Free State of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
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Free State of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Freistaat Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1918–1920 | |||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||
.svg) Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach within the German Empire | |||||||||
 Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (6 main regions, in dark green) within the Thuringian States | |||||||||
| Capital | Weimar 50°58′52″N 11°19′46″E / 50.98111°N 11.32944°E | ||||||||
| Government | Republic | ||||||||
| Historical era | Interwar period | ||||||||
| 1918 | |||||||||
• Merged into Thuringia | 1920 | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| 1919 | 3,610 km2 (1,390 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1919 | 429,831 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Germany | ||||||||
The Free State of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (German: Freistaat Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) was a small, short-lived (1918–1920) central German state during the early years of the Weimar Republic. It was formed following the dissolution of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach during the German revolution of 1918–1919. After Grand Duke William Ernest abdicated, Saxe-Weimar Eisenach transitioned peacefully into a republic. It became part of Thuringia when it was created on 1 May 1920.
The Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1809–1918), part of the Ernestine line of the House of Wettin, became a member state of the North German Confederation in 1866 and of the German Empire in 1871. It was a hereditary monarchy with a single-chamber Landtag (state parliament) and was ruled from 1901 to 1918 by Grand Duke William Ernest.[1] It had three seats in the Empire's Reichstag and one in the Bundesrat.
The Grand Duchy collapsed during the revolution of 1918–1919, which brought down the German Empire and all of Germany's royal houses at the end of World War I. The revolution began in late October 1918 when rebellious sailors at Kiel set up a workers' and soldiers' council and in early November spread the revolt across the rest of Germany. Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland on 10 November, and councils quickly took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed.[2]
The council movement reached Weimar on 8 November when an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 demonstrators, many of them recently recruited soldiers from nearby Jena, demanded and received weapons and ammunition from Weimar's garrison commander, freed imprisoned soldiers, occupied the railway station, postal, telephone and telegraph offices, and set up a soldiers' council. A workers' council followed the next day, and by evening Grand Duke William Ernest had been convinced to abdicate. On 10 November a provisional government dominated by members of the moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD) was set up with August Baudert as state commissioner.[3]
The Grand Duke and his family went into exile at Allstedt, in a northern exclave of the Grand Duchy, on 10 November; six weeks later they settled at their estate at Heinrichau in Prussian Silesia. An agreement between the new government and William Ernest regarding his lands and other possessions was reached in October 1921.[4]
