the Soviet Army in an attempt to rebuild the German armed forces beyond the limitations of the Versailles Treaty. The revelation led to the fall of the third government of Wilhelm Marx (Centre Party). Mayor of Kassel Scheidemann was elected Mayor of Kassel on 19 December 1919, succeeding Erich Koch-Weser. He held office until 1925. From the beginning of his term he had to defend himself against accusations from the bourgeois parties in Kassel who said that a craftsman's son did not have the qualifications for the office and accused him of neglecting his tasks in Kassel because of his Reichstag mandate. Similar criticism eventually came from the SPD. In Kassel's municipal elections on 4 May 1924, the SPD suffered a serious defeat which gave the bourgeois parties a majority in the city parliament. A motion of no confidence against Scheidemann passed, but it was not legally binding. The conflict continued until the district president finally intervened. As a result of his mediation, Scheidemann left office on 1 October 1925. After that he concentrated on his Reichstag duties. He also wrote a number of books, including his autobiography in two volumes, Memoirs of a Social Democrat (1928). Scheidemann as embodiment of the enemy to the Republic's opponents Scheidemann was an embodiment of the "Weimar system" for both the extreme right and left. Taking advantage of the ambiguity of his surname, the term "Scheidemann" was used as an invective against supporters of the Republic ('Scheide' can mean either 'scabbard' or 'vagina'). After such usage had become common among militaristic-nationalist circles during the World War, the Spartacus League used it with an appeal to the workers and soldiers of Berlin on 10 November 1918, when socialists in the government were defamed as "Scheidemänner" ('Scheide men') who had "hounded" the working class into war. On Whit Sunday, 4 June 1922, while Scheidemann was mayor of Kassel, an attempt was made on his life. During a walk with his daughter, Hans Hustert (who would later be an SS adjutant to Heinrich Himmler) and Karl Oehlschläger sprayed him in the face with prussic acid. The third man who took part in the assassination attempt is said to have been Erwin Kern, one of the men who murdered Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau three weeks later. Scheidemann survived the assassination attempt because strong winds prevented the perpetrators from spraying him so that the poison entered his mouth