Ernst Heilmann

Ernst Heilmann was a German jurist and politician of the Social Democratic Party during the Weimar Republic. He rose to prominence as a proponent of the German party truce (Burgfriedenspolitik) during the First World War. From 1921 he was leader of the SPD's parliamentary group in Prussia, Germany's largest state, where he played a key role in stabilising the moderate democratic Weimar Coalition that governed the state until July 1932. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1928 and was prominent in the party press during the rise of the Nazis.