Talk:Saxony in the German Revolution (1918–1919)

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Page needs to be rewritten

I plan to do a major rewrite of this page, so this is a heads-up in case anyone has objections or suggestions.

The issue is that if there ever was anything that could be called a Soviet Republic of Saxony – and I searched every German language source I could find, including Google Books and JSTOR, and found no unambiguous references to such a state – it was limited to the period at the beginning of the revolution, under the workers' and soldiers' councils. It didn't come back in March 1920, and when the KPD entered the legally-constituted Saxon government in October 1923, it was not a return of a 'soviet republic'. The article bases much of its scope on the brief Alpha History article, but even though I usually trust the site for the basics, in this case it's simply wrong.

In the rewrite I plan clean up the early 'soviet' section as much as I can and keep some of the 1923 material as a sort of postscript to the soviet's part in the history of communism in Saxony, making it clear that it was something completely different. The period is thoroughly covered in German October anyway. GHStPaulMN (talk) 13:40, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I started completely from scratch on the rewrite. All material is fully sourced. For the info box, I deleted the flag, map, motto and anthem because there is no authentication that they were used, and the map is the work of a Wikipedian that also can't be authenticated. GHStPaulMN (talk) 11:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Restoring flag, etc. to info box

@TheGreaterAdenz I explained above why I deleted the flag, map, etc. I could find no source that said they were ever used, nor anything that supports that there was a defined amount of territory claimed. I suspect that the flag / anthem were originally added simply because such symbols do tend to go along with soviet republics. But given the fractured nature of the 'republic' in Saxony -- it was no more than a few councils in major cities -- using them in the info box gives the 'republic' decidedly more status than it had historically.

That's my reasoning for having deleted them; what was yours was for restoring them? Thanks, GHStPaulMN (talk) 11:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey @GHStPaulMN, I understand why you removed these.

I honestly though that somebody deleted them for no reason, and so I decided to restore them. But now I understand.

Thank you, TheGreaterAdenz. TheGreaterAdenz (talk) 11:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Flag for a republic that never existed?

@Raketelli

I still have two issues with the flag. The minor one is that "Flag of Saxon republic.gif" obviously comes from https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de-sn920.html, but how reliable of a source is that? Since I'm not a flag expert, I don't have a good answer, but it can't be as reliable as, say, a published book.

My major issue goes back to my 20 June 2023 talk page entry "Page needs to be rewritten" where I questioned if there ever was a Soviet Republic of Saxony. Because of the flag issue I took another look, and I would say now with about 98% confidence that the answer is no. For one thing, the Alpha History article that the earlier Wikipedia page was based on has been taken down – which leaves Wikipedia (and notably not the German wiki) the only source anywhere for a Soviet Republic of Saxony. I searched everywhere I could think of to find something substantial and came up with nothing. There is no mention of it in any of the major histories of the Weimar era (Winkler, Mommsen, etc.) and nothing in the English or German Wikipedia pages on the history of Saxony. It is mentioned in a very few German language books that I found through Google searches but only in the context of someone proclaiming it in the first hours of the revolution in Saxony. After that, there's nothing. It's very much like Karl Liebknecht proclaiming the "Free Socialist Republic of Germany" in Berlin. He proclaimed it, but it never came about. It was the same way in Saxony. There were workers' and soldiers' councils like there were everywhere in Germany, but they were dominated by the moderate MSPD that wanted a parliamentary republic, and the radicals who wanted a soviet republic were quickly pushed aside. Saxony became the parliamentary Free State of Saxony in the same way the old Reich became the Weimar Republic.

I'm seriously considering requesting a name change for this article to something like "German Revolution in Saxony", so to anyone reading this, please add your thoughts.

As for the flag: Raketelli, since a name change would take a while and the flag gives easy visual credence to an entity that in all likelihood never existed, I would recommend removing it until the issue is settled. That's your call, though. GHStPaulMN (talk) 13:18, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Request to rename to "Saxony in the German Revolution (1918–1919)"

I am proposing that the page "Soviet Republic of Saxony" be renamed to "Saxony in the German Revolution (1918–1919)". The reason is that my fairly exhaustive searches have found no clear proofs that there ever was a Soviet Republic of Saxony. Wikipedia alone seems to say that it existed now that the Alpha History article 'The Saxon Soviet' on which the early Wikipedia article was largely based has been dropped. The few places where it is referenced, such as the citation in "List of Communist states" to Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution, state only that the Soviet Republic was proclaimed but don't go on to say that it ever came about. There were workers' and soldiers' councils in Saxony like there were everywhere in Germany at the time, but they were dominated by the moderate MSPD that wanted a parliamentary republic, and the radicals who wanted a soviet republic were quickly pushed aside and never achieved their goal. After a brief period under the councils, Saxony became the parliamentary Free State of Saxony in the same way the German Empire became the Weimar Republic.

With the renaming, I would remove the infobox from the renamed page and make a few minor adjustments to the text. I would also remove links to the Soviet Republic of Saxony in the infoboxes of the pages Dresden, German Revolution and Kingdom of Saxony; and remove the links from the lists in List of German Flags, List of Communist states, Revolutions of 1917–1923 and List of sovereign states in the 1910s. A link to the new name could be added to Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, German Revolution, Weimar Republic, Saxony, History of Saxony, Richard Lipinski, Georg Gradnauer, Hermann Fleissner, Gustav Neuring and Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker. In the more general pages such as the Weimar Republic and Saxony, though, it wouldn’t be a particularly good fit, even just under "See also", so the total number of links would probably be only about 6 or 7.

Please join the discussion here on renaming this page. GHStPaulMN (talk) 15:32, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Since there have been no responses for a week, I will make the name change tomorrow 7 March 2024. GHStPaulMN (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)