The Free Corps unit emerged in the fight against revolutionary sailors who proclaimed the Wilhelmshaven Soviet Republic on January 27, 1919. Its commandant was Hermann Ehrhardt, a captain of a corvette, who put down the uprising with about 300 members of the former Imperial German Navy. Shortly after, on February 17, 1919, the Scheidemann government gave Erhardt the task of setting up a mobile force, the Second Marine Brigade Wilhelmshaven. Its role was to eradicate other local ‘internal trouble spots’ and to be deployed in ‘border security’.
On April 29, 1919 the Free Corps , which by then had grown to 1,500 men and become known as the Erhard Brigade, marched into Munich. According to the General Commander, Ernst von Oven, the Brigade “brought with it the most experience” for the “particularly difficult battle” in Munich. After the operation in Munich, the Brigade put down a strike in Berlin and then an uprising of Poles in Upper Silesia. There it expanded to 4,000 men with Baltic fighters of the “Lindau Assault Company” and German Baltic troops from the Petersdorff Battalion. When the government demanded the disbandment of the Erhardt Brigade, in March 1920 it marched to Berlin under the command of General Lüttwitz to overthrow the government. After the failure of this coup, known as the Kapp Putsch, in spring 1920 Erhardt fled to Munich where with his supporters he founded the Organisation Consul (O.C.).
