Owing to the changes in the relative strength of parties, it was several weeks before a cabinet could be formed; and after several politicians had attempted in vain to form a new cabinet, Konstantin Fehrenbach, one of the most respected leaders of the Clerical Party, succeeded in doing so. What might have been an extremely unstable parliamentary position was avoided by the good sense shown by the German People's Party, who were led by Gustav Stresemann. The German People's Party decided to abandon their position of opposition and their association with the Conservatives, and agreed to unite with the Clericals and Democrats to form a government. The Majority Social Democrats would not actually join a ministry which included the German People's Party, but they agreed to lend the new government their general support in the Reichstag. Thus it came about that twenty months after the revolution an entirely non-Socialist government came into power in Germany, though it was true that the new government depended partly upon the support of the Majority Social Democrats, whose moderation, however, made them more comparable to the Radical-Socialists of France and to Radicals in other countries, than to the Socialist parties of most other countries in Europe. Fehrenbach was born in 1852 and entered the Bavarian parliament as a Catholic and a representative of Freiburg when he was about thirty years of age. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1903 and he became president of that house in 1918. And in 1919 he became president of the National Assembly.