Up to this time the Majority Socialists, by stealing the thunder of the Independents and acting with a good deal of resolution, had kept themselves in the center of the stage. The real makers of the revolution, the Independents and Spartacans, had been confined to off-stage work. It was Liebknecht, with his instinct for the theatrical and dramatic, who now came to the front. A vast crowd had gathered around the royal palace. It was made up in part of the "class-conscious proletariat," but in large part also of the merely curious. Liebknecht, accompanied by Adolf Hoffmann[31] and another left wing Socialist, entered the palace and proceeded to a balcony in the second story, where, lacking a red flag, he hung a red bed-blanket over the rail of the balcony and then delivered an impassioned harangue to the crowd below. The real revolution, he declared, had only begun, and attempts at counter-revolution could be met only by the vigilance of an armed proletariat. The working-classes must arm themselves, the _bourgeoisie_ must be disarmed. Hoffmann, who spoke briefly, said that he was enjoying the happiest and proudest moment of his life. While he was still speaking a red flag was hoisted over the palace, to the cheers of the people gathered around the building. [31] Hoffman was for several years a member of the Prussian Diet and prominent in the councils of the Social-Democratic party. Although a professed atheist and unable to write a sentence of his mother-tongue without an error in spelling or grammar, he became under the first revolutionary government Prussian Minister of Education (_Kultusminister_), with charge over the church and schools. Hoffman left the old party at the time of the split in 1915, and has since been an abusive and virulent enemy of his former colleagues. He distinguished himself in the Diet chiefly by disregard of the ordinary amenities of civilized intercourse and parliamentary forms. Speaking from the speaker's rostrum in the Diet, with his back to the presiding-officer--after the usual European custom--he would utter some insult to the royal house, the authorities in general, one of the _bourgeois_ parties of the house or one of the members. He appeared to know instinctively whenever his remarks were inadmissible, for he would pause, hunch up his shoulders like one expecting to be struck from behind, and wait for the presiding-officer to ring his bell and call him to order. A few minutes later the same scene would be reenacted.