Original, period postcard from Duesseldorf-Oberbilk, showing the Spartakisten barricades. Anything from Duesseldorf during the revolution is very rare. After the Kaiser abdicated at the end of WWI, the Communists (Usually called Spartakisten or Spartacists, but really meaning any left-leaning group) seized power in a number of cities (so-called Spartakus Putsch), only to be deposed by right-wing counter-revolutions and/or the newly forming national government, with the help of volunteer 'Freikorps', or Free Corps fighters, many of whom went on to form the core of the right wing National Socialists who subsequently infiltrated and consumed the Weimar government.