During the period of serious labor unrest that broke out in the industrial areas of the Ruhr valley and Upper Silesia in early 1919, Severing was appointed state commissioner with the task of defusing the situation.

During his three terms in office, he worked to democratize both the Prussian administration and its police force, primarily by removing officials who were not supporters of a republican form of government.

He attempted to build a strong police force in the conviction that its use would lead to less violence and fewer deaths than would the Reichswehr when confronting internal unrest such as the 1921 central German uprising.

In the aftermath of World War II, Severing was contacted by and worked with the Allied occupation authorities and again became active in the SPD, but he never played a leading role because the party wanted a wholly new start.

Although politics played no role in Severing's family, Carl showed an early interest in the socialist labor movement after a colleague introduced him to its goals.

In the so-called "Hottentot election", the Social Democrats lost a considerable number of voters and seats after they were branded as "enemies of the Reich" for opposing what came to be known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide in German South West Africa.

In the party committee in 1915, he denied SPD co-leader Hugo Haase the right to express his critical opinions and in 1916 attacked Karl Liebknecht, an outspoken opponent of the war, with polemical and partly false accusations.

[9] Supported by the regional Social Democratic press, he succeeded in swearing the Bielefeld-Wiedenbrück SPD to the course of the party majority around its moderate pro-war co-leader Friedrich Ebert.

[12] Due in large part to the close involvement of the SPD in local politics, Bielefeld was considered the quietest industrial city in Germany during the November Revolution of 1918 that brought down the Hohenzollern monarchy.

The program of the People's and Soldiers' Council that Severing had developed was aimed solely at maintaining public order and ensuring provisions; it involved no political claims.

Severing was elected as a delegate to the first Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in Berlin, where he was one of the three chairmen of the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD),[13] the main group of the SPD after the USPD split off in 1917.

Both the Reich and Prussian governments wanted to have a politician who would minimize the use of force while working with the military commander in Münster, General Oskar von Watter.

Since the Prussian government had come to value him as a crisis manager, it temporarily sent him to the industrial areas of Upper Silesia, and in the Ruhr his duties were extended to include neighboring regions.

Efforts then began to form a coalition in Prussia that would include the SPD and German People's Party (DVP) in place of Stegerwald's minority government.

Braun and Severing's attempt to take action against illegal Reichswehr units failed as well, largely due to the resistance of General Hans von Seeckt.

The crisis was overcome under the new Reich government led by Gustav Stresemann of the German People's Party (DVP), in which the SPD initially participated at Severing's instigation.

Marx failed within his own ranks, partly because politicians from the right wing of the Centre Party such as Franz von Papen refused to follow the government due to its support for Severing.

Along with Otto Braun and Rudolf Hilferding, he succeeded in persuading the 1927 SPD party congress to adopt a resolution that sought to win positions of power at all political levels.

[48] The office of Reich minister of the interior had considerably less scope for shaping policy than the post in Prussia, especially since administration and police were largely a matter for the states.

In spite of Severing's personal disagreements with Grzesinski at the Prussian Interior Ministry, Prussia and the Reich cooperated more intensively than ever in domestic politics during the grand coalition.

[52][53] In view of the developments on the extreme left and right, Severing felt that it was necessary to pass an extension of the Law for the Protection of the Republic (Gesetz zum Schutze der Republik), which expired on 22 July 1929.

Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party had introduced a compromise proposal that was close to the DVP's position and would have meant an overall shift to the right in social policy.

Severing pushed for acceptance in order to save the government, arguing that the compromise would be better than leaving the Republic to the right-wing parties, but he was unable to convince the majority of the SPD.

They believed that the first presidential government (one that used constitutional emergency decrees issued by President Paul von Hindenburg to override Reichstag opposition) was the lesser evil in the face of the strengthened National Socialists.

Severing's return to office gave the majority of supporters of the Republic hope that the fight against the political extremes would be successful, while the far right took the appointment as a provocation.

A pretext for the so-called Preussenschlag was found in the 17 July 1932 Altona Bloody Sunday, a confrontation between police, supporters of the KPD and the Nazi SA that left 18 people dead.

He was the last SPD politician to make a campaign speech on the radio, although his efforts did nothing to change the party's loss of votes in the July 1932 Reichstag election.

In the final phase of the Republic, Severing was one of the few leading Social Democrats to advocate support for the new Reich chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, as a means to forestall Hitler.

They planned the founding of a workers' party for the post-Hitler period that would overcome the previous division of the labor movement into Christian, Communist and Social Democratic contingents.

Due to the death of his wife, Severing was unable to attend the Wennigser Conference at which Kurt Schumacher asserted his claim to leadership of the SPD in the Western zones.