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Shortly after Maximilian went ahead and unilaterally announced Emperor Wilhelm’s abdication of both the Imperial and Prussian crowns, as well as the renunciation of Crown Prince Wilhelm, Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SPD, appeared in the Reichskanzlei and demanded that the government be handed over to him and the SPD, as that was the only way to keep up law and order. In an unconstitutional move, Prince Max of Baden resigned and appointed Ebert as his successor.

On the same day, Philipp Scheidemann spontaneously proclaimed Germany a republic in order to placate the masses and prevent a socialist revolution. When Maximilian later visited Ebert to say goodbye before leaving Berlin, Ebert – who urgently wanted to keep up the old order, improving it through parliamentary rule, and head a legitimate, not a revolutionary government – asked him to stay on as regent (Reichsverweser). Maximilian refused and, turning his back on politics for good, departed for Baden.

Although events had overtaken him during his tenure at the Reichskanzlei and he was not considered a strong Chancellor, Max is seen today as having played a vital role in enabling the transition from the old regime to a democratic government based on the majority parties and the Reichstag.

This made the government of Ebert that emerged from the November revolution acceptable to some conservative forces in the bureaucracy and military, which was one of Ebert’s strongest aims. They were thus willing to ally themselves with him against the more radical demands by the revolutionaries on the far-left.

Later life and death

Maximilian spent the rest of his life in retirement. He rejected a mandate to the 1919 Weimar National Assembly, offered to him by the German Democratic politician Max Weber. In 1920, together with Kurt Hahn, he established the Schule Schloss Salem boarding school, which was intended to help educate a new German intellectual elite.

Max also published a number of books, assisted by Hahn: Völkerbund und Rechtsfriede (1919), Die moralische Offensive (1921) and Erinnerungen und Dokumente (1927).

In 1928, following the death of Grand Duke Friedrich II, who had been deposed in November 1918 when the German monarchies were abolished, Maximilian became head of the House of Zähringen, assuming the dynasty’s historical title of Margrave of Baden. He died at Salem on November 6, the following year.