Barth, Emil

(1879-1941)

   radical trade-union* leader; represented the USPD on the Council of People's Representatives.* Born in Heidelberg, he worked as an itinerant tinsmith before settling in Berlin* in 1904. An anarchist during 1908-1910, he supported the SPD after joining the metalworkers' union in 1911. He engaged early in opposition to World War I. Inducted, he was invalided out of the army in time to succeed Richard Müller* in 1918 as leader of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards.*

   On 10 November 1918 Barth was the lone radical in Berlin's combined Work-ers' and Soldiers' Councils* prepared to serve with Germany's interim cabinet. Although he was part of the USPD, he was also the only cabinet member not concurrently in the Reichstag.* His importance to the Republic is grounded in his brief service with the government. A proponent of spontaneous revolution, he found himself isolated between the radicals in the Spartacus League,* who were unwilling to work with the hated SPD, and colleagues in the USPD (e.g., Hugo Haase* and Wilhelm Dittmann*), who were hoping to avoid further rev-olution. When he was deposed in December as leader of the Shop Stewards, he lost his base of support. With Haase and Dittmann, he resigned from the cabinet on 29 December and resumed his trade as a tinsmith. Despite his revolutionary rhetoric, he never joined the KPD; indeed, while serving in the 1920s at factory-council headquarters in Berlin, he worked for the SPD.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Morgan, Socialist Left.