transfer of de facto governmental power to Hirsch. On 10 November Ebert found himself forced to form a joint government, the Council of the People's Deputies, with representatives of the Independent SPD (USPD), a more leftist and anti-war group that had broken away from the original united SPD in 1917, and to enter into an alliance with the council movement, a form of council communism. On 12 November 1918 commissioners from the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Greater Berlin, including Paul Hirsch, Otto Braun (MSPD) and Adolph Hoffmann (USPD), appeared before the last Deputy Minister President of Prussia, Robert Friedberg. They declared the previous government deposed and claimed the management of state affairs for themselves. On the same day the commissioners issued instructions that all departments of the state should continue their work as usual. A manifesto, "To the Prussian People!", stated that the goal was to transform "the old, fundamentally reactionary Prussia ... into a fully democratic component of the unified People's Republic." Revolutionary cabinet On 13 November the new government confiscated the royal property and placed it under the Ministry of Finance. The following day, the Majority and Independent Social Democrats formed the Prussian revolutionary cabinet along the lines of the coalition at the Reich level. It included Paul Hirsch, Eugen Ernst and Otto Braun of the MSPD and Heinrich Ströbel, Adolph Hoffmann and Kurt Rosenfeld of the USPD. Almost all departments were under ministers from both parties. Hirsch and Ströbel became joint chairmen of the cabinet. Other non-partisan ministers or ministers belonging to different political camps were also included, such as the Minister of War, initially Heinrich Schëuch, then from January 1919 Walther Reinhardt. The narrower, decisive political cabinet, however, included only politicians from the two workers' parties. Since the leadership qualities of the two chairmen were comparatively weak, it was mainly Otto Braun and Adolph Hoffmann who set the tone in the provisional government. Political change and its limits On 14 November the Prussian House of Lords () was abolished and the House of Representatives dissolved. The replacement of political elites, however, remained limited during the early years. In many cases the former royal district administrators () continued to hold office as if there had been no revolution. Complaints against them by the workers' councils were either dismissed or ignored by Interior Minister Wolfgang Heine (MSPD). When conservative district administrators themselves requested to be dismissed, they