Eduard Heinrich Rudolph David

As a young grammar school teacher, Eduard David founded (1893) the "Sozialistische Mitteldeutsche Sonntagszeitung"; but his affiliation with the Social Democrats soon cost him his state employment. In a series of articles in August-September 1894 he criticized traditional Marxian theory as it applied to small farmers, thus somewhat anticipating the first works of his more famous revisionist colleague Eduard Bernstein. Elected to the Reichstag in 1903, David soon became a leading spokesman for parliamentary social democracy and subsequently played a crucial role in the formulation of his party's support of the imperial government during World War I. On the eve of the armistice he was appointed undersecretary of the foreign office (October 1918). At the second meeting of the National Constituent Assembly, David was elected its president (7 Feb 1919), but he had to give up the office when he joined the Cabinet of Philipp Scheidemann as minister without portfolio (13 Feb 1919 - 21 Jun 1919). In the next governments of Gustav Bauer and Hermann Müller, David assumed the office of interior minister (21 Jun 1919 - 3 Oct 1919) and continued as minister without portfolio (3 Oct 1919 - 24 Jun 1920). Biography source: [1]