EICHHORN, EMIL

(1863-1925)

politician; served as Berlin's* police chief during the November Revolution.* Born in Rohrsdorf near Chemnitz, he was a mechanic in a metalworking factory before becoming a paid official with the SPD. Serving concurrently in the Baden Landtag (1901-1909) and the Reichs-tag* (1903-1912), he was initially counted among the SPD's moderates, but gravitated toward the radicals. During the war he organized illegal publications for the Party opposition and in 1917 split with the SPD to head the press bureau for the new USPD. In the war's last months he assisted the Soviet press agency.

Only once did Eichhorn break the bounds of the rank-and-file official, and thereby the history of the Republic's early months is inseparably connected with his name. Serving from 9 November 1918 as Berlin's Commissar for Public Safety, he aided the antigovernment intrigues of the city's radicals. On 4 January 1919, by resisting his own dismissal, he triggered the Spartacist Uprising.* The unexpectedly brutal response of the government against those who stood by Eichhorn left the new KPD prostrate and, with the murders of Rosa Luxemburg* and Karl Liebknecht,* leaderless; Eichhorn went into hiding until August 1919.

Elected consecutively to the National Assembly* and the Reichstag, Eichhorn joined the KPD when the USPD split in October 1920. He was among only a handful of prewar Social Democrats who remained with the KPD for an ex-tended period.