In March 1920, faced with its imminent disbanding by orders of the government in Berlin, the Marine Brigade was one of the main supporters of the Kapp Putsch that tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

[1] About 300 officers and professional soldiers of the former Imperial Navy, including Corvette Captain (Korvettenkapitän) Hermann Ehrhardt, then armed themselves and stormed the barracks using rifles and machine guns.

[3] The Reich government then decided to raise volunteer troops in Wilhelmshaven to fight other soviet republics such as the one in Bremen that lasted until 4 February 1919.

Wilhelmshaven was chosen because it was a former port of the Imperial Navy and full of soldiers, many of whom were opposed to radical leftist efforts to set up communist governments in Germany.

On 13 February 1919 an advertisement appeared in the Wilhelmshaven daily newspaper Die Republik of the Majority Social Democrats, the party that led the Reich government in Berlin.

In the course of further growth and the formation of new units, it was transferred on 30 March 1919 to Jüterbog south of Berlin and divided into the 3rd and 4th Marine Regiments and a brigade staff.

[6] The brigade's first deployment took it to Braunschweig on 17 April 1919, where it joined units of the Maercker Free Corps in preventing the attempt to establish a soviet republic there.

The brigade's advance into Munich without command orders to do so led to fierce street fighting in which the combined government units crushed the workers' uprising.

After the coup collapsed, Vice Chancellor Eugen Schiffer built "golden bridges" for Lüttwitz, Ehrhardt and Kapp to persuade them to surrender peacefully.

The new Reichswehr leader Hans von Seeckt spoke highly of the brigade's discipline in a daily order issued on 18 March and the next day assured Ehrhardt in writing of protection from arrest.

[11] A large part of it was taken into the German Navy (Reichsmarine) as "reliable cadres"; many of the rest went underground in various organizations including the Union of Former Ehrhardt Officers, the Viking League (Bund Wiking) and the Sport Club Olympia.

[12][13] The badge was made of silver tinplate and showed, within an egg-shaped rope, a Viking ship sailing with a single man at the helm.

After the brigade was disbanded, successor organizations continued to use the insignia in a modified form with the inscription "Wilhelmshaven" replaced by "Ehrhardt".

From about October 1919 members of the brigade adorned themselves with anti-Semitic markings, such as when they wore swastikas on their helmets returning from operations against the insurgents in Upper Silesia.