[1][2][3][4] One high-point of his career as a journalist was his one-year stint as editor-in-chief of the (initially) Hamburg-based popular left-wing satirical magazine Der Wahre Jacob between 1879 and the publication's (temporary) closure, triggered by expulsion of William Blos from Hamburg in October 1880.

[5] Wilhelm Joseph Blos was born at Wertheim am Main during the aftermath of the 1848 uprisings, the son of a physician who had moved away from the big city on account of his delicate health.

[2] He became a pupil at the (subsequently renamed and rebuilt) Lyceum (secondary school) in Wertheim, his hometown, located slightly above 100 km to the north of Stuttgart.

After Bebel, Liebknecht and Adolf Hepner were all arrested and subjected to a show trial, it fell to Blos to take charge of the editorship of the Leipzig-based Der Volksstaat (newspaper).

However Hepner was found to be "as innocent as a new-born child" – in the words not of the court but, much later, of August Bebel – and released (while his two co-accused each received a two-year jail term).

[12] Hamburg and the adjacent (but at that time determinedly separate) more proletarian municipality of Altona were both robustly opposed to the centralising tendencies of the emerging German nation-state, and both had powerful traditions of political liberalism and radicalism of their own.

Publication ended in October 1880 when Blos – along with Dietz and Audorf – was among the approximately 75 social-democrat activists deprived of residency entitlement in Hamburg and Prussia by "government authorities".

It turned out that the persecution to which Social Democrats were prey across the German empire during the twelve years of the "Socialist Laws" was very much less intense in the Württembergisch capital than it had been in Hamburg.

Berlin and Prussia felt far away: for the eventful final four and a half decades of his life, the Stuttgart region became home for Wilhelm Blos.

[4][13] At Stuttgart he took work as a proof reader on Die Neue Zeit, Dietz's (at that time) monthly socialist theoretical journal of the SPD.

The party was deeply divided, since the subject of a government backed international mail-boat network was clearly enmeshed in wider discussion of whether and how far Germany should be seeking to emulate the global imperialism of France and Britain.

There are two parties, one global and the other parochial: that is how the thing will develop"[16][a] In 1887 a conservative commentator wrote that "... Messrs Geiser, Blos and Frohme, whose political output mostly appears in the Dietz Press, have the same interests ...

Many Social-Democratic publications were banned under the "Socialist Laws" during this period: a fine line was pursued under the editorial leadership of Wilhelm Blos whereby the "Berliner Volksblatt" narrowly avoided that fate.

1890 was a year of political change: two linked developments, in particular, were important for the future of Social Democracy in Germany In January 1890 parliament, since 1887 dominated by liberals and centrists, refused to renew the "Socialist Laws" which, accordingly, lapsed.

[21] Horst Krause shares his verdict: "His writing of history certainly did not reveal him a great scholar of the subject ... but it was enough to demonstrate basic historical competence when it came to identifying the key personalities in the Social Democratic movement, both among his party colleagues and more widely, and by connecting with a broad readership ... he did contribute significantly to the shaping of contemporary political perspectives".

By 1905 she had become a respected figure in the Social Democratic Party and a prominent leader in the increasingly mainstream (at least on the political left) "votes for women" campaign.

Party leaders prepared to support the war were motivated both by traditional patriotism and by the widely shared terror of the military build-up in the Russian Empire which, if left unchecked for another couple of years, would free up the Tsar to impose on Germany the brutal autocracy under which many millions already suffered.

In return, there was an understanding in some quarters, that when it was over Germany's ruling establishment would back SPD demands for a more democratic voting system in place of the infamous "Dreiklassenwahlrecht" which was designed to privilege voters with large amounts of land and money.

In his own record of what happened next, included in a book three years later, Wilhelm Blos indicates that it was only with reluctance, and after some delay, that he shared his insights with the meeting.

Even within the Soldiers' Soviet, most of the foot-soldiers of the "German revolution" were not longstanding "Bolsheviks" as their frightened enemies might suppose, but simply hungry and desperate ex-soldiers, home from a war that had been disastrously lost, who found themselves without prospects and without jobs.

[29] During the evening of 9 November 1918, King William II of Württemberg was escorted by a delegation of revolutionary workers to the safety of his relatively remote hunting lodge at the former Abbey of Bebenhausen.

[25] The next day there were no protests from any of the "bourgeois traditionalist" members of the previous (i.e. pre-revolutionary) government over the king's decision to release them from their oaths of office by telephone.

In the words of the "Schwäbisches Tagblatt" (newspaper) "the revolutionary movement had been in no sense directed against the person of the king, but against the monarchical system, which had been made bankrupt under [Emperor] Wilhelm II of Hohenzollern".

A couple of days after the abdication, agreement was reached with the provisional government under the terms of which the former king would receive a relatively generous annual pension of 200,000 marks.

Perhaps this was one reason why all the ministers in the provisional government led by Blos, including even those who were members of the leftist Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, voted unanimously in favour of the king's pension.

Five weeks later, in recognition that Württemberg no longer had a king at the apex of the political hierarchy, Wilhelm Blos lost his title of "minister-president", becoming instead "Staatspräsident" (loosely, "state president").

A new constitution for Württemberg was formally adopted by the assembly on 23 May 1919: it came into force on 25 September 1919, ten days ahead of Wilhelm Blos' seventieth birthday.

Wilhelm Blos was replaced as "Staatspräsident" by the "Democratic-Liberal", Johannes von Hieber,[11][29] who would, on taking office, pay generous tribute to the "calm and dignity, combined with clever prudence, wisdom and decisiveness" that his predecessor had displayed as leader of the government.

[4] Blos and his wife had lived in a "service apartment" in Stuttgart's "Old Castle" while he was head of government: following Wilhelm's resignation from office they were permitted to remain.