Source: Timeline
Oct. 14, 1919 Pacelli to Gasparri:
Re: Threat of Bavarian Government crisis
Most Reverend Eminence,
At various times there has been talk of a possible crisis in the Bavarian Government. The discussions of the political parties, which since several days ago have been unfolding in the press of the Majority Socialists and of the Bavarian Volkspartei, especially about religion and school policy, have recently come to a climax. The decisive thrust toward the crisis was given by the meeting of the Bavarian Socialists held in Nuremberg this September 27 and 28. After a long discussion about the political situation in Bavaria, the following agenda was unanimously approved: “The conference of Bavarian Socialists, held in Nuremberg the 27th and 28th of September, has discussed the political difficulties of the Socialists and the situation of the party in the cabinet. The conference expresses its full trust in the representatives of the party in the Government. It observes that a particular difficulty of the Socialist Party in Bavaria is the fact that the so-called Government of Hoffmann is regarded as a Socialist Government, while it is clear that the composition of the Government and the Landtag precludes a purely Socialist policy. Therefore the Conference proposes a radical reform of the Cabinet Ministry. It authorizes comrades Hoffmann, Segitz and Endres to resign from the Ministry if the reform deemed necessary by the Conference cannot be effected.”
As a result of this resolution, the entire press was in agreement in observing that the first duty of the Landtag, which was to convene on the 1st of October, would be to reform the Cabinet. And thus for the first time in Bavaria the parliamentary system would have to carry out its principal function, that of forming the Government; since, as Your Most Reverend Eminence well recalls, the current Hoffmann Government was born solely from a compromise in the Landtag, reduced to impotence as the result of the crisis produced by the assassination of Eisner and the Central Council of soldiers, workers and farmers, which had taken power into their hands.
The reason that drove the Socialists to this resolution in Nuremberg is that in truth the current coalition cabinet bears the signature and responsibility of Socialists, but in fact the representatives of this party are in a minority there. It is to be observed, however, that this situation was put before the Socialist press right in the days of the trials of the assassins of the hostages perpetrated by the Communists in this last month of May, a period in which the responsibility of the Government appeared quite terrible, whether for the lack of energy it demonstrated in repressing the anarchist uprising of April, or because it was the one that had to speak the final word about the condemnation of the assassins, making least use of the right to pardon them.
On the other hand, the press of the Bavarian Volkspartei had conducted an increasingly vehement campaign against Minister President Hoffmann for his openly anti-religious school policy. Thus, fundamentally, the crisis appeared as a logical and fatal necessity produced by the situation of struggle between the two principal Bavarian political parties, the Socialists and the Center Party (Bavarian Volkspartei).
Interminable complicated discussions were protracted day after day among the various political delegations and committees of the Landtag, but nothing could come of them beyond a declaration, by which the Center Party made a halfway disavowal of the attacks appearing in the Catholic press, and especially in the Bayerischer Kurier, against Hoffmann, and then an announcement that for making a definitive decision about the crisis, there needed to be consultations by the various parties with their own organizations, and that this would be done within a short timeframe.
Meanwhile the Bavarian Volkspartei found itself in this Impasse: on the one hand it would have to accept the responsibility of the Government, being the numerically strongest party; on the other hand, accepting this responsibility would have run the risk of a series of compromises, being obligated, once in the Government, to settle all the matters pending from the war, to confront all the arduous issues created by the new state of affairs, especially in the social and financial realms, and finally, not to speak of further matters, to resolve the threatening problems of food and material life that will appear in the next winter, and to that it suffices to add the absolute lack of men in that party who can truly impress with their name and their past record. In a speech delivered on October 6th, in Deggendorf, Mr. Held, Head of the Landtag delegation of the Bavarian Volkspartei, refuted the reasoning put forward by the Socialists for now sharing Government responsibility with the bourgeois parties, that is the polemics of the press against Minister President Hoffmann. These polemics have existed ever since November of last year, said Held, and they intensified in January and February of this year. Why did the Socialists not want a recomposition of the Government back then? Instead the Socialist Party took power into its hands during the revolution, formed a Government by itself (while in the elections it only received a third of the votes), and also demonstrated its firm intent during the Councils Republic to seek power solo and maintain it solo. Only now that they need to take on the inheritance of the Councils Republic, with all its financial consequences, the Socialists think of trying to share the responsibility of power, which they realize they cannot bear any longer by themselves. We want to remain in the coalition, added Held, and work with it, but we propose that the Minister President find a middle way in the Government, by which it would be possible not to violate the convictions of the majority of the Bavarian population, and to refrain from all that could offend them. If this does not work out, any form of cooperation is impossible. The Socialists must not think that a mere gesture from them will suffice for them to have to submit to the Minister President. That is not consistent with the Constitution or with the parliamentary political system. If it is not possible to work out a satisfactory solution to the governmental crisis, there remains no other possibility than to dissolve the Landtag.
Dissolution of the Landtag was in fact much discussed by various newspapers in the days of the crisis. The current political situation in Bavaria is, however, so complicated that it cannot be clearly predicted what would be the results of new elections. Naturally each party has maintained that it would be the winner and not the loser.
Held, for example, in the quoted speech, after having flashed the possibility of new elections, added: Then we will see what the people will say of the Hoffmann Government. The Socialists must not think that the Bavarian people would reject the idea of new elections. I am convinced that they have learned to distinguish where truly lies the good of the fatherland, whether with the Socialists or with the Bavarian Volkspartei. A Ministry of the Bavarian Volkspartei cannot assume the responsibility for the work of the Hoffmann Government, especially for what concerns school policy and fiscal policy. All the press, from the Democrats to the Independent Socialists, would have put it on the Bavarian Volkspartei, making it responsible for all the discomforts of the land, and above all the Minister President, to which the Bavarian Volkpartei would have to respond: I cannot do anything!
But the Democrats strongly opposed new elections. They said that an appeal to the body of the electorate during the coming winter, when there are already fears of uprisings and agitations because of food conditions and the lack of coal and of work, could not be desired by any party other than by egoism. Thus the consequences of new elections, in a period so agitated, would fall not only on the shoulders of the Socialists, who would have provoked them by their resolution at Nuremberg, but also upon those of the Bavarian Volkspartei, which, through party egoism, would have seconded the desire of the Socialists. Naturally the Democrats made the fullest reservations about the rosy expectations of the Center Party for results favorable to it in the eventuality of elections. Moreover, concluded the Democrats, the elections could only take place in the coming months, while we now have sufficient security in the consolidation of our political situation and in the authority and force of the Government, and this can only occur with a coalition Ministry.
The Socialists tried to turn back against the Bavarian Volkspartei the arguments espoused by Held. They said (as was read in No. 234 of the Munich Post) that a Minister President who has public opinion against him has to respond that he cannot do anything. But the Hoffmann Cabinet, according to the press of the Center Party, has public opinion against it. Therefore it cannot govern, and that is why it wants to hand over power to the Bavarian Volkspartei. As to new elections, it is not only we Socialists who want them, but it is the Bavarian Volkspartei that is proposing to bring them about by its refusal to take power: but Mr. Held knows that in an electoral battle we will not fail to call the voters’ attention to this situation.
Finally a meeting of the various parties occurred. The evening of the 9th of this month, the Bavarian Volkspartei held an impressive assembly, in which the most influential men of the party took part. After a heated discussion, an agenda was voted that more or less repeated what Held had said in his above-quoted speech:
If up to now a Ministry of their side has made the Socialists comfortable, the Bavarian Volkspartei now does not have any desire to assume power under such difficult conditions and such frightful responsibilities. Therefore the Coalition Ministry remains, with which the Bavarian Volkspartei will gladly cooperate if changes will result in the school and religion policy. If the schools do not follow such a program, the Bavarian Volkspartei does not fear elections, which will have to be held according to the new election law. - It must also be added that, according to what the leaders of the Bavarian Volkspartei have secretly confided in me, there is also another serious reason why this party could not accept the Minister Presidency at the current moment, and it is the fear that the army (Reichswehr), in which Socialists also abound, would not offer to defend a Government not presided over by a Socialist against new Communist and Spartacist agitations.
Since the Democrats were also, at one of their meetings, demonstrably against having a Cabinet crisis, there remains only the word of the Socialists. And it was spoken at a meeting of the party, the 12th of this month, in Munich. An agenda was voted at that meeting that sounded more or less like this: The bourgeois parties wanted the Socialists to take responsibility for the Government during the events of February 21 (assassination of Eisner); the bourgeois parties in May came together with the Socialists to form a coalition with a program that was drawn up by common agreement, which has been implemented up to now; as a result the bourgeois parties have had responsibility for all the work of the Government up to today. That notwithstanding, these parties have obstructed the activity of the Government in every way; they have proclaimed it responsible for all the woes of the land; they have not wanted to accept full responsibility for the Government, which the Socialists are now offering them; and instead they have decided that the current Cabinet presided over by Hoffmann should remain in power. Thus the responsibility of all the parties is established for the entire activity that has developed up to now and that will develop in consequence of the current Government. The representatives of the Bavarian Volkspartei and of the Democrats have, by their own acts, recognized as unfounded the innumerable attacks against the Socialists who are in the Government. In sum, the cited agenda concludes that the Socialists under current circumstances cannot assume the responsibility of new elections, which would aggravate the frightful difficulties that are presented by the coming winter. Everything occurring in the crisis ends up with the observation that it is a matter of a tempest in a teapot and that things remain as they began.
That is to say, the Coalition Ministry under Hoffmann remains, and there has only been this novelty, that the Minister of Finance, Dr. Speck of the Center Party, has been appointed Vice-President of the Cabinet.
The fact that the Socialists have not wanted to face elections has been praised by their press as an act of glowing patriotism that must be shown to the country, which should recognize the sacrifice they have made in continuing the management of the Government in such difficult conditions; but it could also be explained by their uncertainty about the results of future elections. Indeed, on the one hand the school policy of Hoffmann, on the other hand the impossibility of contenting the country in fiscal and food policy (impossibilities that will get worse in the imminent winter) make for conjectures that many adherents of the Socialist party will turn their backs to it in possible elections; while the Center Party, not being directly charged with and responsible for the Government, will be able to win the sympathies of many. Indeed a rather widespread and serious opinion is that in the eventuality of elections, the Center Party and the Independents would come out ahead. To the latter would stream all the malcontents and those disillusioned with Socialism, who would not want to go over to the Center Party because of their political and religious convictions.
Viewed from this perspective, the current situation and the threatened crisis that have consolidated it could bear good fruit for the future.
Summing it all up, the Center Party (Bavarian Volkspartei) has had a victory. It did not want a Ministerial crisis and it did not take place; it wanted the direct responsibility for the Government to be on the Socialist Party and it has obtained that; since, although the Socialists say that this responsibility must be shared also with the bourgeois parties, yet the people will continue to attribute it to the Socialist Party that directs the Cabinet. It only remains to be seen if the Center Party will be able to obtain that Mr. Hoffmann change his school and religion policy.
Humbly bowing ...
Source: www.Pacelli-Edition.de, Dokt 266