The father of mathematician Prof. Abraham Frankel foresaw the danger to Bavarian Jewry due to Jewish participation in the leadership of the communist republic – and from there began Frankel's path towards Zionism and the Hebrew University.
On November 7, 1918, the leader of the Independent Socialists of Jewish origin, Kurt Eisner, with the help of workers, peasants and soldiers, seized power in Bavaria, becoming Prime Minister of the republic, which had been a monarchy. As a result of this revolution, the Bavarian throne was abolished, thus ending the 738-year rule of the House of Wittelsbach over Bavaria. Ludwig III fled to Hungary, Liechtenstein and then Switzerland. The Jewish Eisner overthrew the king. Eisner's government included intellectuals, Jews Ernst Toller, Erich Miesam and Gustav Landauer. In February 1919, Eisner was shot dead by a nationalist assassin. On April 7, 1919, the Bavarian Socialist Republic was proclaimed, led by the leader of the Independent Social Democrats, the poet Ernst Toller, who resigned after six days in office. Toller, a poet and playwright, was a pacifist and was unable to lead the violent system that was the Bavarian Soviet Republic. After his resignation, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed, led by the Jewish communist Eugen Lewin.
In opposition leaflets, the situation in communist-controlled Munich looked like this: "Many of the houses were burned down, and significant sums of money disappeared forever. Arrests were made indiscriminately. […] Munich is cut off from the rest of the world. Food supplies have stopped. The lives of infants, the sick and the weak are in grave danger. Coal has become a rare commodity in the kitchens of the poor. […] The revolutionary tribunal persecuted citizens for every free word spoken against the shameful management of the gang of foreigners. Hostages were brutally murdered." The place of execution of the radical nationalists was the Leutfeld Gymnasium. The banks were transferred to state ownership. The communists took apartments from the rich and gave them to the poor. The "gang of foreigners" were the Jewish leaders of the revolution.
Leviner did not care about the hungry children: “What will happen if in a few weeks there is less milk in Munich? In any case, most of it goes to the children of the bourgeoisie. We do not want them to survive. It will not be a loss if they die – when they grow up, they will be enemies of the proletariat.” The newspapers called the leadership of the Republic “a gang of madmen, dreamers, fanatics and criminals” and “arrogant foreign propagandists.” The poet and writer Isolde Kurtz called the Communists “a group of terrorists.” In early May 1919 the Republic fell, Landauer was executed, Leviner was convicted and shot. Toler was arrested and convicted of treason. Muesum was arrested, convicted of treason and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
The Bavarian Soviet Republic alarmed the Germans. The writer Thomas Mann, a resident of Munich, was shocked by the possibility of the victory of the revolution: "We talked about whether it was still possible to save European culture, […] or whether the Kyrgyz idea of extermination would triumph. We also talked about the type of Russian Jew, the leader of the international movement, this explosive mixture of Jewish intellectual-radical with Slavic-Orthodox fanaticism. The world, which has not yet lost the instinct of self-preservation, must with supreme effort and in a short time, according to the laws of war, take drastic measures against this type of people."
The revolution in which the Jews were blamed
The November 1918 Revolution in Berlin was seen as a German revolution, while the Bavarian Revolution was blamed on the Jews. American historian Christopher Browning wrote in his book The Origins of the Final Solution: Evolution of Nazi Policy Towards the Jews (2004): "The Jew became a symbol of a leftist politician, of a capitalist-exploiter, of a different kind of avant-garde experiment in culture, and of secularism – all of which caused rejection in a fairly broad part of the conservative political spectrum. The Jew became an ideal political provocateur."
The Trade Counselor (a title of honor given in Germany to outstanding entrepreneurs), Sigmund Frankel, leader of the Orthodox Jewish community in Munich and one of the founders of Agudath Israel, was terrified of the active role of Jews in the revolution. His 28-year-old son, Abraham Frankel, a graduate of the Leitfold Gymnasium in Munich, the site of the execution of the aristocratic hostages, recounted his father's position in the book Memoirs of a mathematician in Germany: "Sigmund Frankl expected that the participation of Jews in the radical leadership would lead to a catastrophic effect on Bavarian Jewry." On January 5, 1919, at the end of the existence of the Bavarian Republic, the National Socialist Party was founded in the Stenkreberbräu beer hall in Munich.
Abraham Frankel (Adolf Abraham Halevi Frankel) was born in Munich on February 17, 1891, to a Jewish family of wool merchant Sigmund Frankel, where there were five children. In 1909, Abraham graduated from the municipal gymnasium. He studied mathematics at the universities of Munich, Berlin, Marburg, and Breslau. In 1914, Frankel graduated with honors and was drafted to the French front in World War I. In 1916, during a vacation, he submitted his doctoral thesis. In 1920, Frankel was appointed a member of the board of directors of the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. In 1922, he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg.
The experiences of Frankl's father, who condemned the revolutionary activity dangerous to Jews, led Abraham to Zionism. In 1926 he first visited Israel. In 1928 he was appointed professor at the University of Kiel, but that same year, after consulting with Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Kook, he took up a professorship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in 1929 he immigrated to Palestine. He was granted leave and returned to the University of Kiel, where he worked from 1932–1933. On April 25, 1933, Frankl was dismissed from the University of Kiel and moved to Israel. He was an ardent Zionist and a zealot for the Hebrew language. He was the first dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and rector of the Hebrew University from 1938–1940. He taught in Jerusalem until his retirement in 1959. He then taught at Bar-Ilan University. In 1956, Frankl was awarded the Israel Prize in the field of exact sciences. In 1960, Frankl was elected to the Israel National Academy of Sciences.
Frankel is one of the authors of the axiomatic theory of Zermelo-Frankel groups. His other works deal with algebra, the foundations of mathematics, the history of mathematics, and the development of education in Israel.
Frankl died on October 15, 1965.
The Communist Revolution in Munich
At the end of World War I, all of Germany was in anarchy. Following the November Revolution of 1918, a socialist government was established in Bavaria, led by Kurt Eisner, but he was assassinated in February 1919. After his death, communist and anarchist groups took over power and declared a state of emergency in April. Independent Soviet Republic In Bavaria.
The republic, which was run, among others, by intellectuals such as Ernest Toler, Gustav Landauer וEugen Levina, suffered from internal instability, a lack of governmental experience, and ideological rifts between factions.
In May 1919, the central government in Berlin sent Freikorps – right-wing nationalist militias – to suppress the uprising. What followed was a massacre. All the people who had headed the Bavarian Soviet Republic were executed, along with 600 people, most of them intellectuals, in what would prove to be a prelude to the hatred of the elites.
These events marked the end of the first attempt at revolutionary communist rule in Germany, and were a prelude to the rise of far-right forces in the 20s and 30s. They also illustrated the hostility toward Jews who were leaders of the revolution and identified as leftists, a hostility that would grow in the decades to come.
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The prime minister's enemies sound like they fit the description.