Hermann Müller (18 May 1876 – 20 March 1931; ) was a German Social Democratic politician who served as foreign minister (1919–1920) and was twice chancellor of Germany (1920, 1928–1930) during the Weimar Republic.
Müller rose quickly through the ranks of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) after joining it in 1893. He was elected to the Reichstag of the German Empire in 1916 and to the Weimar National Assembly in 1919. In his capacity as foreign minister, he was one of the German signatories of the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919).
During the three months Müller was chancellor in 1920, his government passed a number of progressive social reforms before it had to resign due to the Social Democratic Party of Germany's (SPD) poor showing in the 1920 election. In his second term as chancellor, from June 1928 to 1930, he led a grand coalition through a period marked by budgetary and international relations issues. The coalition broke apart after the onset of the Great Depression, and Müller, already suffering from poor health, died a year after leaving office.
Hermann Müller was born on 18 May 1876 in Mannheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden, the son of Georg Jakob Müller (born 1843), a producer of sparkling wine and wine dealer from Güdingen near Saarbrücken, and his wife Karoline (née Vogt, born 1849, died after 1931), originally from Frankfurt am Main. Müller attended grammar school at Mannheim and, after his father moved to Niederlößnitz in 1888, at Dresden. After his father died in 1892, Müller had to leave school due to financial difficulties and began an apprenticeship in Frankfurt. He worked in Frankfurt and Breslau, and in 1893 joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Heavily influenced by his father's interest in the philosophy of the critic of Christianity Ludwig Feuerbach, Hermann Müller was the only German chancellor who was not a member of any religion.
Before 1918: entry into the SPD and Reichstag
From 1899 to 1906, Müller worked as an editor at the socialist newspaper Görlitzer Volkswacht. He was a member of the Görlitz city council from 1903 to 1906 and a party functionary (Unterbezirksvorsitzender). August Bebel, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) chairman, nominated him in 1905 (without success) and 1906 (successfully) for membership of the board of the national SPD. At that time, Müller changed from a left-wing Social Democrat to a centrist, who argued against both the Marxist reformists such as Eduard Bernstein and the radical Left around Rosa Luxemburg. Together with Friedrich Ebert, Müller in 1909 created a party executive committee that was to deal with internal arguments between party conventions. Known for his calm, industriousness, integrity and rationality, Müller lacked charisma. In 1909, he tried but failed to prevent Otto Braun's election to the board, laying the foundation for a long-running animosity between the two.
As a result of his foreign language skills, Müller was the representative of the SPD at the Second International, an organisation of socialist and labour parties, and at the conventions of socialist parties in other countries in western Europe. In late July 1914, during the July Crisis that led up to the outbreak of World War I, Müller was sent to Paris to negotiate with French socialists over a common stance towards the respective countries' proposals for war loans. No agreement was reached, however, and before Müller was able to report back, the SPD had already decided to support the first war loans in the Reichstag in the belief, fostered by the German government, that the war was purely defensive.
During World War I, Müller supported the political truce between Germany's political parties known as the Burgfrieden. He was used by the SPD leadership to deal with arguments with the party's left wing and as an in-house censor for the party newspaper Vorwärts to avoid its outright ban by the military authorities. After he was elected to the Reichstag in a 1916 by-election, he supported both the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia and the entry of the SPD into the government of Max von Baden in October 1918. Baden was named chancellor after the army leadership decided that it could get better peace terms from the Allies and deflect the blame from itself for the lost war if the government was democratised and the socialists – whom they blamed for the loss – brought into it.
1918 to 1919: revolution and National Assembly
During the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Müller was a member of the Greater Berlin Executive Council of Workers and Soldiers (Vollzugsrat der Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte Groß-Berlin) where he represented the position of the SPD leadership arguing in favor of elections to a constituent national assembly instead of the creation of a council republic as the more radical members of the Council wanted. He later published a book on his experience during the revolution.
In January 1919, Müller was elected to the Weimar National Assembly, which was to be Germany's interim parliament and draft a new constitution. In February, the Assembly elected Friedrich Ebert president of Germany and appointed Philipp Scheidemann as minister president (head of government). The two men had been the joint chairmen of the SPD, and Müller and Otto Wels were elected as their replacements with 373 and 291 out of 376 votes, respectively. Wels focused on internal leadership and organisation, whilst Müller was the external representative of the party. In 1919 and 1920–1928, Müller was also parliamentary party leader first in the Weimar National Assembly and then the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. He was chosen chairman of the Reichstag's Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1920, he won a seat in the Reichstag for Franconia (Franken in German) and changed his name to Müller-Franken to distinguish himself from other members named Müller.
After Philipp Scheidemann resigned in June 1919 because he could not accept the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Müller was asked to succeed him as head of government but declined. Under the new Reich Minister President and later Chancellor Gustav Bauer, Müller became foreign minister on 21 June 1919. In that capacity, he went to Versailles and with Colonial Minister Johannes Bell, signed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany on 29 June 1919.
After the resignation of the Bauer cabinet, which followed the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in March 1920, Müller accepted Ebert's offer of becoming chancellor and formed a new government that was a continuation of the Weimar Coalition made up of the SPD, German Democratic Party (DDP) and Centre Party. Under his leadership, the government suppressed the left-wing insurgencies such as the Ruhr uprising and urged the disarmament of the paramilitary Einwohnerwehren (Citizens' Defence) demanded by the Allies. The newly created second commission on socialisation, which was tasked to examine ways of socialising parts of the German economy, admitted some members from the left-wing USPD because Müller felt that it was the only way workers would be willing to accept the commission's decisions. In social policy, Müller's time as chancellor saw the passage of a number of progressive social reforms. A comprehensive war-disability system was established in May 1920, while the Law on the Employment of the Disabled of April 1920 stipulated that all public and private employers with more than 20 employees were obligated to hire Germans disabled by accident or war and with at least a 50% reduction in their ability to work. The Basic School Law (passed on 28 April 1920) introduced a common four-year course in primary schools for all German children. Benefits for the unemployed were improved, with the maximum benefit for single males over the age of 21 increasing from 5 to 8 marks in May 1920. Maximum wage scales that were established in April 1919 were also increased.
On 29 March 1920 the Reichstag passed a Reich income-tax law, together with a law on corporate tax and a capital-yield tax. The Salary Reform Act, passed in April 1920, greatly improved the pay of civil servants. In May 1920, the Reich Office for Labour Allocation was set up as the first Reich-wide institution "to allocate labor, administer unemployment insurance and generally manage labor concerns". The Reich Insurance Code of May 1920 provided war-wounded persons and dependent survivors with therapeutic treatment and social welfare with the objective of reintegrating handicapped persons into working life. The Cripples' Welfare Act, passed that same month, made it a duty of the public welfare system to assist cripples under the age of 18 to obtain the capacity to earn an income. The Reich Homestead Act, passed in May 1920, sought to encourage homesteading as a means of helping economically vulnerable groups. The Reich Tenant Protection Order of 9 June 1920 sought to check evictions and "an immoderate increase of rental rates", authorising the states to set up tenancy offices made up of tenants' and owners' representatives, with a judge as chairman to settle disputes concerning rents. As noted by Frieda Wunderlich, they were entitled "to supervise the fixing of rents for all farms". During Müller's last year in office, a number of orders were introduced that "confirmed and defined the protective measures taken in connection with the employment of women in certain work of a particularly dangerous or arduous nature", which included glass-works, rolling mills, and iron foundries (through orders of 26 March 1930).