known as the "Königsberg secret society trial". Braun was defended by fellow East Prussian Social Democrat Hugo Haase, who in the process revealed the cooperation of the Prussian police with the Russian secret service Okhrana. The evidence against Braun was not considered substantive by the court, and he was acquitted. In 1898 Braun became chairman of the East Prussian SPD and in 1905 assumed his first party office at the Reich level as a member of the Control Commission. In 1911 he moved up to the Reich Executive Committee of the SPD as chief treasurer where he remained until 1917. In 1913 he won a seat in the Prussian House of Representatives which he kept until 1933. Although he initially belonged to the left wing of the party, as an autodidact he was very different from the often highly educated Spartacists and Communists. He found their argumentation too unworldly, too theoretical and too little oriented toward practical and attainable goals. He once criticized Rosa Luxemburg for her "insufferable schoolmasterly manner". In 1895, commenting on discussions in the party about an agrarian program, he said that "for practical agitation the draft offers nothing. There, as in the whole debate, they argued doctoral questions." After the party rejected the draft, he said, "So let us leave our program, which has already helped us over many a mountain and led to many a victory, completely untouched for the time being, and let us not tinker around with it so much; that can lead to no good results. But it is different with our tactics, which on the basis of our program have to adapt naturally to the respective conditions in all locations." During World War I, Braun sided with the SPD's more moderate wing that supported the Reichstag's Burgfriedenspolitik, which was intended to prevent domestic political disputes during the war. When the left wing of the SPD split off in 1917 to form the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), Braun stayed with the majority in the MSPD. He participated in the organization of the strike of January 1918, in which 400,000 workers, primarily in munitions plants, unsuccessfully went on strike. At the end of the war and the start of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, he became a representative of the MSPD on the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council, which was set up on the pattern of Russian soviets. With Braun's