Friedrich Ebert Jr.

Friedrich "Fritz" Ebert Jr. (12 September 1894 – 4 December 1979) was a German socialist and later communist politician, the son of Germany's first president Friedrich Ebert. He was originally a Social Democrat like his father before him, but is best known for his role in the foundation of East Germany's ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, in which he served in various positions.

Born in Bremen, Ebert underwent an apprenticeship as a printer from 1909 to 1913. In 1910, he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth and in 1913 the SPD. From 1915 to 1918, he fought in the First World War. Of his three brothers, Ebert Jr. was the only survivor.

In 1920, he married Johanna Elisabeth Vollmann, three years his junior, with whom he had two children, Friedrich and Georg. His wife committed suicide in 1938.

During the Weimar Era, Ebert worked for various social democratic newspapers. From 1919 to 1925 he was an editor for Vorwärts, from 1923 to 1925 he worked for the Social Democratic Press Service, and from 1925 to 1933 he was an editor for the Brandenburger Zeitung.

Ebert's career in electoral politics began in 1927 when he was elected to the Brandenburg an der Havel City Council. In 1930, he became City Council Chairman, and the same year he joined the board of the Association of German Cities for the Province of Brandenburg. He was also a member of the SPD district board for Brandenburg-Grenzmark. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1928, representing the Potsdam I constituency, and in April 1933 joined the Prussian State Council representing Brandenburg. He lost all elected positions after the Nazis came to power and banned the SPD in June 1933.

Ebert was also active in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, serving as chairman of the Brandenburg state group in 1928.

On 21 February 1933, three weeks after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, Ebert published an open letter to Paul von Hindenburg. In it he pointed out to the Reich President, among other things,

"...that he had fought and bled for three years under Hindenburg's command. Two of his brothers had fallen in front of Monastir and on the Chemin des Dames. In response to Hitler's claim that fourteen years of Marxism had ruined Germany, Ebert's son recalls the letter that Hindenburg wrote to his father on December 8, 1918, in which he addressed Ebert as a loyal German man with whom he had allied himself to save the people from impending collapse. Finally, Friedrich Ebert asks why nothing was being done to save his father's honor and why his deceased colleagues, Stresemann and Hermann Müller, had also remained defenseless, before whose coffins Hindenburg had bowed his aged head in reverence."