Georg Gradnauer (16 November 1866 – 18 November 1946) was a German newspaper editor and politician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the first elected Minister-President of Saxony following the end of the monarchy.
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Education and early career
Born in Magdeburg, Gradnauer earned a PhD in 1889, and became editor of the Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung (later Dresdner Volkszeitung), the SPD paper in Saxony, in 1891. A relative moderate within the Saxon SPD, he was replaced as editor by radicals Alexander Parvus and Julian Marchlewski in 1896. Gradnauer subsequently moved to the SPD's Berlin paper, Vorwärts, where he worked from 1897 with fellow reformists Friedrich Stampfer and Kurt Eisner, until 1905, when they were ousted in favor of editors from the SPD's left wing. Gradnauer then returned to head the Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung once more, meanwhile renamed Dresdner Volkszeitung, and remained in that role until the outbreak of the German Revolution in 1918. In parallel with this newspaper work, he served as an SPD delegate to the Reichstag, in two stints: 1898 to 1907, and 1912 to 1918.
Later political career
After taking an active role in the German Revolution in Saxony, Gradnauer initially served as Minister of Justice in the new republican government of Saxony in 1918, and soon succeeded Richard Lipinski as Minister of the Interior and chair of the provisional government. The SPD won a plurality of the votes in the first Saxon elections under the Weimar Republic, on February 2, 1919, and Gradnauer ended up forming a minority government, becoming Saxony's first constitutional Minister-President on March 14. His minority government was formed after an attempt to form a coalition with the Independent SPD (USPD) foundered over the USPD's demand for recognition of workers' councils, and Gradnauer's preferred alternative, a coalition with the German Democratic Party (DDP), was rejected by the majority of SPD delegates.