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PHASES OF THE GERMAN SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT

PHASES OF THE GERMAN SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT. Primitive/heroic (until 1890): The movement suffers repression; strikes are often acts of desperation, sometimes erupt in violence, and often fail.

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PHASES OF THE GERMAN SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT

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  1. PHASES OF THE GERMAN SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT • Primitive/heroic (until 1890): The movement suffers repression; strikes are often acts of desperation, sometimes erupt in violence, and often fail. • “Negative integration” into society (1890-1914): The movement is tolerated and develops a skilled cadre of paid functionaries and a huge network of newspapers, workers’ libraries, consumers’ cooperatives, etc. Trade unions develop large strike chests, time their strikes carefully, and often achieve success. Socialists are still excluded, however, from any share of political power. • Schism during World War I between democratic socialists who pursue “positive integration” and communists pursuing the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

  2. DISTRIBUTION OF THE GERMAN POPULATION BY SIZE OF MUNICIPALITY Germany crossed the threshold from a predominantly agricultural to a predominantly small town and urban society in the 1890s….

  3. THE GROWTH OF THE “PROLETARIAT” * Mostly wives working in their husbands’ farm or small business. ** Workers paid a monthly salary, not hourly wages, including clerks, salespeople, technical employees, and foremen.

  4. FOLLOWING THE “GREAT DEPRESSION” A “SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION” BEGAN IN THE MID 1890s The Siemens Corporation and German General Electric began to electrify the country, while the automobile and petrochemical industries were born….

  5. BUT REAL WAGES STAGNATED:Average rate of annual increase of nominal wages for workers, real wages, and the cost of living The food tariff increases of 1892 and 1902 depressed the living standard of German workers. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Band III: 1849-1914 (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1995), p. 777.

  6. WEEKLY CONSUMPTION OF CERTAINFOODS BY WORKING-CLASS FAMILIES IN 1905

  7. Johann Bahr, “Accident in a Machine Factory” (ca. 1890)

  8. The AEG small motors factory, Berlin, 1908: The growth of large-scale enterprise created a true industrial proletariat

  9. The AEG adding machine factory, Berlin, 1908:Women still comprised just 16% of the industrial work force and showed less interest than men in trade unions

  10. HOURLY WAGES OF GERMAN SKILLED ANDUNSKILLED WORKERS IN 1913 (PENNIES) Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin discerned the rise of a “labor aristocracy” in the coal mines, steel mills, and metalworking factories….

  11. Pickets before a mine entrance during the Ruhr coal miners strike of 1905, whenthe miners were united.

  12. In 1912 Ruhr miners read a government decree authorizing the police to open fire on picketers

  13. Unions and strikes remained illegal for government employees (such as these railway workers), servants, and farmworkers

  14. A working-class neighborhood in Berlin with its “Rent Barracks” [Mietskasernen]

  15. A working-class tenement house, Berlin, 1909

  16. Street scene in a working-class neighborhood, Berlin, ca. 1903

  17. RULES POSTED AT THE ENTRANCE OF A RESPECTABLE BERLIN HOUSE IN 1900 • “Servants and delivery boys may only use the outside stairs.” • “Main stairway only for ladies and gentlemen.” • “Begging and peddling forbidden.”

  18. An old iron forge, now a dormitory for unmarried workers(Berlin, 1906)

  19. A working-class kitchen, Berlin, 1907

  20. Working-class children, on their own (Berlin, 1912)

  21. The Prussian Drill Instructor (1885):“Remember, you came here as civilians, but you will leave as MEN.”(See Blackbourn, 285-88)

  22. “The People in Arms”(SPD, 1896) “The German loves the uniform, The saber and the gun, The spiked helmet is the norm, That’s how we have our fun.” “The judge, the prosecutor, The banker’s son and pastor, They all take the floor As a martial arts master.”

  23. In 1906 the cobbler Wilhelm Voigt disguised himself as a Guards captain, showed forged orders to a squad of soldiers, invaded the City Hall of Köpenick, arrested the mayor, and confiscated 4,000 gold marks in the city treasury “for reasons of national security.”

  24. Anton von Werner, “The 70th Birthday of CommercialCounsellor Valentin Manheimer” (1887):Was this the dream of most proletarians?

  25. Ludwig Knaus,“The Malcontent”(aka, “The Social Democrat,” 1877)

  26. Robert Koehler,“The Socialist” (1885, finished in the USA)

  27. Jens Birkholm, “Gospel of the Poor” (1900)

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