Bavarian Soviet Republic
Born in Trebnitz (Silesia), and brought up in Nördlingen, he became a schoolteacher by profession. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1917 and was instrumental in the setting up of a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Indeed, for a time at the start of the year, after the resignation of Kurt Eisner and immediately before the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Niekisch wielded effective power as chairman of the central executive of Bavarian councils, an interim governing body. He left the SPD soon afterward and was the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) for a time before he returned to his former party. He served a brief spell in prison in 1925 for his part in the abortive Bavarian coup.