Provenance and early years Wilhelm Joseph Blos was born at
Wertheim am Main during the aftermath of the
1848 uprisings, the son of a physician who had moved away from the big city on account of his delicate health. Aloys Blos died from an incurable lung disease in 1856, when his son Wilhelm was just seven years old. His children's mother almost immediately remarried, selecting on this occasion a forester. Wilhelm and his sister acquired a step-father who abused Wilhelm. In 1863 he went to live with his grandparents. His grandfather died almost at once, but his grandmother attended to his education. At university he also joined the
Corps Rhenania (student fraternity).
Journalist: satire and socialism After just three terms Blos was obliged by lack of funds to abandon his university career. He turned to journalism. Between 1870 and 1875 he led a somewhat itinerant career, working for a succession of
Social Democratic publications. After a brief period contributing to the "Konstanzer Volksfreund" he was on the receiving end of an indictment under the press laws. Meanwhile, in 1872, in
Nuremberg, he became a member of the recently launched
Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), which is widely seen as the precursor of the
SPD. After that he got to know
August Bebel and
Wilhelm Liebknecht at
Eisenach. After Bebel, Liebknecht and
Adolf Hepner were all arrested and subjected to a
show trial, it fell to Blos to take charge of the editorship of the
Leipzig-based
Der Volksstaat (newspaper). However
Hepner was found to be "as innocent as a new-born child" – in the words not of the court but, much later, of
August Bebel – and released (while his two co-accused each received a two-year jail term). In 1874, still working at
Volksstaat. it was Blos who was arrested and sentenced to a three-month jail term for "press offences". Following his release, still in 1874, Blos met
Karl Marx, who was visiting Leipzig with his daughter on the way home from
a cure at
Karlsbad.
More journalism: more politics In 1875 Blos founded his own magazine, the weekly satirical "Mainzer Eulenspiegel". However, it was apparently in connection with this publication that he was very soon indicted and locked up. His incarceration appears to have been brief, but "Mainzer Eulenspiegel" seems not to have survived. In May 1875 he attended the
Gotha Unification Congress which gave birth to the
Social Democratic Party (SDAP / SPD). He participated as the delegate representing no fewer than 125 party members from
Mainz and
Gartenfeld. In the national parliamentary
elections of 1877 and
1881 (but not
1878) he won the electoral district of
"Reuss Elder Line" for the
SDAP / SPD.
Expulsion In Fall/Autumn 1875, Blos started work at the
Hamburg-Altonaer Volksblatt, a socialist daily paper newly launched by the politician-journalist
Wilhelm Hasenclever. He stayed with the newspaper as a contributing editor – initially alongside the worker-poet
Jacob Audorf – till 1880. He was also working between 1878 and 1881, alongside
Ignaz Auer at the short-lived "Gerichtszeitung" (
loosely, "Court Reporter" newspaper). The so-called
"Socialist Laws" of 1878 put an end to many socialist and social democratic newspapers and magazines, though as matters turned out the effectiveness of press censorship was very variable in the different regions of the
newly "united" Germany. Its headquarters was in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1887 a conservative commentator wrote that "... Messrs
Geiser, Blos and
Frohme, whose political output mostly appears in the Dietz Press, have the same interests ... The application over many years of their moderate journalism is naturally not without influence on the wider thinking [among social democrats].
Politics and journalism under the ban In 1884
Dietz and Blos revived
"Der wahre Jacob". Production of the satirical magazine now continued in Stuttgart without further interruption till 1914. Wilhelm Blos contributed frequently under his pseudonym "Hans Flux", though the job of editor-in-chief now passed to others. During the second half of the 1880s, parliamentary duties combined with other journalistic responsibilities to detain him in Berlin. He served as editor-in-chief at the
Berliner Volksblatt between 1884 and 1890. Many Social-Democratic publications were banned under the "Socialist Laws" during this period: a fine line was pursued under the editorial leadership of Wilhelm Blos whereby the "Berliner Volksblatt" narrowly avoided that fate. After 1890 the newspaper was relaunched and in 1891 rebranded as "
Vorwärts". Blos stayed on briefly as co-editor-in-chief, sharing duties with
Wilhelm Liebknecht. The
1884 general election was unusual in that three candidates were elected for more than one electoral districts: of whom two had stood successfully as
SDAP / SPD) candidates. One was
Wilhelm Hasenclever: Wilhelm Blos was the other. Elected by voters in both
"Reuss Elder Line" and
Braunschweig central, and required to choose, he chose a move to
Braunschweig, forcing a bye-election in Reuss a few weeks later. Despite having been the youngest member of
parliament when first elected, back in 1877, Wilhelm Blos never became a stellar parliamentary performer. He n3vertheless delivered several notable speeches over the years, especially with regard to worker protection. He was, in addition, known as an advocate for a parliamentary alliance between the
SPD and the
Liberals, and as a supporter of political and social reform.
Chronicler of a liberal dawn? 1890 was a year of political change: two linked developments, in particular, were important for the future of Social Democracy in
Germany In January 1890
parliament, since
1887 dominated by
liberals and
centrists, refused to renew the
"Socialist Laws" which, accordingly, lapsed. In March 1890
Chancellor Bismarck finally resigned, with a show of reluctance that may very well have been unfeigned. Blos turned increasingly to historical research and other projects of penmanship. His publications from this period include two "socially critical" novels, translations and works of the revolutions of 1848/49. There were also various autobiographical contributions with a strong political slant. Horst Krause shares his verdict: "His writing of history certainly did not reveal him a great scholar of the subject ... but it was enough to demonstrate basic historical competence when it came to identifying the key personalities in the Social Democratic movement, both among his party colleagues and more widely, and by connecting with a broad readership ... he did contribute significantly to the shaping of contemporary political perspectives".
Anna In 1905 Wilhelm Blos, by now in his mid-50s, married
Anna Berta Antonia Blos Tomasczewska (1866-1933), the daughter of a military physician from
Lower Silesia. Her conservative upbringing made her, on the face of things, an effective
Württemberg politician. By 1905 she had become a respected figure in the
Social Democratic Party and a prominent leader in the increasingly mainstream (at least on the political left)
"votes for women" campaign. The marriage was followed by the birth of the couple's son.
Revolution Following the outbreak of the
post-war revolution, on 9 November 1918 Wilhelm Blos was installed "by the revolution" as minister-president of what became, shortly afterwards, the
Free People's State of Württemberg. By this time Blos was 69, and had retired from active politics in order (he said) to concentrate on journalism. It is apparent that he had never aspired to lead the government. His intention on 9 November 1918 was simply to accompany
his (much younger) politician-wife to a meeting of the Württemberg
SPD party executive committee. When the meeting grew boring and he found there was nothing for him to do, Blos returned home, but after lunch his wife appeared and asked him to return with her to the "Landtagsgebäude" (
"parliament building"), where the parliamentarians were keen to ask his advice. Their walk to the parliament building took them past the royal palace where the king could be seen on the steps, and there were groups of people excitedly talking together in the forecourt. Others, it turned out, had already entered the palace and requested the king, respectfully through the good offices of one of his servants, that the royal flag should be lowered and a red flag raised in its place. The king had refused the request, and one soldier had been beaten up when attempting to enforce his refusal. Nevertheless, by the time Blos walked past with his wife a red flag fluttered from the royal palace. Although the bloodied soldier in question was the only person to shed any blood over the affair, by the standards of the Württembergers the revolution was in full swing. Thanks to the length of his parallel careers in journalism and politics, Wilhelm Blos was very much a "known quantity" for many of those who selected him to head up the Württemberg provisional government. The choice was also a reflection of his political moderation. Even within the
Soldiers' Soviet, most of the foot-soldiers of
the "German revolution" were not longstanding "Bolsheviks" as their frightened enemies might suppose, but simply hungry and desperate ex-soldiers, home from a war that had been disastrously lost, who found themselves without prospects and without jobs. Blos was a figure around whom both "radical democrats" and many "bourgeois traditionalists" might hope to find common ground. The provisional government formed on 9 November 1918 comprised at this stage both
"Independent" Social Democrats and
"mainstream" Social Democrats. Two days later, on 11 November 1918, the
"Blos provisional government" was joined by ministers from two of the more
"centrist" and
left-leaning "bourgeois parties". During the evening of 9 November 1918,
King William II of Württemberg was escorted by a delegation of revolutionary workers to the safety of his relatively remote hunting lodge at the former
Abbey of Bebenhausen. Wilhelm Blos died on 6 July 1927 at the municipal hospital of
Bad Cannstatt (
Stuttgart). == Celebration (selection) ==