The Grand Duke abdicates
On 9 November 1918 a workers' and soldiers' council formed in a Weimar pub, a newspaper editor drafted the abdication, and by that evening the monarchy in Weimar was over.
The end of the Weimar monarchy took a single afternoon and evening, and the man who wrote it was not a politician but the editor of the local Social Democratic paper.
A council in a pub
The revolution reached Weimar on the afternoon of 9 November 1918, and it began in licensed premises: a workers' and soldiers' council constituted itself in a public house called the Bürgerhof.[1] Nothing about the setting was ceremonial. Power in a small residence town changed hands in the room that happened to be available.
The man who wrote it
Heinrich Fischer edited the Social Democratic Volkszeitung, and as soon as the council existed he sat down and drafted the document by which Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst would give up his throne. A working journalist wrote a monarch out of office in an afternoon.
Half past four, the Rotes Schloss
A delegation of soldiers carried the draft to the grand-ducal government, finding its ministers in the rooms of the Kultusdepartement in the Rotes Schloss at half past four. Around eight that evening Wilhelm Ernst put his name to it twice over: once on a formal chancery deed, and once on Fischer's draft itself.[1] He was the first of the Thuringian princes to go.
What came next, three months later
The family left the residence town rather than meet the revolution on the street, pausing at Schloss Allstedt to the north before moving on to Schloss Heinrichau in Silesia. In February the assembly that would write Germany its first democratic constitution sat down in the theatre, in the same small town.
Sources
- Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst dankt ab — Klassik Stiftung Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Historical figures
Historical figures
1876–1923 • grand duke • patron
He signed the deed around eight in the evening, having been handed it at half past four.
Period
1918–1933
The republic in Weimar begins here: the monarchy ended in the town on the evening of 9 November 1918, three months before the assembly convened.
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
On 6 February 1919 the assembly elected to write Germany a constitution met for the first time, in a court theatre eleven years old. Weimar was chosen because Berlin was too dangerous.
The assembly met because the monarchy had fallen three months earlier — in Weimar, on the evening of 9 November 1918.