BAUER, GUSTAV (1870- ), German Socialist, and first chancellor of the republican German Reich, was born Jan. 6 1870 at Darkehnen in East Prussia. At an early stage of his career he took up the secretarial work of the German Trades Unions movement and in 1908 became president of the general committee of the Trades Unions of Germany. Elected a member of the old Reichstag in 1912, he was appointed on Oct. 5 1918 Secretary of State for the Department of Labour in the Government of Prince Max of Baden, the last Government under the old regime. In Feb. 1919 he was appointed Minister of Labour in the republican Government of the German Reich and on June 21 of the same year president of the Ministry which was installed to accept the Peace Treaty of Versailles. The new constitution of the Reich having been enacted, the president of the Ministry resumed, in accordance with its provisions, the old title of chancellor (Reichskanzler) and Bauer was the first to hold this office under the republican regime. He remained chancellor until the Kapp coup of March 1920, when he fled with the president of the Reich, Ebert, and the rest of the Ministry to Dresden and afterwards to Stuttgart. On their return the Ministry was reconstructed and Bauer made way for the second republican chancellor, Hermann Miiller, himself becoming for a brief period the Minister of the Treasury (Reichsschatzminister).
BAUER, OTTO (1881- ), Austrian politician, was born Sept. 5 1881, the son of a Viennese manufacturer. He
entered the faculty of jurisprudence at the university of
Vienna, devoting himself especially to the study of economics,
principally under Bohm-Bawerk. As a student he took an active
part in the work of the Social Democratic party, and was early
a zealous contributor to the Arbeiler-Zeilung. He served in the
campaign of 1914, and was a prisoner of war in Russia from 1915
to 1917. After his return to Vienna he was elected a member of
the committee of the Social Democratic party, and became the
leader of the increasingly influential Left group. After the
revolution he succeeded, in Nov. 1918, his master Viktor
Adler as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In this capacity he
energetically supported the idea of the union of German Austria
with Germany. During the peace negotiations at St. Germain
in July 1919 he retired from his office, but remained until
Oct. a member of the Socialization Commission. He subse-
quently became one of the most conspicuous leaders of the
Social Democratic party in the Constituent National Assembly
and in the National Parliament (Nationalrat), his speeches
dealing mainly with financial questions, such as the tax on capi-
tal, and foreign affairs.
His works are: Die Nationalitatenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (1908); Die Teuerung (1911); Balkankrieg und Deutsche Welt- politik (1912); Die russische Revolution und das europaische Prole- tariat (1917); Bolschewismus oder Sozialdemokratie? (1920).
BAVARIA, a territory and free state of Germany (see 3.543). The pop. of Bavaria, with which Coburg had voluntarily
united in 1920, was, according to the census of 1919, 7,i4>333;
without Coburg 7,066,024, in 1910 6,887,291.
Political History, 1910-21. The two last years of the life of the Prince-Regent Luitpold were characterized by an in- tensification of internal political conflicts which arose from the increasing estrangement between the Podewils Government and the majority of the Diet (Landtag) consisting of the Catholic Centre party.
In the summer of 1910 Minister of Finance von Pfaff had suc- ceeded without much difficulty in passing an important measure of taxation reform by the vote of the non-Socialist parties and had thus been able to introduce a general income tax in order to consolidate the financial position of the country. But the resistance with which, in the following year, the Minister of Communications, von Frauen- dorfer, and the whole Cabinet met the demand of the Centre for the suppression of the South German Railway Men's Union, on the ground of its alleged Socialist tendencies, soon led to an open con- flict between the majority and the Government. On Nov. 8 1911 the majority of the Finance Committee of the Diet refused to dis- cuss with Frauendorfer the vote for the estimates of his department. The Government, in the hope of solving the conflict and relaxing the strain of the internal situation, induced the aged Regent to order the dissolution of the Diet. This was done on Nov. 14. For the elections which took place on Feb. 5 1912, the Liberal parties, the
Social Democrats and the Bavarian Farmers' League (Bayerischer Bauernbund) concluded an alliance the effect of which was that only one candidate was set up by the allied parties in each constituency against the candidate of the Centre. The Podewils Cabinet resigned on the day of the elections in order to give the Crown a free hand according to the results. These results did not fulfil expectations. The Centre returned an absolute majority in the Diet, although their allies, the Conservatives, came back with much less than half their former strength. The Liberals, the Social Democrats and the Farm- ers' League gained seats, but not enough to overthrow the Clerical- Conservative majority.
The Prince-Regent entrusted the university professor, Dr. Baron von ftertling (afterwards Chancellor of the German Empire 1917-8), who also sat in the Reichstag in Berlin as a member of the Catholic Centre party, with the formation of a ministry. Baron von Hertling acted in the sense of his commission; he selected two of the leading members of the Centre and filled the remaining posts with politically colourless officials. The hope that the elections would have relieved the strained condition of internal politics was not at first fulfilled. On the contrary the controversy about the treatment of the South German Railway Men's Union was further embittered by the issue of an ordinance which demanded from the workers on the railways the signature of a paper certifying their loyalty ; and the issue of a secret ordinance on toleration of the exercise of priestly functions by members of the Jesuit Order, which was still forbidden by a Law of the empire, roused the opposition to the Hertling Ministry to increased violence. By a decision of the Federal Council of Nov. 28 1912 disavowing this secret edict of the Bavarian Government, the controversy about the Jesuits was eliminated, but new subjects of conflict soon arose.
On Dec. 12 1912 Prince-Regent Luitpold died in his ninety- second year. His son Louis assumed the regency, and took the oath to the constitution on Dec. 21.
The movement for ending the regency (which had lasted since 1886 and was due to the insanity of King Otto) and conferring the royal dignity upon the Regent, coincided in point of time with the bill introduced by the Government for increasing the Civil List from 4-2 to 5-4 million marks (270,000). After protracted debates, by which the internal conflicts of the country were intensified, the Diet on Oct. 30 1913 passed, by a majority of 122 against 27 Social Democratic votes, an amendment to the constitution ending the regency and enabling the Prince-Regent, Louis, to assume royal authority. After the Upper Chamber had given its assent, Prince Louis issued a proclamation on Nov. 5 announcing his assumption of the crown. The demand for the increase in the Civil List was granted by the Diet on Nov. 21 against a minority of 50 Liberals and Social Democrats.
The War Period. The truce to party politics (Burgfrieden), which had completely silenced political conflicts at the outbreak of the war, continued as an after-effect, to mitigate them. In 1915 the edict regarding the declaration of loyalty to be signed by the railway -men was withdrawn ; in 1916 the Minister of the Interior, von Soden, who was widely attacked on the ground of his agrarian food policy, was replaced by the former Minister of the Interior, von Brettreich, while Gen. von Hellingrath replaced Gen. von Kress as Minister of War. In the later years of the war, when discontent due to the oppressive war burdens was accompanied by increasingly powerful efforts to carry domestic reform, resolutions of the Social Democrats in favour of proportional representation, a parliamentary regime, and the abolition of the Upper Chamber were repeatedly rejected by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies; but the Government promised at least to introduce a bill for the overdue reform of the Upper House (Kammer der Reichsrate). On Nov. 10 1917 Count (as he had now become) Hertling resigned the presidency of the Ministry in order to assume the office of chancellor of the empire. He was succeeded by Herr von Dandl, hitherto chief of the Civil Cabinet of the King.
The imminence of the revolution, a consequence of the discontent excited by the increasing burdens imposed by the war, made itself felt as far back as Jan. 1918 in Bavaria as in the empire. The band of Independent Socialists led by the Social Democratic newspaper editor, Kurt Eisner, did not succeed, it is true, in launching a general strike of munition workers, but there were demonstrations in Niirnberg and Fiirth and also in Munich, leading in some cases to street conflicts. Eisner himself and a number of his partisans were arrested and kept in custody with a view to their trial. He was set at liberty only by the political amnesty which the Government of Prince Max
