Auer was born the illegitimate son of a seamstress from an already social democratic family. He worked at the age of twelve as a farm labourer. At the age of fifteen, Auer was one of the co-founders of an immediately banned agricultural labor movement. After his military service, he achieved a remarkable social rise. As a messenger, he joined in 1896 in a Munich trading house and reached in the course of time through intensive training a senior position. In 1900 he entered the service of the Ortskrankenkasse München. This position he gave in 1908 due to his numerous political obligations. In the First World War Auer was a soldier.
Auer was viewed as the great rival of socialist Kurt Eisner who was shot dead in Munich by a German nationalist on February 21, 1919. Auer was viewed as the best hope to fend off a Bolshevik Revolution. To Auers role during the strike with Krupp in January 1918 Ernst Toller writes in " A youth in Germany"The" leader of the legal socialists "Auer had appeased the workers:" For days the strike lasted until the right-wing socialist parliamentarians took control of the leadership, promising the war minister to strangle the strike. Shorty after which the strike collapsed. Before that, a delegation will be elected to "hand over the demands of the strikers to the minister with all seriousness and with all vigor". The leader of the legal socialists Auer appeased the dissatisfied workers by vouching for the fulfillment of their demands, promising that he would lead the delegation to the minister, that no one who participated in the strike would be fired and no one punished. In the morning, the strikers gathered for a final rally on the Theresienwiese, the train moves into the city and dissolves at Karlsplatz. After the resignation of Georg von Vollmar Auer was elected as his successor. On November 8, 1918, the provisional National Council of Bavaria elected a revolutionary government of MSPD and USPD with Kurt Eisner as Prime Minister and Erhard Auer as Minister of the Interior. Auer, who also belonged to the Weimar National Assembly, like the majority of the Bavarian MSPD leadership, endeavored to close as soon as possible a coalition with the Bavarian People's Party and the Liberals, as was also done at the federal level with the Weimar coalition. In the state elections of January 12, 1919, the USPD suffered a crushing defeat and Eisner wanted to declare his resignation as Prime Minister at the inaugural session of the Diet on February 21, 1919 but was shot on the way to the parliament building by Count Anton von Arco-Valley. It then came to riots in the state parliament, in which Erhard Auer shot by the left-wing extremist Alois Lindner and the Major Paul Ritter von Jahreiß was killed. The conservative MP Heinrich Osel also died of a gunshot wound, but the perpetrators remained unclear in this case.
Weimar Republic and National Socialism
After his recovery, he was operated on by Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Auer took over the chairmanship of the SPD parliamentary group. From 1919 to 1933 he was city councillor in Munich, from October 1922 to 1933 editor at the Munich Post. In the mid-1920s, Auer campaigned for a reformist orientation of the new SPD policy program . He was one of those Social Democrats who tried to strongly oppose the rise of the fledging Nazis. On March 17, 1922, he spoke at one of Bavaria's Interior Minister Franz Xaver Schweyer convened meeting as the sole party chairman in the state parliament against expulsion of Adolf Hitler to Austria. In response to the Hitler coup in 1923, Auer prompted the formation of social democratic self-protection groups, the so-called Auer-Garden, which were later transferred to the " Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold ". After the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP Auer initially went underground and fled to Innsbruck. A short time later, however, he returned to Munich. On May 9, 1933, he was severely abused by the National Socialists in the Munich City Council and imprisoned in the prison Stadelheim. After his release, Auer was banned from visiting Munich and subsequently forced to change his whereabouts and employment. In connection with the assassination attempt of Hitler on 20 July 1944 Auer, now seriously ill, was again arrested, imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp and probably relocated to Giengen with an ambulance because of the advancing Allied troops, where he died March 20, 1945.
Honors
In Munich-Neuhausen, the Erhard-Auer-Straße is named after him. 1929: Honorary citizen of the city of Penzberg for his services to the elevation of Penzberg to the city
