who participated in the disturbances two months previously. They now demanded the fulfillment of the hopes expressed in November. The Spartacists by no means had a leading position. The demands came straight from the workforce supported by various groups left of the SPD. The so-called "Spartacist Uprising" that followed originated only partially in the KPD. KPD members were even a minority among the insurgents.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The initiators assembled at the Police Headquarters elected a 53-member "Interim Revolutionary Committee" (Provisorischer Revolutionsausschuss) that failed to make use of its power and was unable to give any clear direction. Liebknecht demanded the overthrow of the government and agreed with the majority of the committee that propagated the armed struggle. Rosa Luxemburg as well as the majority of KPD leaders thought a revolt at this moment to be a catastrophe and spoke out against it.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: On the following day, 6 January, the Revolutionary Committee again called for a mass demonstration. This time, even more people heeded the call. Again they carried placards and banners that proclaimed, "Brothers, don't shoot!" and remained waiting on an assembly square. A part of the Revolutionary Stewards armed themselves and called for the overthrow of the Ebert government. But the KPD activists mostly failed in their endeavour to win over the troops. It turned out that even units such as the People's Navy Division were not willing to support the armed revolt and declared themselves neutral. The other regiments stationed in Berlin mostly remained loyal to the government.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: While more troops were moving into Berlin on Ebert's order, he accepted an offer by the USPD to mediate between him and the Revolutionary Committee. After the advance of the troops into the city became known, an SPD leaflet appeared saying, "The hour of reckoning is nigh". With this, the Committee broke off further negotiations on 8 January. That was opportunity enough for Ebert to use the troops stationed in Berlin against the occupiers. Beginning 9 January, they violently quelled an improvised revolt. In addition to that, on 12 January, the anti-republican Freikorps, which had been raised more or less as death squads since the beginning of December, moved into Berlin. Gustav Noske, who had been People's Representative for Army and Navy for a few days, accepted the premium command of these troops by saying, "If you like, someone has to be the bloodhound. I won't shy away from the responsibility."


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The Freikorps brutally cleared several buildings and executed the occupiers on the spot. Others soon surrendered, but some of them were still shot. The January revolt claimed 156 lives in Berlin.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The alleged ringleaders of the January Revolt had to go into hiding. In spite of the urgings of their allies, they refused to leave Berlin. On the evening of 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were discovered in an apartment of the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. They were immediately arrested and handed over to the largest Freikorps, the heavily armed Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division. Their commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst, had them questioned. That same night both prisoners were beaten unconscious with rifle butts and shot in the head. Rosa Luxemburg's body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal that ran through Berlin, where it was found only on 1 July. Karl Liebknecht's body, without a name, was delivered to a morgue.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The perpetrators for the most part went unpunished. The Nazi Party later compensated the few that had been tried or even jailed, and they merged the Gardekavallerie into the SA (Sturmabteilung). In an interview given to "Der Spiegel" in 1962 and in his memoirs, Pabst maintained that he had talked on the phone with Noske in the Chancellery, and that Noske and Ebert had approved of his actions. Pabst's statement was never confirmed, especially since neither the Reichstag nor the courts ever examined the case.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: After the murders of 15 January, the political differences between the SPD and KPD grew even more irreconcilable. In the following years, both parties were unable to agree on joint action against the Nazi Party, which dramatically grew in strength as of 1930.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: In the first months of 1919, there were further armed revolts all over Germany. In some states, Councils Republics were proclaimed, most prominently in Bavaria (the Munich Soviet Republic), even if only temporarily.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: These revolts were triggered by Noske's decision at the end of February to take armed action against the Bremen Soviet Republic. In spite of an offer to negotiate, he ordered his Freikorps units to invade the city. Approximately 400 people were killed in the ensuing fights.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: This caused an eruption of mass strikes in the Ruhr District, the Rhineland and in Saxony. Members of the USPD, the KPD and even the SPD called for a general strike that started on 4 March. Against the will of the strike leadership, the strikes escalated into street fighting in Berlin. The Prussian state government, which in the meantime had declared a state of siege, called the imperial government for help. Again Noske employed the Gardekavallerie-Schützendivision, commanded by Pabst, against the strikers in Berlin. By the end of the fighting on 16 March, they had killed approximately 1,200 people, many of them unarmed and uninvolved. Among others, 29 members of the Peoples Navy Division, who had surrendered, were summarily executed, since Noske had ordered that anybody found armed should be shot on the spot.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The situation in Hamburg and Thuringia also was very much like a civil war. The council government to hold out the longest was the Munich Soviet Republic. It was only on 2 May that Prussian and Freikorps units from Württemberg toppled it by using the same violent methods as in Berlin and Bremen.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: According to the predominant opinion of modern historians, the establishment of a Bolshevik-style council government in Germany on 9–10 November 1918 was impossible. Yet the Ebert government felt threatened by a coup from the left, and was certainly undermined by the Spartakus movement; thus it co-operated with the Supreme Command and the Freikorps. The brutal actions of the Freikorps during the various revolts estranged many left democrats from the SPD. They regarded the behavior of Ebert, Noske and the other SPD leaders during the revolution as an outright betrayal of their own followers.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: On 19 January 1919, a Constituent National Assembly (Verfassungsgebende Nationalversammlung) was elected. Aside from SPD and USPD, the Catholic Centre Party took part, and so did several middle-class parties that had established themselves since November: the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), the national-liberal German People's Party (DVP) and the conservative, nationalist German National People's Party (DNVP). In spite of Rosa Luxemburg's recommendation, the KPD did not participate in these elections.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: With 37.4% of the vote, the SPD became the strongest party in the Reichstag and secured 165 out of 423 deputies. The USPD received only 7.6% of the vote and sent 22 deputies into the parliament. The popularity of the USPD temporarily rose one more time after the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920, but the party dissolved in 1922. The Centre Party was runner-up to the SPD with 91 deputies, the DDP had 75, the DVP 19 and the DNVP 44. As a result of the elections, the SPD formed the so-called Weimar Coalition with the Centre Party and the DDP. To get away from the post-revolutionary confusion in Berlin, the National Assembly met on 6 February in the town of Weimar, Thuringia, some 250 km to the southwest of Berlin, where Friedrich Ebert was elected temporary Reich President on 11 February. Philipp Scheidemann was elected as Prime Minister (Ministerpräsident) of the newly formed coalition on 13 February. Ebert was then constitutionally sworn in as Reich President (Reichspräsident) on 21 August 1919.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: On the one hand, the Weimar Constitution offered more possibilities for a direct democracy than the present Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, for example by setting up a mechanism for referendums. On the other hand, Article 48 granted the president the authority to rule against the majority in the Reichstag, with the help of the army if need be. In 1932–33, Article 48 was instrumental in destroying German democracy.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: From 1920 to 1923, nationalist forces continued fighting against the Weimar Republic and left-wing political opponents. In 1920, the German government was briefly overthrown in a coup organized by Wolfgang Kapp (the Kapp Putsch), and a nationalist government was briefly in power. Mass public demonstrations soon forced this regime out of power. In 1921 and 1922, Matthias Erzberger and Walter Rathenau were shot by members of the ultra-nationalist Organisation Consul. The newly formed Nazi Party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and supported by former German army chief Erich Ludendorff, engaged in political violence against the government and left-wing political forces as well. In 1923, in what is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazis took control of parts of Munich, arrested the president of Bavaria, the chief of police, and others and forced them to sign an agreement in which they endorsed the Nazi takeover and its objective to overthrow the German government. The putsch came to an end when the German army and police were called in to put it down, resulting in an armed confrontation in which a number of Nazis and some police were killed.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The Weimar Republic was always under great pressure from both left-wing and right-wing extremists. The left-wing extremists accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and unleashing the Freikorps upon the workers. Right-wing extremists were opposed to any democratic system, preferring instead an authoritarian state similar to the Empire founded in 1871. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, right-wing extremists (especially certain members of the former officer corps) used the "Dolchstoßlegende" to blame an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, largely drawing fuel from the fact that eight out of the ten leaders of the communist revolution were Jewish. Both sides were determined to bring down the Weimar Republic. In the end, the right-wing extremists were successful, and the Weimar Republic came to an end with the ascent of Hitler and the National Socialist Party.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The Revolution of 1918/19 is one of the most important events in the modern history of Germany, yet it is poorly embedded in the historical memory of Germans. The failure of the Weimar Republic that this revolution brought into being and the Nazi era that followed it obstructed the view of these events for a long time. To this very day, the interpretation of these events has been determined more by legends than by facts.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Both the radical right and the radical leftunder different circumstancesnurtured the idea that a Communist uprising was aiming to establish a Soviet Republic following the Russian example. The democratic centre parties, especially the SPD, were also barely interested in assessing the events which turned Germany into a Republic fairly. At closer look, these events turned out to be a revolution supported by the Social Democrats and stopped by their party leadership. These processes helped to weaken the Weimar Republic from its very beginning.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: After the imperial government and the Supreme Command shirked their responsibilities for the war and the defeat at an early stage, the majority parties of the Reichstag were left to cope with the resulting burdens. In his autobiography, Ludendorff's successor Groener states, "It suited me just fine, when the army and the Supreme Command remained as guiltless as possible in these wretched truce negotiations, from which nothing good could be expected".


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Thus, the "Myth of the Stab in the Back" was born, according to which the revolutionaries stabbed the army, "undefeated on the field", in the back and only then turned the almost secure victory into a defeat. It was mainly Ludendorff who contributed to the spread of this falsification of history to conceal his own role in the defeat. In nationalistic and national minded circles, the myth fell on fertile ground. They soon defamed the revolutionaries and even politicians like Ebert, who never wanted the revolution and had done everything to channel and contain it, as "November Criminals" (Novemberverbrecher). In 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff deliberately chose symbolic 9 November as the date of their attempted "Beer Hall Putsch".


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: From its very beginning, the Weimar Republic was afflicted with the stigma of the military defeat. A large part of the bourgeoisie and the old elites from big industry, landowners, military, judiciary and administration never accepted the democratic republic and hoped to get rid of it at the first opportunity. On the left, the actions of the SPD Leadership during the revolution drove many of its former adherents to the Communists. The contained revolution gave birth to a "democracy without democrats".


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Depending on their political standpoint of view, contemporaries had greatly differing opinions about the revolution.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Ernst Troeltsch, a Protestant theologian and philosopher, rather calmly remarked how the majority of Berlin citizens perceived 10 November:


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: On Sunday morning after a frightful night the morning newspapers gave a clear picture: the Kaiser in Holland, the revolution victorious in most urban centres, the royals in the states abdicating. No man dead for Kaiser and Empire! The continuation of duties ensured and no run on the banks! (...) Trams and subways ran as usual which is a pledge that basic needs are cared for. On all faces it could be read: Wages will continue to be paid.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The liberal publicist Theodor Wolff wrote on the very day of 10 November in the newspaper "Berliner Tageblatt", lending himself to far too optimistic illusions, which the SPD leadership also might have had:


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Like a sudden storm, the biggest of all revolutions has toppled the imperial regime including everything that belonged to it. It can be called the greatest of all revolutions because never has a more firmly built (...) fortress been taken in this manner at the first attempt. Only one week ago, there was still a military and civil administration so deeply rooted that it seemed to have secured its dominion beyond the change of times. (...) Only yesterday morning, at least in Berlin, all this still existed. Yesterday afternoon it was all gone.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The extreme right had a completely opposite perception. On 10 November, conservative journalist Paul Baecker wrote an article in "Deutsche Tageszeitung" which already contained essential elements of the "Stab-in-the-back myth":


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text:
The work fought for by our fathers with their precious blood – dismissed by betrayal in the ranks of our own people! Germany, yesterday still undefeated, left to the mercy of our enemies by men carrying the German name, by felony out of our own ranks broken down in guilt and shame.
The German Socialists knew that peace was at hand anyway and that it was only about holding out against the enemy for a few days or weeks in order to wrest bearable conditions from them. In this situation they raised the white flag.
This is a sin that can never be forgiven and never will be forgiven. This is treason not only against the monarchy and the army but also against the German people themselves who will have to bear the consequences in centuries of decline and of misery.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: In an article on the 10th anniversary of the revolution the publicist Kurt Tucholsky remarked that neither Wolff nor Baecker were right. Nevertheless, Tucholsky accused Ebert and Noske of betrayal, not of the monarchy but of the revolution. Although he wanted to regard it as only a coup d'état, he analysed the actual course of events more clearly than most of his contemporaries. In 1928 he wrote in "November Coup":


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text:
The things taking place were not a revolution. There was no spiritual preparation, no leaders ready in the dark; no revolutionary goals. The mother of this revolution was the soldiers' longing to be home for Christmas. And weariness, disgust and weariness.
The possibilities that nevertheless were lying in the streets were betrayed by Ebert and his like. Fritz* Ebert, whom you cannot heighten to a personality by calling him Friedrich opposed the establishment of a republic only until he found there was a post of chairman to be had; comrade Scheidemann è tutti quanti all were would-be senior civil servants. (* Fritz is the colloquial term for Friedrich like Willy – William)


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The following possibilities were left out: shattering federal states, division of landed property, revolutionary socialization of industry, reform of administrative and judiciary personnel. A republican constitution in which every sentence rescinds the next one, a revolution talking about well acquired rights of the old regime can be only laughed at.<br>


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Walter Rathenau was of a similar opinion. He called the revolution a "disappointment", a "present by chance", a "product of desperation", a "revolution by mistake". It did not deserve the name because it did "not abolish the actual mistakes" but "degenerated into a degrading clash of interests".


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Not a chain was broken by the swelling of spirit and will, but a lock merely rusted through. The chain fell off and the freed stood amazed, helpless, embarrassed and needed to arm against their will. The ones sensing their advantage were the quickest.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: The historian and publicist Sebastian Haffner in turn came out against Tucholsky and Rathenau. He lived through the revolution in Berlin as a child and wrote 50 years later in his book about one of the myths related to the events of November 1918 that had taken root especially in the bourgeoisie:


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: It is often said that a true revolution in Germany in 1918 never took place. All that really happened was a breakdown. It was only the temporary weakness of the police and army in the moment of military defeat which let a mutiny of sailors appear as a revolution.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text:
At first sight, one can see how wrong and blind this is comparing 1918 with 1945. In 1945 there really was a breakdown.
Certainly a mutiny of sailors started the revolution in 1918 but it was only a start. What made it extraordinary is that a mere sailors' mutiny triggered an earthquake which shook all of Germany; that the whole home army, the whole urban workforce and in Bavaria a part of the rural population rose up in revolt. This revolt was not just a mutiny anymore, it was a true revolution...
As in any revolution, the old order was replaced by the beginnings of a new one. It was not only destructive but also creative...
As a revolutionary achievement of masses the German November 1918 does not need to take second place to either the French July 1789 or the Russian March 1917.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: During the Nazi regime, works on the Weimar Republic and the German Revolution published abroad and by exiles in the 1930s and 1940s could not be read in Germany. Around 1935, that affected the first published history of the Weimar Republic by Arthur Rosenberg. In his view the political situation at the beginning of the revolution was open: the moderate socialist and democratic-oriented work force indeed had a chance to become the actual social foundation of the republic and to drive back the conservative forces. It failed because of the wrong decisions of the SPD leadership and because of the revolutionary tactics employed by the extreme left wing of the work force.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: After 1945 West German historical research on the Weimar Republic concentrated most of all on its decline. In 1951, Theodor Eschenburg mostly ignored the revolutionary beginning of the republic. In 1955, Karl Dietrich Bracher also dealt with the German Revolution from the perspective of the failed republic. Erich Eyck shows how little the revolution after 1945 was regarded as part of German history. His two-volume "History of the Weimar Republic" gave barely 20 pages to these events. The same can be said for Karl Dietrich Erdmann's contribution to the 8th edition of the "Gebhardt Handbook for German History" ("Gebhardtsches Handbuch zur Deutschen Geschichte"), whose viewpoint dominated the interpretation of events related to the German Revolution after 1945. According to Erdmann, 1918/19 was about the choice between "social revolution in line with forces demanding a proletarian dictatorship and parliamentary republic in line with the conservative elements like the German officer corps". As most Social Democrats were forced to join up with the old elites to prevent an imminent council dictatorship, the blame for the failure of the Weimar Republic was to be put on the extreme left, and the events of 1918/19 were successful defensive actions of democracy against Bolshevism.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: This interpretation at the height of the Cold War was based on the assumption that the extreme left was comparably strong and a real threat to the democratic development. In this point, West German researchers ironically found themselves in line with Marxist historiography in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which attributed considerable revolutionary potential most of all to the Spartacists.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: While in the postwar years the majority SPD (MSPD) was cleared of its Nazi odium as "November Criminals", GDR historians blamed the SPD for "betrayal of the working class" and the USPD leadership for their incompetence. Their interpretation was mainly based on the 1958 theories of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany according to which the German Revolution was defined as a "bourgeois-democratic revolution", led in certain aspects by proletarian means and methods. The fact that a revolution by the working class in Germany never happened could be put down to the "subjective factor", especially the absence of a "Marxist-Leninist offensive party". Contrary to the official party line, Rudolf Lindau supported the theory that the German Revolution had a Socialist tendency.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Consistently, the founding of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was declared to be the decisive turning point in German history, but in spite of ideological bias, historical research in the GDR expanded detailed knowledge of the German Revolution.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: During the 1950s, West German historians focused their research on the final stages of the Weimar Republic. In the 1960s, they shifted to its revolutionary beginnings, realising that the decisions and developments during the revolution were central to the failure of the first German Republic. The workers' and soldiers' councils especially moved into focus, and their previous appearance as a far-left movement had to be revised extensively. Authors like Ulrich Kluge, Eberhard Kolb and Reinhard Rürup argued that in the first weeks of the revolution the social base for a democratic redesign of society was much stronger than previously thought and that the potential of the extreme left was actually weaker than the MSPD's leadership, for example, assumed.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: As "Bolshevism" posed no real threat, the scope of action for the Council of the People's Deputies (also supported by the more reform-oriented councils) to democratise the administration, military and society had been relatively large, but the MSPD's leadership did not take that step because it trusted in the loyalty of the old elites and mistrusted the spontaneous mass movements in the first weeks of the revolution. The result was the resignation and radicalisation of the council movement. The theories have been supported by the publications of the minutes of the Council of the People's Deputies. Increasingly, the history of the German Revolution appeared as the history of its gradual reversal.


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: This new interpretation of the German Revolution gained acceptance in research rather quickly even though older perceptions remained alive. Research concerning the composition of the Worker's and Soldier's Councils which today can be easily verified by sources is undisputed to a large extent, but the interpretation of the revolutionary events based on this research has been already criticised and partially modified since the end of the 1970s. Criticism was aimed at the partially idealised description of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils which especially was the case in the wake of the German Student Movement of the 1960s (1968). Peter von Oertzen went particularly far in this respect describing a social democracy based on councils as a positive alternative to the bourgeois republic. In comparison, Wolfgang J. Mommsen did not regard the councils as a homogeneous focused movement for democracy but as a heterogeneous group with a multitude of different motivations and goals. Jesse and Köhler even talked about the "construct of a democratic council movement". Certainly, the authors also excluded a "relapse to the positions of the 1950s: "The councils were neither communist oriented to a large extent nor can the policies of the majority SPD in every aspect be labelled fortuitous and worth praising."


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: Heinrich August Winkler tried to find a compromise, according to which the Social Democrats depended to a limited extent on cooperation with the old elites but went considerably too far: "With more political willpower they could have changed more and preserved less."


title: German Revolution of 1918–1919

text: With all the differences concerning details, historical researchers agree that in the German Revolution, the chances to put the republic on a firm footing were considerably better than the dangers coming from the extreme left. Instead, the alliance of the SPD with the old elites constituted a considerable structural problem for the Weimar Republic.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: Alejandra María Silva García-Baquero (born 16 February 1983) is a Spanish publicist and political activist.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: Silva worked as an intern in The Farm ad agency in Madrid, and in 2005 she accepted a position in sales and marketing at a private firm in the airplane industry.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: Silva is the daughter of Ignacio Silva, a businessman and the former Vice President of Real Madrid Football Club.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: Silva and first husband Govind Friedland, a mining magnate, had son Albert in December 2012. The couple were in the process of divorce by October 2015, by which time Silva was in a relationship with actor Richard Gere, a longtime family friend. She and Gere married in April 2018 at Gere's estate in Pound Ridge, New York. The couple had a son, Alexander, in early February 2019. In April 2020, it was reported that Silva had given birth to a third son.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: In 2007, Silva promoted a nonprofit initiative jointly with Karolina Kurkova called Beautiful Life Fund, which raises awareness of the plight of children in need, distressed refugee children, victims of war, and the education of homeless children around the world.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: In 2010, she participated in the Real Madrid Football Club Foundation African Initiative Project by creating soccer leagues as means of integrating underprivileged children to their local communities and promoting sports and its values amongst African families.


title: Alejandra Silva

text: Through her interest in nonprofit organizations, Silva met American actor Richard Gere and began a relationship. As of 2016, Silva continues her activism in nonprofit organization and supports The Rais Foundation for the Homeless.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. Fußballclub Union Berlin e. V., commonly known as 1. FC Union Berlin () or Union Berlin, is a professional German football club in Köpenick, Berlin.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The club's origins can be traced to 1906, when its predecessor FC Olympia Oberschöneweide was founded. During the Cold War, Union was based in East Berlin, joining the German league structure upon the reunification of the city and country in 1990. From 2009 until 2019, they competed in the 2. Bundesliga, the second tier of German football. In 2019, Union won promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time in the club's history. In 2022, the club qualified for the UEFA Europa League.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The home ground of the club is the Stadion An der Alten Försterei. It is the second-largest in the German capital and has been home to Union Berlin and its forerunners since it opened in 1920. The stadium also hosts concerts and the annual Weihnachtssingen Christmas carols event.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: As of 2022, Union Berlin has 45,000 official members. The club has become well known for its enthusiastic and creative fan base and its chant "Eisern Union" (Iron Union).


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The name 1. FC Union Berlin was used by two football clubs that shared a common origin as "FC Olympia Oberschöneweide", founded in 1906 in Oberschöneweide, which at that time was a suburb of Berlin. The side took on the name SC Union 06 Oberschöneweide in 1910. Union was one of Berlin's premier clubs in the interwar period, regularly winning local championships and competing at the national level, including an appearance in the 1923 German championship final which they lost 0–3 to Hamburger SV.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Early on, the team was nicknamed "Schlosserjungs" (English: metalworker-boys) because of their then all blue kit, reminiscent of the typical work clothing worn in the factories of the industrial Oberschöneweide district. The popular cry of Union supporters – "Eisern Union!" (Iron Union) – also emerged at this time. Since its foundation the club has had a distinct working-class image, in contrast to other local clubs with more middle-class origins, such as Viktoria 89 Berlin, Blau-Weiß 90 Berlin, BSV 92 Berlin or Tennis Borussia Berlin.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: In 1933, German football was reorganized under the Third Reich into 16 top-flight divisions known as Gauligen. Oberschöneweide became part of the Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg, where they generally earned middling, unexceptional results. They were relegated in 1935 and returned to first division play in 1936 after only one season's absence. In 1940, the team finished first in Group B of the division and then defeated Blau-Weiss (1–2, 3–0) to win the overall division title. That advanced the club to the national playoffs where they were put out by Rapid Wien in the opening group round (2–3, 1–3). Union resumed its place as an unremarkable side. They were relegated again in 1942 and played the final war-shortened Gauliga season in 1944–45.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: After World War II, occupying Allied authorities ordered the dissolution of all organizations in Germany, including sports and football associations. A new sport community called SG Oberschöneweide was formed in late 1945 and it played in the City League organized immediately after the war which had four regional departments. The team did not qualify to the newly created Oberliga Berlin (I) in 1946 after a poor season, but was promoted in 1947, won the division title right away and regained club status as SG Union Oberschöneweide during 1948–49.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The club finished the 1949–50 season in second place in Berlin and qualified to take part in the national final rounds. However, escalating Cold War tensions led Soviet authorities to refuse the team permission to travel to take part. Two Union teams then emerged as most players and coaches fled to the west to form Sport-Club Union 06 Berlin which took part in the scheduled playoff match in Kiel against Hamburger SV, losing 0–7.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The players remaining in the east carried on as SG Union Oberschöneweide while a number of players who had fled to the west to form SC organized a third side called Berliner Ballspiel-Club Südost. The western team was a strong side until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, drawing huge crowds to matches in the Olympiastadion. The division of the city led to a change of fortunes for BBC Südost which plays today in the lower divisions before meagre crowds.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The eastern branch of the club went through a number of name changes: Union Oberschöneweide (1950), BSG Motor Oberschöneweide (1951), SC Motor Berlin (1955), TSC Oberschöneweide (1957), TSC Berlin (1963) – finally becoming the football club 1. FC Union Berlin in 1966.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. FC Union Berlin was founded during the reorganization of East German football in December 1965 and January 1966, when ten dedicated football clubs were created. However, the football department of TSC Berlin was originally not taken into account. Only two clubs were planned for East Berlin, to be formed from the football departments of ASK Vorwärts Berlin and SC Dynamo Berlin. This was already contrary to the original plan, which had envisioned only one football club per district. And the football department of TSC Berlin was only playing in the second tier DDR-Liga at the time.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. FC Union Berlin was allegedly founded on the initiative of the powerful Herbert Warnke. Herbert Warnke was the chairman of the state-controlled national trade union FDGB and a member of the SED Politburo. Both ASK Vorwärts Berlin and SC Dynamo Berlin were associated with the armed organs (). Warnke therefore argued for the creation of a third "civilian club" for the working people in East Berlin. He would become a passionate fan of 1. FC Union Berlin and a sponsoring member of the club. 1. FC Union Berlin was established in the middle of one of the largest industrial centers in East Germany. 1. FC Union Berlin was initially supported by the FDGB. The intention of the SED to win the support from FDGB for 1. FC Union Berlin was likely well thought out. The FDGB unified all workers in East Germany and therefore was most likely to carry the proper identity for a club of the working people. The club was founded in a ceremony in the clubhouse of VEB Transformatorenwerk Oberschöneheide "Karl Liebknecht" (TRO) in Oberschöneweide on 20 January 1966. The founding of the club was organized by the then-SED First Secretary in Köpenick, Hans Modrow. Like Herbert Warnke, Hans Modrow would be a sponsoring member of the club.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. FC Union Berlin was the only football club not playing in the DDR-Oberliga at the time of its founding. As a dedicated football club, it was elevated into the upper tier of privileged elite clubs. The first club president was the general director of VVB Hochspannungsgeräte und Kabel, Werner Otto, and his deputy was the SED Second Secretary in East Berlin, Hans Wagner. Even as a "civilian club", 1. FC Union Berlin was part of the state sports political system. 1. FC Union Berlin was state-funded and all club decisions had to be reported to the all-powerful central sports agency DTSB. In turn, the DTSB stood under direct control of the SED Central Committee. The official sponsor of 1. FC Union Berlin was the state-owned combine VVB Hochspannungsgeräte und Kabel, which implemented its support through VEB Kabelwerk Oberspree, VEB Transformatorenwerk Oberschöneweide and other local state-owned enterprises.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The support from the FDGB ended when Herbert Warnke was replaced by Harry Tisch as the chairman of the FDGB in 1975. Tisch had begun his political career in Rostock and instead gave his support to FC Hansa Rostock. This event was remarkable, as it revealed the large influence that high-ranking politicians exerted on football in East Germany. 1. FC Union Berlin would then had to rely on support from the regional district administration of the ruling SED party in East Berlin and local state-owned enterprises. The main sponsors would be VEB Kabelwerk Oberspree (KWO), VEB Transformatorenwerk Oberschöneweide (TRO) and VEB Werk für Fernsehelektronik (WF). 1. FC Union Berlin developed a bitter rivalry with BFC Dynamo, which was supported by the Stasi. While their arch rivals won 10 titles in a row, Union yo-yoed between the DDR-Oberliga and the DDR-Liga with very little success. Union managed to win the East German Cup in 1968 when they defeated FC Carl Zeiss Jena 2–1 although they lost in their second cup appearance in 1986 to 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig by a score of 1–5.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The East German state-owned film studio DEFA produced a documentary about the supporters of 1. FC Union Berlin in 1989. The documentary is called "And Fridays at the Green Hell" and follows a group of supporters of 1. FC Union Berlin to both home and away matches during the 1987–88 season.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: After German reunification in 1990, the team continued to perform well on the field, but almost collapsed financially. They managed to hang on through some tight times and find sponsorship, but only after winning their division in both 1993 and 1994 and each time being denied a license to play in the 2. Bundesliga due to their financial problems. The club had another close brush with financial failure in 1997.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Union again came close to advancing to the 2. Bundesliga in 1998–99 and 1999–2000, but were disappointed. They were finally successful in 2000–01, under Bulgarian manager Georgi Vasilev, easily winning the Regionalliga Nord (III) and moving up a division to become the city's second most popular side. That same year they appeared in the final of the German Cup where they lost 0–2 to FC Schalke 04, and advanced as far as the second round in UEFA Cup before being put out by Bulgarian side PFC Litex Lovech. The club slipped to the Regionalliga Nord (III) in 2004–05 and then to the NOFV-Oberliga Nord (IV) in 2005–06, but returned to third division play after capturing the Oberliga title. In 2008–09, Union became one of the founding clubs of the new 3. Liga, and its inaugural champion, securing first place and promotion to the 2. Bundesliga on 10 May.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: A controversy erupted in 2011 when it became publicly known that club president Dirk Zingler had been a member of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment for three years during his military service. Only two years before, Zingler had cancelled a sponsorship deal with the company International Sport Promotion (ISP) because the head of the board at the company had been a Stasi officer. The Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment was the paramilitary wing of the Stasi. Zingler explained that he had sought to spend his military service in Berlin and that he was unaware beforehand that the regiment belonged to the Stasi. However, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment was an elite formation; it was not possible to simply apply for the regiment. The Stasi selected who it thought were best fit to serve with the regiment, only accepting recruits that were "loyal to the line".


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The team remained in the second tier until the 2018–19 season, when they secured their first-ever promotion into the Bundesliga after defeating VfB Stuttgart in the relegation play-offs. The fans invaded the pitch after the victory, but no one was harmed.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Union Berlin became the first Bundesliga club from the former East Berlin and the fifth from the former East Germany, after Dynamo Dresden, Hansa Rostock, VfB Leipzig and Energie Cottbus. The team is the sixth to win promotion from the 2. Bundesliga by beating the 16th-placed Bundesliga team in the playoff – since it began in the 1981–82 season, the others being Bayer Uerdingen, 1. FC Saarbrücken, Stuttgarter Kickers, 1. FC Nürnberg and Fortuna Düsseldorf. Ahead of Union Berlin's debut season in the Bundesliga, the club signed Neven Subotić, Anthony Ujah and Christian Gentner, as well as re-signing Marvin Friedrich, who had scored a decisive goal against Stuttgart in the play-offs in the previous season to secure promotion for the club. The first ever Bundesliga goal was scored by Sebastian Andersson in a 1–1 draw against Augsburg. On 31 August 2019, the club claimed its first ever Bundesliga victory by beating Borussia Dortmund 3–1 in a home game. The team finished the season in 11th place, with Sebastian Andersson scoring 12 goals.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: On 22 May 2021, in Union Berlin's second Bundesliga season, the club qualified for the inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League after finishing seventh, following a 2–1 home win against RB Leipzig, with Max Kruse confirming Union Berlin's first European campaign in twenty years, with a 92nd-minute winner.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: In 1920 SC Union Oberschöneweide (forerunner of today's 1. FC Union Berlin) had to find a new home ground as its former pitch had been built over by developers with residential buildings. The club moved a little further away from the city to the north-western part of the borough of Köpenick. The new stadium was officially opened in August 1920 with a match between Oberschöneweide and the then German champions 1. FC Nürnberg (1–2). The inaugural match in at the Alte Försterei had already been played on 17 March, when Union challenged Viktoria 89 Berlin.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: When Union won promotion to the DDR-Oberliga (the top flight in East Germany) in 1966, the stadium soon needed to be expanded. The ground was first expanded in 1970 when the Gegengerade terrace was raised, whilst further extensions to the terracing at both ends in the late 1970s and early 1980s increased the capacity furthermore to 22,500. However, the somewhat spartan facilities at Alte Försterei had quickly begun to show their age and went into a serious decline.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: After German reunification, when Union were assigned by the German Football Association to play in the third league, the outdated stadium proved only one of a number of factors that hampered the club's push for promotion to higher leagues.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: In the middle of 2008, the club decided to finally modernise the stadium, the Stadion An der Alten Försterei (Old Forester's House). Money was still tight, and so the fans simply built the ground themselves. More than 2,000 Union supporters invested 140,000 working hours to create what is now regarded as the largest football-specific stadium in Berlin. During the redevelopment, Union played at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark. Inside the stadium an array of outside beer kiosks and open air grills serving bratwurst and pork steaks at the back of the stand provide the culinary staples. The official opening on 12 July 2013, was celebrated with a friendly against Scottish Champions Celtic. It holds 22,012 people with 3,617 seats. The rest is terracing.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: In 2014, the club came up with the idea of inviting their fans to take their own sofas to the ground for the whole of the World Cup, in order to enjoy the televised matches in the company of fellow supporters. More than 800 sofas were placed on the pitch in rows in front of a big screen. The event was later recognized with the Fan Experience Award at The Stadium Business Summit 2015 in Barcelona.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The number 22 will not be worn on the back of a Union shirt until someone breaks the all-time Union scoring record of Karim Benyamina, who scored 87 goals in 213 appearances for the club. "This is a great gesture by president Dirk Zingler. That is the reward for six successful years," he said in 2016. Over 14,000 fans turned out to give Benyamina his career send-off alongside another legend, Torsten Mattuschka, who is often seen as the face of that particular era for Union.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The club's reserve team, "1. FC Union Berlin II", most recently played in the tier four Regionalliga Nordost, having won promotion to the league in 2012. Previous to this it spent two seasons in the NOFV-Oberliga Nord. At the end of the 2014–15 season the club withdrew the team from competition.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Union Berlin's was formed in September 1969, becoming the first women's team in Berlin and one of the first in East Germany. The women's team initially competed against Union Berlin's youth teams due to a lack of opponents, playing their first game on 17 January 1970, losing 7–1. In 1971, the team were amalgamated into KWO Berlin's women's team, before KWO merged with Union Berlin in June 1990 following German reunification. The team currently compete in the .


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. FC Union Berlin is recognized as one of Europe's "cult" clubs, based on many unique fan and club initiatives over the last two decades.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The nicknames of the club are "Eiserne" (the Iron Ones) or "Eisern Union" (Iron Union). These nicknames evolved from the earlier sobriquet "Schlosserjungs" (metalworker boys), a reference to the blue kit the Union played in, as it was reminiscent of the overalls worn by local workers.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: In May 2004, the supporters raised enough money to secure the club's license for fourth-division football through a campaign called 'Bleed for Union'. This catchphrase was not meant metaphorically. One element of the campaign was that fans donated blood to Berlin hospitals and then gave the money they received from the blood bank to their club.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: After 2010, Union Berlin became increasingly attractive for new Berliners, even internationals, who were drawn to the atmosphere at the club.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: During the East German era, 1. FC Union Berlin was known for a rivalry with BFC Dynamo, which was reputedly affiliated with the powerful state security service of East Germany (Stasi). Union was supported by the regional district administration of the governing SED party and sponsored by local state-owned enterprises. The club played some identificatory role in the unofficial opposition against the authorities of the communist system. Between 1979 and 1988, BFC Dynamo won ten consecutive East German league titles, with popular allegations of sporting misconduct helping to fuel the rivalry, and clashes between both sets of fans occurred. BFC Dynamo was seen as the supreme representative of the security agencies, with advantages in the recruitment of players and financial support as well as the political clout of Erich Mielke. Supporters of Union cultivated the image of their club as the eternal underdog that was firmly rooted in the working class. Union became the most popular club in East Berlin.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: It is said that fans of 1. FC Union Berlin often chanted "The wall must go!", with a reference to the Berlin Wall, when the opponents formed a wall during free kicks in 1980s. However, some sources suggest that this is partly a myth and exaggerated. Supporters of Union saw themselves as stubborn and non-conformist. But this image should not be confused with actual resistance. For some supporters of Union, the dissident reputation is a legend that was created after "Die Wende". Honorary president of Union Günter Mielis has said: "Union was not a club of resistance fighters, but we had to fight against a lot of political and economic resistance over and over again. We got strength from our fans". Politics was not in the foreground. Most supporters of Union were just normal football supporters. There were no political groups at Union. A supporter of Union from the East German era has said: "With the best of intentions, Union fans did not contribute to the overthrow of the GDR. No way, we were interested in football. There is the cliché about the club for the enemies of the state, but that wasn't us". Supporters of Union from the East German era have testified that the club was the most important thing, and the identification with Union had primarily to do with Köpenick.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Despite 1. FC Union Berlin and Hertha BSC making up the two biggest clubs in Berlin, a rivalry between the two has been much less pronounced. Sympathies between supporters of the two clubs developed in divided Berlin. The first personal contacts between supporters of the two clubs occurred in the 1970s. Supporters of Hertha visited the Stadion An der Alten Försterei and supporters of Union accompanied the supporters of Hertha when Hertha played in the Eastern Bloc countries, such as the quarter finals in the 1978–79 UEFA Cup against Dukla Prague. Chants and slogans such as "Ha-Ho-He, there are only two teams on the Spree - Union and Hertha BSC" () and "Hertha and Union - one nation" () became popular among the two sets of supporters. The two sets of supporters came together for the first time after the opening of the Berlin wall during the first edition of the indoor tournament "Internationales Berliner Hallenfußballturnier" in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle on 18–20 January 1990. Supporters of Union and Hertha now also sang xenophobic and nationalist chants.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: On 27 January 1990, 79 days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hertha hosted Union Berlin at the Olympiastadion in a friendly in front of 52,000 spectators. Fans of both clubs paid for admission in East and West Germany's respective currencies and sang songs of German reunification as Hertha won 2–1. Over twenty years later, on 17 September 2010, the duo faced each other for a second time, in their first competitive meeting, at the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, drawing 1–1 in the 2. Bundesliga. On 2 November 2019, Union Berlin faced Hertha at the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, in the first clash between the clubs in the top flight of German football. An 87th minute Sebastian Polter penalty secured a 1–0 win for Union, in a game temporarily suspended by referee Deniz Aytekin, following fireworks fired by Hertha fans landing amongst Union Berlin fans, as well as on the playing surface. 1,100 police officers were on duty for the game, with Hertha fans burning Union Berlin shirts, flags and scarves during the game. The supporters of Hertha had also been joined by 20-25 supporters of BFC Dynamo in the guest block. Following full time, Union Berlin goalkeeper Rafał Gikiewicz won praise from fans and media alike after ushering Union Berlin ultras from the field of play, following a minor pitch invasion devised to attack Hertha supporters.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Union Berlin also holds rivalries with Hansa Rostock, Dynamo Dresden, and Magdeburg dating back to when the teams used to compete in the DDR-Oberliga.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: More recently, the club has developed a rivalry with RB Leipzig, following the takeover of license and teams from fifth division side SSV Markranstädt financed by Red Bull GmbH and the ascension by Leipzig to the Bundesliga system. In 2011, Union Berlin ran adverts against the investment of the club whilst also cancelling a pre-season friendly with the club. On 21 September 2014, Union Berlin fans staged a silent protest for the first 15 minutes of a 2. Bundesliga home game against RB Leipzig, labelling RB Leipzig a "marketing product pushed by financial interests" with "brainwashed consumers in the stands". Union Berlin won the game 2–1. On 18 August 2019, during Union Berlin's first ever Bundesliga game, at home against RB Leipzig, the club's oldest ultras group, the "Wuhlesyndikat", successfully called for a 15-minute silent protest at the start of the club's 2019–20 opener.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The official Union Berlin song is "Eisern Union" by German punk singer Nina Hagen. The composition was recorded in 1998. Four versions were issued on a CD single by G.I.B Music and Distribution GmbH.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: The famous supporters' chant 'Eisern Union' (Iron Union) bounces back and forth between the terraces named "Waldseite" and the "Gegengerade", and is followed by mutual acknowledging applause.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: Union Berlin is also well known for its Christmas traditions celebrated in their home stadium. In 2003 the yearly Union Weihnachtssingen started as an unofficial gathering to which just 89 fans showed up. In 2013, 27,500 people attended, including players and supporters of other teams from around Germany and Europe. Fans drink Glühwein (mulled wine), wave candles around, light flares and sing a combination of Christmas carols and football chants.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: "Ritter Keule" (Literally: Cudgel the Knight) is the mascot of Union Berlin. He was first introduced in 2000.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: "Union fürs Leben" (Union for life) is a 2014 documentary film that showcases the supporters passion for 1. FC Union Berlin.


title: 1. FC Union Berlin

text: 1. FC Union Berlin is led mostly by fans. Dirk Zingler has served as the club's president since 2004. The club had 41,088 registered members in 2022.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Marvelous Marvin Hagler (born Marvin Nathaniel Hagler; May 23, 1954 – March 13, 2021) was an American professional boxer and film actor. He competed in boxing from 1973 to 1987 and reigned as the undisputed champion of the middleweight division from 1980 to 1987, making twelve successful title defenses, all but one by knockout. Hagler also holds the highest knockout percentage of all undisputed middleweight champions at 78 percent. His undisputed middleweight championship reign of six years and seven months is the second-longest active reign of the last century. He holds the record for the sixth longest reign as champion in middleweight history. Nicknamed "Marvelous" and annoyed that network announcers often did not refer to him as such, Hagler legally changed his name to "Marvelous Marvin Hagler" in 1982.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler is an inductee of the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. He was twice named Fighter of the Year by "The Ring" magazine and the Boxing Writers Association of America, as well as Fighter of the Decade (1980s) by "Boxing Illustrated" magazine. In 2001 and 2004, "The Ring" named him the fourth greatest middleweight of all time and in 2002 named him the 17th greatest fighter of the past 69 years. The International Boxing Research Organization rates Hagler as the sixth greatest middleweight of all time, while BoxRec rates him the 29th greatest boxer of all time, pound for pound. Many analysts and boxing writers consider Hagler to have one of the most durable chins in boxing history, having been knocked down only once during his entire professional career. The lone knockdown, scored by Juan Roldán of Argentina, is still being disputed.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler was the first child of Robert Sims and Ida Mae Hagler, born on May 23, 1954. His birth year publicly came to light in 1982, when he had to state his date of birth in order to legally change from Marvin Nathaniel Hagler to Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Hagler was raised by his mother in the Central Ward of Newark, New Jersey, United States along with five siblings: sisters Veronica, Cheryl, Genarra, and Noreen, and half brother Robbie Sims, who, like Hagler, would also become a professional boxer. Hagler first put on gloves at the age of ten, for a social worker he knew only as Mister Joe, who taught him sports and got him involved in counseling other children. Hagler dropped out of school at the age of 14 and worked in a toy factory to help support the family. Ida Mae recalled her eldest son had always wanted to box and promised one day to buy her a home. Growing up, Hagler would pretend he was Floyd Patterson or Emile Griffith.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Following the riots of 1967 in which 26 people were killed and $11 million in property damage was caused, including the destruction of the Haglers' tenement, his family moved to Brockton, Massachusetts. Hagler said that looking down on the streets at the looters was almost like watching ants on a picnic table. Ida Mae described the riots as "really terrifying" and nobody left the Hagler apartment for three days. The family lay under Veronica's bed during this time, with a pair of bullets smashing through the bedroom window, and shattering the plaster above the bed. Hagler and his siblings were forbidden from standing up by Ida Mae, who told her children to "stay away from the windows." The family crawled about the five-room apartment, sliding around on cushions to reach the bathroom and kitchen. Once the riot was over, the nearby neighborhoods were mostly in ruin, and many cars had been stripped for parts. After another riot nearly two years later, Hagler and his family got out of Newark and moved to Brockton, Massachusetts.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: In 1969, Hagler took up boxing after being roughed up on the street by a local boxer—whom he later defeated—with his friends watching. The very next day after being roughed up, Hagler, determined to become a boxer himself, walked into a gym owned by brothers Pat and Goody Petronelli, who became his trainers and managers. As Hagler needed to be 16 in order to enter some amateur tournaments, he lied about his age, saying that he was born in 1952 instead of 1954. In May 1973, Hagler won the National AAU title after defeating Terry Dobbs, a U.S. Marine from Atlanta, Georgia. Ahead of both Aaron Pryor and Leon Spinks, officials also voted him the 'Outstanding Boxer' of the tournament. Hagler subsequently turned professional, finishing his amateur career with a 55–1 record.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler was a top-ranked middleweight boxer for many years before he fought for the title. He struggled to find high-profile opponents willing to face him in his early years. Joe Frazier told Hagler, "You have three strikes against you, "You're black, you're a southpaw, and you're good." He often had to travel to his opponents' hometowns to get fights. His first break came when he was offered—on two weeks' notice—a chance against Willie 'The Worm' Monroe, who was being trained by Frazier. Hagler lost the decision but the fight was close, so Monroe gave him a rematch. This time Hagler knocked out Monroe in twelve rounds. In a third fight, he defeated Monroe in two rounds.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Boston promoter Rip Valenti took an interest in Hagler and began bringing in top ranked opponents for Hagler to face. He fought 1972 Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales; Hagler won the first time, the second was a draw and Hagler knocked Seales out in the third fight. Number one ranked Mike Colbert was knocked out in the twelfth and also had his jaw broken by Hagler. Briton Kevin Finnegan was stopped in eight and required 40 facial stitches. He dropped a controversial decision to Bobby 'Boogaloo' Watts preceding those victories, but knocked Watts out in two rounds in a rematch. Hagler won a ten-round decision over 'Bad' Bennie Briscoe, which ultimately concluded his Spectrum expedition. By then, promoter Bob Arum took notice and signed him.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: In November 1979, Hagler fought world middleweight champion Vito Antuofermo at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. When the fight was over after 15 rounds, most ringside observers thought that Hagler had won, even though Antuofermo had been closing the gap in the second half of the fight. Hagler claimed that referee Mills Lane told him he had won, but Lane later denied ever saying that. Hagler also noted that he and many others at ringside were surprised when the fight decision was announced as a draw. Judge Duane Ford scored the fight in Hagler's favor, 145–141. However, judge Dalby Shirley scored the bout for Antuofermo, 144–142, while judge Hal Miller scored the fight even, 143–143. This fight result only added to Hagler's frustrations, as Antuofermo retained his title with the draw. Hagler had the boxing skills and killer instinct to knock his opponent out, but instead he played it safe, as Antuofermo closed the gap late in the fight, and that late surge cost Hagler the title.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Antuofermo later lost his title to British boxer Alan Minter, who gave Hagler his second title shot. Hagler went to Wembley Arena to face Minter. The tense atmosphere was stoked further when Minter was quoted as saying that "No black man is going to take my title"—Minter later insisted he meant ""that" black man". Hagler took command and his slashing punches soon opened up the cut-prone Minter. With Hagler dominating the action, referee Carlos Berrocal halted the fight during the third round to have the four glaring cuts on Minter's face examined. Minter's manager, Doug Bidwell, almost immediately conceded defeat. Once Berrocal waved the bout off, a riot broke out among the spectators. Clive Gammon of "Sports Illustrated" described the scene as "a horrifying ululation of howls and boos." Hagler and his trainers had to be escorted to their locker room by a phalanx of policemen, all the while enduring a steady rain of beer bottles and glasses. After seven years and 50 fights, Hagler was the world middleweight champion.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler proved a busy world champion. He defeated future world champion Fulgencio Obelmejias of Venezuela by a knockout in eight rounds and then former world champ Antuofermo in a rematch by TKO in four rounds. Both matches were fought at the Boston Garden near Hagler's hometown, endearing him to Boston fight fans. Syrian born Mustafa Hamsho, who later defeated three-division world champion Wilfred Benítez and future world champion Bobby Czyz, became Hagler's next challenger, putting up a lot of resistance before finally succumbing in eleven tough rounds. Michigan fighter William "Caveman" Lee lasted only one round and in a rematch in Italy, Obelmejias lasted five rounds. British champion (and mutual Alan Minter conqueror) Tony Sibson followed on Hagler's ever-growing list of unsuccessful challengers. Sibson provided one of the most entertaining (to this point) fights of Marvelous Marvin's career, but he ultimately fell short, lasting six rounds. Next came Wilford Scypion, who only lasted four. By then, Hagler was a staple on HBO, the pay-per-view of its time.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: A fight against Roberto Durán followed on November 10, 1983. Durán was the first challenger to last the distance with Hagler in a world-championship bout. Durán was the WBA light middleweight champion and went up in weight to challenge for Hagler's middleweight crown. Hagler won a unanimous 15-round decision, although after 13 rounds, Durán was ahead by one point on two scorecards and even on the third. Hagler, with his left eye swollen and cut, came on strong in the last two rounds to win the fight. Judge Guy Jutras scored the bout 144–142. Judge Ove Ovesen scored it 144–143. Judge Yusaku Yoshida scored it 146–145.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Then came Juan Roldán of Argentina, who became the only man to be credited with a knockdown of Hagler, scoring one mere seconds into the fight. Hagler protested bitterly that he had been pulled/pushed to the canvas. Hagler cut Roldan's left eye, then brutalized him over ten rounds and finally stopped him in the middle of round ten. Sugar Ray Leonard was calling the fight ringside with HBO analyst Barry Tompkins. He noted to Tompkins between rounds that Hagler looked older and slower. "Marvin might finally be slowing down, Barry," Leonard remarked. Many people believe this is the fight that gave Sugar Ray Leonard the idea that he could actually win a fight with the aging Hagler.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hamsho was given a rematch, but the Syrian was again TKO'd, this time in only three rounds. Hamsho angered Hagler with a trio of intentional headbutts in the second round and a fourth early in the third, goading the normally patient and cautious Hagler into a full-out attack that left Hamsho battered and defenseless in a matter of seconds.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: After conquering Hamsho again, Hagler met Thomas Hearns on April 15, 1985, in what was billed as The Fight; it became known as "The War".


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Round One: Three minutes of violence. Within the first 15 seconds, Hearns landed his best punch, a straight right, onto Hagler's chin. The champion stepped back, then came forward. At this point, Hagler began to walk through Hearns' power punches.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Round Two: Hagler was cut on his head from an unintentional elbow or headbutt. Despite the blood, the champion continued to push the fight forward. Hearns was fighting hurt as well, having suffered a broken right hand in the last minute of the first round. The pace continued as before, but now Hearns was backing up, trying to move around the ring. Hearns' trainer Emanuel Steward later revealed Hearns had a leg massage, much to his dismay, before the fight. Hearns' legs by the end of the round were weakening.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Round Three: The pace slowed until referee Richard Steele called a time out to have the ringside doctor examine the cut on Hagler's head. The crowd was on its feet for the next ten seconds, before the doctor allowed the fight to continue. Hagler charged the much taller Hearns, drilling in an overhand right behind Hearns' ear. Hearns' legs wobbled and Hagler was on him quickly. Hearns toppled to the canvas, then rose at the count of eight, but collapsed into referee Steele's arms. The fight was then halted.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: The fight lasted only eight minutes and one second, but it was regarded as a classic. Commentator Al Michaels uttered the famous line, "It didn't go very far, but it was a beauty!" The fight was named "Fight of the Year" by "The Ring".


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Next was Olympic silver medalist John Mugabi of Uganda, who was 26–0 with 26 knockouts and was ranked the number one contender by all three major bodies. The fight took place on March 10, 1986, as Hagler had hurt his back and could not fight on the first date booked in 1985. Hagler stopped Mugabi in the eleventh round of a brutal fight. Many ringside observers, including analyst Gil Clancy, noticed that Hagler was showing signs of advanced ring wear and age. He was much slower of hand and foot and seemed much easier to hit. He had also completely morphed his ring style from a slick, quick-fisted, boxer/puncher to a strictly flat-footed, stalking, slugger to compensate for his loss of speed and reflexes. Hagler was now said to be seriously considering retirement. Hagler's promoter Bob Arum was quoted as saying he was expecting Hagler to retire in the face of being challenged by Sugar Ray Leonard.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler's next challenger was Sugar Ray Leonard, who was returning to the ring after a three-year retirement (having fought just once in the previous five years). During the pre-fight negotiations, in return for granting Hagler a larger share of the purse, Leonard obtained several conditions which were crucial to his strategy: a ring instead of a smaller ring, gloves instead of gloves, and the fight was to be over twelve rounds instead of the 15 rounds favoured by Hagler. Leonard was two years younger, had half as many fights and unbeknownst to Hagler, had engaged in several 'real' (i.e. gloves, rounds, a referee, judges and no headgear) fights behind closed doors in order to shake off his ring rust. The fight took place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on April 6, 1987. Hagler was the clear betting favorite after a dominant six and a half years as the reigning undisputed middleweight champion of the world, having knocked out all opponents as champion except in winning a very close unanimous decision over 15 rounds against Roberto Durán. It was Leonard's first fight at middleweight ( weight limit). The fight was to be for Hagler's WBC, lineal and Ring middleweight titles only, as the WBA stripped Hagler of their belt for choosing to face Leonard instead of WBA mandatory challenger Herol Graham. The IBF, while keeping Hagler as their champion, refused to sanction his fight against Leonard and said that the IBF middleweight title would be declared vacant if Hagler lost to Leonard.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler, a natural southpaw, opened the fight boxing out of an orthodox stance. After the quick and slick Leonard won the first two rounds on all three scorecards, Hagler started the third round as a southpaw. Hagler then did much better, though Leonard's superior speed and quick flurries kept him in the fight. But by the fifth, Leonard, who was moving a lot, began to tire and Hagler started to get closer. As Leonard tired he began to clinch with more frequency (in total referee Richard Steele gave him over 30 warnings for holding, although never deducted a point). Hagler buckled Leonard's knees with a right uppercut near the end of the round, which finished with Leonard on the ropes. Hagler continued to score effectively in round six. Leonard, having slowed down, was obliged to fight more and run less.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: In rounds seven and eight, Hagler's southpaw jab was landing solidly and Leonard's counter flurries were less frequent. Round nine was the most exciting round of the fight. Hagler hurt Leonard with a left cross and pinned him in a corner. Leonard was in trouble, then furiously tried to fight his way out of the corner. The action see-sawed for the rest of the round, with each man having his moments. Round ten was calmer even as Hagler continued to press forward and Leonard slowly got a second wind, as the pace slowed after the furious action of the previous round. Clearly tiring, Leonard boxed well in the eleventh. Every time Hagler scored, Leonard came back with something flashier, if not as effective. In the final round, Hagler continued to chase Leonard. He hit Leonard with a big left hand and backed him into a corner. Leonard responded with a flurry and danced away with Hagler in pursuit. The fight ended with Hagler and Leonard exchanging along the ropes. Hagler began dancing in celebration of his performance while Leonard collapsed to the canvas and raised both his arms in triumph. Leonard threw 629 punches and landed 306, while Hagler threw 792 and landed 291.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler later said that, as the fighters embraced in the ring after the fight, Leonard said to him, "You beat me, man." Hagler said after the fight, "He said I beat him and I was so happy." Leonard denied making the statement and said he only told Hagler, "You're a great champion." HBO cameras and microphones supported Hagler's version of events.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Leonard was announced as the winner and new middleweight champion of the world by split decision (118–110, 115–113, 113–115), a result which remains hotly disputed to this day. The Hagler vs. Leonard fight divides fans, pundits, press and ringside observers arguably more than any other fight in boxing history, with scorecards varying as widely as 117–111 Hagler to 118–110 Leonard and everything in between. The only near universally agreed views about the fight are that Hagler was foolish for starting the fight in an orthodox stance, that Leonard won the first two rounds and that Hagler won the fifth round. Every other round in the fight divides people as to who actually won it, or if the rounds were even.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Official ringside judge JoJo Guerra, whose scorecard of 118–110 in favour of Leonard was derided in many quarters, commented that:


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Upon a second viewing of the fight, while maintaining his belief that Leonard won the fight, Guerra acknowledged that he made a mistake and should have scored two more rounds for Hagler. Duane Ford, chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, commented that Guerra probably would not be invited back to Las Vegas to judge a fight in the near future.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Judge Lou Filippo, who scored it 115–113 for Hagler and felt that Hagler's bodyshots and aggression earned him the nod, said:


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: McIlvanney also referred to Budd Schulberg's contention about a 'compound optical illusion', namely that by being the underdog and more competitive than expected against the dominant undisputed champion in Hagler meant that Leonard appeared more effective and to be doing more than he actually was. Leonard himself had said to journalists before the fight "the reason I will win is because you don't think I can". Harry Gibbs, the British judge who had been rejected by Pat Petronelli from Hagler's camp and replaced by JoJo Guerra, said he scored it 115–113 for Hagler when he watched the fight at home.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Jim Murray, long-time sports columnist for the "Los Angeles Times" felt that Leonard deservedly got the decision, arguing that Leonard showed better defense and ring generalship, landed more punches and writing:


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: The scorecards from the ringside press and broadcast media attest to the polarizing views and opinions of the fight:


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler requested a rematch but Leonard chose to retire again (the third of five high-profile retirements announced by Leonard during his professional boxing career), having announced it beforehand. 14 months following their fight, Hagler retired from boxing on June 13, 1988, after watching WBA middleweight champion Sumbu Kalambay prevail over his brother, Robbie Sims, via unanimous decision. Hagler declared that he was "tired of waiting" for Leonard to grant him a rematch. Just a month succeeding Hagler's retirement, Leonard announced another boxing comeback to fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Donny Lalonde at the super middleweight limit. In 1990, Leonard finally offered Hagler a rematch which reportedly would have earned him $15 million, but he declined. By then, Hagler had settled down into a new life as an actor in Italy and was now uninterested in his past boxing life. Hagler said "A while ago, yeah, I wanted him so bad, but I'm over that." At the 1994 Consumer Electronics Show, Hagler and Leonard had a mock rematch by playing against each other in the video game "Boxing Legends of the Ring" and claimed that an actual rematch was being planned, though it never happened.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: After the loss to Leonard, Hagler moved to Italy, where he became a well-known star of action films. His roles included a U.S. Marine in the films "Indio" (1989) and "" (1991). In 1997, he starred alongside Terence Hill and Giselle Blondet in "Virtual Weapon". Hagler also provided boxing commentary for British television. Another foray by Hagler into the entertainment field included work on the video game "".


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: Hagler had five children with his first wife, Bertha: Charelle, Celeste, James, Marvin Jr. and Gentry. Although he owned a home in Bartlett, New Hampshire, Hagler lived in Milan. In May 2000, he married his second wife, Kay, an Italian, in Pioltello, Italy.


title: Marvelous Marvin Hagler

text: On March 13, 2021, Hagler's wife, Kay, announced that he had died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire at the age of 66. His son James said his father was taken to a New Hampshire hospital after experiencing chest pains and difficulty breathing.


title: Kibbutz

text: A kibbutz ( / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a "kibbutznik" ( / ; plural "kibbutznikim" or "kibbutzniks").


title: Kibbutz

text: In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel with population of 126,000. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel's industrial output, worth US$8 billion, and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over US$1.7 billion. Some kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated US$850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.


title: Kibbutz

text: Currently the kibbutzim are organised in the secular Kibbutz Movement with some 230 kibbutzim, the Religious Kibbutz Movement with 16 kibbutzim and the much smaller religious Poalei Agudat Yisrael with two kibbutzim, all part of the wider communal settlement movement.


title: Kibbutz

text: The kibbutzim were founded by members of the Bilu movement who emigrated to Palestine. Like the members of the First Aliyah who came before them and established agricultural villages, most members of the Second Aliyah planned to become farmers; almost the sole career available in the agrarian economy of Ottoman Palestine. The first kibbutz was Degania Alef, founded in 1909.


title: Kibbutz

text: Some founders of the Kibbutz movement in Israel were influenced by the ideals of Ancient Sparta, particularly in education and communal living.


title: Kibbutz

text: Though Baratz and others wanted to farm the land themselves, becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option in 1909. As Arthur Ruppin, a proponent of Jewish agricultural colonization of the Trans-Jordan would later say, "The question was not whether group settlement was preferable to individual settlement; it was rather one of either group settlement or no settlement at all."


title: Kibbutz

text: Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment. The Galilee was swampy, the Judaean Mountains rocky, and the south of the country, the Negev, was a desert. To make things more challenging, most of the settlers had no prior farming experience. The sanitary conditions were also poor. Malaria, typhus and cholera were rampant. Bedouins would raid farms and settled areas. Sabotage of irrigation canals and burning of crops were also common. Living collectively was simply the most logical way to be secure in an unwelcoming land. On top of safety considerations, establishing a farm was a capital-intensive project; collectively, the founders of the kibbutzim had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently they did not.


title: Kibbutz

text: Finally, the land had been purchased by the greater Jewish community. From around the world, Jews dropped coins into Jewish National Fund "Blue Boxes" for land purchases in Palestine. In 1909, Baratz, nine other men, and two women established themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near the Arab village of Umm Juni/Juniya. These teenagers had hitherto worked as day laborers converting wetlands for human development, as masons, or as hands at the older Jewish settlements. Their dream was now to work for themselves, building up the land. They called their community "Kvutzat Degania" (lit. "collective of wheat" or "community of cereal grains"), now Degania Alef.


title: Kibbutz

text: The founders of Degania endured backbreaking labor: "The body is crushed, the legs fail, the head hurts, the sun burns and weakens," wrote one of the pioneers. At times, half of the kibbutz members could not report for work and many left. Despite the difficulties, by 1914, Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea of Galilee and the nearby Jezreel Valley.


title: Kibbutz

text: The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, followed by the arrival of the British, brought with it benefits for the Jewish community of Palestine and its kibbutzim. The Ottoman authorities had made immigration to Palestine difficult and restricted land purchases. Rising antisemitism forced many Jews to flee Eastern Europe. To escape the pogroms, tens of thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine in the early 1920s, in a wave of immigration that was called the Third Aliyah.


title: Kibbutz

text: Zionist Jewish youth movements flourished in the 1920s, from right-wing movements like Betar to left-wing socialist groups such as Dror, Brit Haolim, Qadima, HabBonim (now Habonim Dror), and Hashomer Hatzair. In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliyah, these youth group members had some agricultural training before embarking. Members of the Second Aliyah and Third Aliyah were also less likely to be Russian, since emigration from Russia was closed off after the Russian Revolution. European Jews who settled on kibbutzim between the World Wars were from other countries in Eastern Europe, including Germany.


title: Kibbutz

text: In the early days, communal meetings were limited to practical matters, but in the 1920s and 1930s, they became more informal. Instead of meeting in the dining room, the group would sit around a campfire. Rather than reading minutes, the session would begin with a group dance. Remembering her youth on a kibbutz on the shores of the Kinneret, one woman said: "Oh, how beautiful it was when we all took part in the discussions, [they were] nights of searching for one another—that is what I call those hallowed nights. During the moments of silence, it seemed to me that from each heart a spark would burst forth, and the sparks would unite in one great flame penetrating the heavens... At the center of our camp a fire burns, and under the weight of the hora the earth groans a rhythmic groan, accompanied by wild songs".


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzim founded in the 1920s tended to be larger than the kibbutzim like Degania that were founded prior to World War I. Degania had had twelve members at its founding. Eyn Harod, founded only a decade later, began with 215 members.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzim grew and flourished in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1922, there were 700 people living on kibbutzim in Palestine. By 1927, the number had risen to 2,000. When World War II erupted, 24,105 people were living on 79 kibbutzim, comprising 5% of the Jewish population of Mandate Palestine. In 1950, the figures went up to 65,000, accounting for 7.5% of the population. In 1989, the kibbutz population peaked at 129,000. By 2010, the number decreased to about 100,000; the number of kibbutzim in Israel was 270.


title: Kibbutz

text: In 1927, the United Kibbutz Movement was established. Several Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim banded together to form Kibbutz Artzi. In 1936, Socialist League of Palestine was founded, and served as an urban ally of HaKibbutz HaArtzi. In 1946, HaKibbutz HaArtzi and the Socialist League combined to form the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party of Palestine which in 1948, merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form the left-wing Mapam party.


title: Kibbutz

text: In 1928, Degania and other small kibbutzim formed "Hever Hakvutzot" ("The Kvutzot Association"). Kvutzot were deliberately small, not exceeding 200 members, in the belief that this was imperative for maintaining trust. Kvutzot did not have youth-group affiliations in Europe. Kibbutzim affiliated with the United Kibbutz Movement took in as many members as they could. Givat Brenner eventually came to have more than 1,500 members. Artzi kibbutzim were also more devoted to gender equality than other kibbutzim. Women called their husbands "ishi" ("my man") rather than the customary Hebrew word for husband "ba'ali" (lit. "my master"). The children slept in children's houses and visited their parents only a few hours a day.


title: Kibbutz

text: There were also differences in religion. Kibbutz Artzi and United Kibbutz Movement kibbutzim were secular, even staunchly atheistic, proudly trying to be "monasteries without God". Although most mainstream kibbutznikim also disdained the Orthodox Judaism of their parents, they wanted their new communities to have Jewish characteristics nonetheless. Friday nights were still Shabbat with a white tablecloth and fine food and work was not done on Saturday if it could be avoided. Only later did some kibbutzim adopt Yom Kippur as the day to discuss fears for the future of the kibbutz. Kibbutzim also had collective Bar and Bat Mitzvahs for their children.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutznikim did not pray three times a day like their parents and grandparents, but would mark holidays like Shavuot, Sukkot, and Passover with dances, meals, and celebrations. One Jewish holiday, Tu BiShvat, the "birthday of the trees" was substantially revived by kibbutzim. All in all, holidays with some kind of agricultural component, like Passover and Sukkot, were the most significant for kibbutzim.


title: Kibbutz

text: Religious kibbutzim were established in clusters before the establishment of the State, creating the Religious Kibbutz Movement. The first religious kibbutz was Ein Tzurim, founded in 1946.


title: Kibbutz

text: Arab opposition increased as the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the wave of Jewish settlers to Palestine began to tilt the demographic balance of the area. Arabs responded with bloody riots in Jerusalem in 1920, Jaffa in 1921 and in Hebron in 1929. In the late 1930s, Arab–Jewish violence became virtually constant; the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine is also known as the "Great Uprising" in Palestinian historiography.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzim began to assume a more prominent military role. Rifles were purchased or manufactured and kibbutz members drilled and practiced shooting. Yigal Allon, an Israeli soldier and statesman, explained the role of kibbutzim in the military activities of the Yishuv:


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzim also played a role in defining the borders of the Jewish state-to-be. By the late 1930s, when it appeared that Palestine would be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, kibbutzim were established in outlying areas to ensure that the land would be incorporated into the Jewish state. In 1946, on the day after Yom Kippur, eleven new "Tower and Stockade" kibbutzim were hurriedly established in the northern part of the Negev to give Israel a better claim to this arid, but strategically important, region. The Marxist faction of the kibbutz movement, Kibbutz Artzi, favoured a one-state solution over partition, but advocated free Jewish immigration, which the Arabs opposed.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzniks fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, emerging from the conflict with enhanced prestige in the nascent State of Israel. Members of Kibbutz Degania were instrumental in stopping the Syrian tank advance into the Galilee with Molotov cocktails. Maagan Michael manufactured the bullets for the Sten guns that won the war. Maagan Michael's clandestine ammunition factory was later separated from the kibbutz and grew into Israel Military Industries.


title: Kibbutz

text: The establishment of Israel and the flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim. The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new members and inexpensive labour, but it also meant that Ashkenazi kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different from their own. Until the 1950s, nearly all kibbutzniks were from Eastern Europe, culturally different from the Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Iraq. Many kibbutzim hired Mizrahi Jews as labourers but were less inclined to grant them membership.


title: Kibbutz

text: Ideological disputes were also widespread, leading to painful splits, sometimes even of individual kibbutzim, and to polarisation and animosity among members. Israel had been initially recognized by both the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first three years of its existence, Israel was in the Non-Aligned Movement, but David Ben-Gurion gradually began to take sides with the West. The question of which side of the Cold War Israel should choose created fissures in the kibbutz movement. Dining halls segregated according to politics and a few kibbutzim even had Marxist members leave. The disillusionment particularly set in after the Slánský trial in which an envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried.


title: Kibbutz

text: Another controversy involved the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany. Should kibbutz members turn over income that was the product of a very personal loss? If Holocaust survivors were allowed to keep their reparation money, what would that mean for the principle of equality? Eventually, many kibbutzim made this one concession to inequality by letting Holocaust survivors keep all or a percentage of their reparations. Reparations that were turned over to the collective were used for building expansion and even recreational activities.


title: Kibbutz

text: The split between different factions within the kibbutz movement evolved between 1948 and 1954, when finally three kibbutz federations emerged, each aligned to a different Labour party: Ihud with Mapai, Meuhad with Ahdut HaAvoda, and Artzi with Mapam.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s, the kibbutzim standard of living improved faster than Israel's general population. Most kibbutz swimming pools date from the 1960s.


title: Kibbutz

text: Kibbutzim also continued to play an outsize role in Israel's defence apparatus. In the 1950s and 1960s many kibbutzim were in fact founded by an Israel Defense Forces group called Nahal. Many of these 1950s and 1960s Nahal kibbutzim were founded on the precarious and porous borders of the state. In the Six-Day War, when Israel lost 800 soldiers, 200 of them were from kibbutzim. The prestige that kibbutzniks enjoyed in Israel in the 1960s was reflected in the Knesset. Though only 4% of Israelis were kibbutzniks, kibbutzniks made up 15% of Israel's parliament.


title: Kibbutz

text: As late as the 1970s, kibbutzim seemed to be thriving in every way. Kibbutzniks performed working-class, or even peasant-class, occupations, yet enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle.