bavarikon4UThe Hof USPD Politician Max Blumtritt (1877-1931), 1925
Two out of three deputies who entered parliament for the USPD after the elections of the Bavarian Parliament on 12 January 1919 came from the Upper Franconian Hof. One of them was Max Blumtritt (1877-1931), born in Burg near Magdeburg, who would be a member of parliament until his death. In 1925, his portrait and biographical data were included in the Official Handbook of the Bavarian State Parliament. The trained wood sculptor Blumtritt came to Hof in 1909, where he first worked as editor of the social-democrat Oberfränkische Volkszeitung. In 1911, he became chairman of the Hof Social Democrats; in the same year, he entered the city council for his party. In 1917, the Social Democrats of Hof joined the USPD under his leadership.
Despite this particular political constellation, the revolution in Hof was not significantly different from the rest of Bavaria. On 10 November, Blumtritt proclaimed the Socialist Republic in front of thousands of farmers on the Hallplatz and was elected chairman of the workers’ and soldiers’ council formed by acclamation. Afterwards, the participants of the meeting marched through the city and took over public control without resistance. The rapidly increasing unemployment in the immediate post-war period led to isolated riots in Hof in February, culminating in the occupation of the town hall and of the editorial office of the bourgeois Hofer Anzeiger. Even though the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils of Hof joined the "Bavarian Soviet Republic" proclaimed on 7 April, the situation in Hof remained calm. The fact that on 1 May 10,000 people demonstrated against the bloody suppression of the soviet movement in southern Bavaria and, at the same time, protested against the implementation of communism with violent methods shows that the city of Hof and the Unabhängigen Sozialdemokraten had taken a neutral stand around Blumtritt.