For a month, a Central Council (soviet) under Ernst Niekisch held governmental power. Then, on 7 March 1919, the new leader of the Socialists, Johannes Hoffmann, an anti-militarist and former schoolteacher, managed to patch together a parliamentary coalition government, but a month later, on the night of 6–7 April, Communists and anarchists, energized by the news of a left-wing revolution in Hungary declared a Bavarian Soviet Republic (BSR), with Ernst Toller as chief of state. Toller called on the non-existent "Bavarian Red Army" to support the new dictatorship of the proletariat and ruthlessly deal with any counter-revolutionary behavior.[1][16][17]