Friedrich Ebert rose from humble beginnings and became the first President of Germany.

He was born on Feb. 4, 1871, in Heidelberg. His mother was named Katharina. His father, Karl, was a tailor. The Eberts eventually had nine children; of those, Friedrich was the seventh. Even though the boy wanted to go to college, his family didn't have the money to make that happen and so when he became a teenager, he trained as a saddle maker. He became a journeyman, traveling around the country plying his trade. Through an uncle he discovered the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and joined that political institution in 1889. He lived in various places for a few years before settling in Bremen in 1891. After doing odd jobs for a couple of years, Ebert got a job as a journalist. He married Louise Rump in 1894.

Ebert bought a pub, which became a meeting place for unionists and other political activists. He got himself elected party chairman of the Bremen chapter of the SDP. He gained wider recognition and rose through the ranks, becoming Secretary-General of the party in 1905.

He ran for a seat in the legislative body, the Reichstag, several times. During his few runs, the SDP had little representation; dominating the Reichstag at that time were the National Liberal Party and the Centre Party. In 1890, the SDP received the most votes of any political parties, but that vote total did not translate into the most seats in the Reichstag. It wasn't until 1912 that the SDP won the most seats; in that same year, Ebert won a seat, representing Elberfeld-Barmen. Ebert and Hugo Haase were co-chairmen.

Along with many others, Ebert supported Germany's going to war in 1914. That support did not waver as the war progressed. Things changed in 1917, however, with the advent of the Russian Revolution, the withdrawal of Russia from the war, and the downturn in Germany's fortunes. The SDP splintered, into two groups. Ebert presided over the existing gathering, which came to be called the Majority Social Democratic Party (MSPD). A significant number of SDP members, however, had had enough of the war and the emperor and left to form their own entity, the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), led by SPD Chairman Hugo Haase.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, the nominal head of government but no longer really an emperor, refused to enact any reforms. Seeing the discontent growing stronger, he fled to Belgium. In his place came the Council of the People's Deputies, under the leadership of Ebert and Haase. Ebert briefly served as Chancellor, as the government phased into a new form.

On Jan. 19, 1919, voters elected members to a Constituent National Assembly. Familiar political parties such as the SPD and the Centre Party strove for influence, as did the new USPD and a small handful of other new parties. The SPD garnered the most seats in the new Assembly, 165 of a possible 423. To form a government, the SPD joined with the Centre Party and one of the new parties, the German Democratic Party. The National Assembly met in the Thuringian town of Weimar. The new governmental blueprint, which came to be known as the Weimar Constitution, a Reich President served as head of government; taking up that role was Ebert. Leading the Assembly was Prime Minister Philipp Scheidemann.

Ebert won the first presidential election, on Feb. 11, 1919, easily, garnering 73 percent of the vote. Electing him were not the people at large but the National Assembly, which thought that it needed a head of government right away.

All of this took place under the shadow of the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I. The fighting had stopped on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, but negotiations of the terms of the treaty dragged on. The details of these terms became public in May 1919, and many Germans opposed the acceptance of the treaty, viewing it as a humiliation and, especially in the case of the Guilt Clause, unfair. Allied leaders threatened to continue the war if Germany did not sign and accept the treaty; after consultation with the head of the armed forces, Paul von Hindenburg, Ebert urged the government to accept the treaty, which it did, signing on June 28, 1919.

An election for president was set to happen in June 1920. Hindenburg put his name forward as a candidate, seeking to oppose Ebert, but the election didn't occur because a military coup took control of Berlin and declared Wolfgang Kapp, a prominent government official, president. In the resulting civil unrest, a general strike led to violence in the streets and an uprising by Communist forces. The coup government collapsed, and troops arrested Kapp. He died in prison, awaiting trial for reason. A resurgent Reichstag extended Ebert's term of office for another five years.

In 1925, Ebert's health took a turn for the worse. He had struggled off and on for years with various maladies. He became severely ill in February of that year and, after undergoing an emergency appendectomy, died, in Berlin on February 27, of septic shock. He was 54.

Ebert and his wife had had five children, three of whom survived him: Friedrich (1894), Karl (1899), and Amalie (1900). The other two children, George and Heinrich, born in 1896 and 1897, respectively, both died in 1917. Louise died in 1955.