Gustav Kahr, born in 1862 into a Protestant family of pastors and civil servants, began his legal studies in 1881 at the University of Munich. After his studies , like his father, who later became president of the Bavarian Administrative Court, Kahr pursued a career in public service. As a young civil servant, Kahr was able to make a favorable impression quickly, in part thanks to his talent for organization: There was especially great appreciation for his efforts in efficient repair of damages after a tornado in 1894 and later on, in 1902, when he arranged a highly regarded ethnographic exhibition in Kaufbeuren.
He was soon appointed to work in the Bavarian Department of the Interior. There, as a senior civil servant, he was responsible for the building and construction industry, but he also served as advisor for the incipient Deutsche Museum (a science and technology museum in Munich) and was active in the new movement to protect German cultural heritage. Once again he advanced in his professional career, reaching a preliminary high point in 1912, when he was appointed to the Council of State. As Deputy Minister of Interior, he now held considerable political sway as a senior official, and he grew still more influential during WWI due to the scarcity of personnel and new administrative duties. In 1917, after a change of Minister, Kahr obtained the position, for which he had striven, as new District President of Upper Bavaria.
While in this position, the November Revolution took place one year later: This revolution confirmed for Kahr, who was a staunch monarchist, the defeat of the German Reich and the downfall of the kingdom in Bavaria. For Kahr, as a career civil servant, however, the experience was more traumatic due to the breakdown of public order. Kahr traced the riots of the Munich Soviet Republic back to the affirmation of democratic ideals in November 1918. He believed that the introduction of the principle of parliamentary majority had already led to the revolutionary excesses. “Free reign to the shouters” – this is how Kahr characterized the democratic order in his Memoirs (Kahr, Memoirs, p. 815). Hence, in 1919, the coalition of all groups “seeking to preserve the state” under a single, non-partisan organization seemed obvious to Kahr: He vehemently encouraged the militias that were forming, thus bringing about a political constellation that paved the way for him to become State Premier of Bavaria.
For when, in the wake of the Kapp Putsch, the militias also triggered the downfall of the social-democratically led cabinet of Johannes Hoffmann, no leading politician of the Bavarian People’s Party was ready to take over the government. In the end, Georg Heim and Georg Escherich persuaded Kahr, as the driving force in the background, to take this step, thereby ringing in the era of State Premiers who were civil servants with little political experience. Of course, Kahr offered himself initially only for a transitional period, and then in June 1920 after the election victory of the middle-class parties, he decided to remain in office over the long term.
From this point on, Kahr took stronger political initiatives and started to reorganize Bavaria in keeping with his own ideas as a “’cell of order’ of the Reich,” i.e., as a bulwark against Bolshevism, It was the radical right-wing groups, such as the NSDAP, which was taking shape at that time, who profited most from this, since, as opposition to the political Left they could count on extensive toleration of their activities. In this context, it must be attested that the State Premier even actively assisted the criminally prosecuted perpetrators of the Kapp Putsch in fleeing justice.
The main issue during Kahr’s era in government was, of course, Bavaria’s unrelenting resistance to the disbanding of the militias, which was being demanded by the victorious powers. In order to maintain the militias, the cabinet rejected all mediation opportunities offered by the Reich government for a long time. The coalition began to have its doubts about Kahr, however, when he was forced to cede to the pressure in May 1921 and consented to the disarmament – which, however, turned out to be merely a sham. In September 1921, the Bavarian People’s Party fraction was no longer willing to continue to go along with Kahr’s confrontational politics: They almost unanimously accepted a negotiation proposal on the decree to protect the republic of the Reich, forcing the State Premier to step down immediately.
This setback, however, scarcely decreased Kahr’s actual influence: Although the politician, who once again served as president of the government, had to accept the distancing of the moderate forces, he could be all the more sure of the support of the right-wing spectrum, which celebrated his unwillingness to compromise as a strength of character. As a result, Kahr went even further in identifying himself with the role of a confidant of the patriotic movement, which he saw as bringing together Bavarian conservatives and German nationalists – as well as some of the National Socialists. From then on, he used every opportunity to promote this project, which was linked to his leadership ambitions: initiating the funeral ceremony for the last royal couple in November 1921 and organizing a reception for Hindenburg in August 1922, he was responsible for pompous demonstrations of “patriotic” Bavaria. By the fall of 1922, however, the much-vaunted united front began to crumble: several organizations withdrew their allegiance from the nationalist organizations, instead joining the emerging Combat League (Deutscher Kampfbund) under Hitler’s leadership. Although Kahr tried to counteract this with more frequent public appearances, he could not stop the process.
As such, the position of the former State Premier was already weakened when the government appointed him State Commissioner General on September 26, 1923. Wielding powers not provided for in the constitution, Kahr was to prevent the collapse of public order in the face of hyperinflation and the risk of upheaval – so the Bavarian government hoped. But these hopes were quickly dashed when Kahr sought to exploit his new powers to pursue more far-reaching plans: subject to certain conditions, he was even prepared to actively promote the establishment of a dictatorial imperial government, immediately causing Bavaria to become embroiled in several serious conflicts with the Reich. With Kahr reluctant to take the final “plunge” from the point of view of the combat units, Hitler decided to stage an open coup of his own – the Munich Putsch.
On November 8, Hitler took advantage of a mass Kahr rally at the Bürgerbräukeller to quickly proclaim himself the political leader of the Reich, forcing the General State Commissioner to join the venture before the assembly. After his release, however, he retracted his statement and violently suppressed the uprising the next day.
As one of those responsible for the escalation, Kahr had now made an enemy of almost all political camps, leading to his resignation as State Commissioner General in February. His hardly credible behavior during the Hitler trial further diminished his already badly damaged prestige. Since a continuation of his political career was out of the question, Kahr ensured his continued service in the state administration, serving as president of the Administrative Court until his retirement in 1930.
The National Socialists certainly did not forget the "betrayal of 1923" and took brutal revenge after seizing power in 1933: in the course of the so-called ‘Röhm Affair’, Kahr was murdered by the SS near Dachau Concentration Camp on June 30,1934.
