Workers calendar
The first worker calendars are documented for the years 1867 “General Workers Calendar” (in Budapest ) and 1868 “A. Eichhoff's German Workers' Calendar ”(in Berlin ). The workers 'calendar was historically linked to the workers' movement. Workers' calendars deliberately chose the traditional title “People's Calendar”, such as B. the calendar published in Braunschweig from 1875 to 1879, which was aimed primarily at farmers.
history
The Social Democrats claimed the “people” term in their name, the adoption of the term in the “workers calendar” showed that the “people” should no longer be understood in the general sense of the old people's calendar, but received aspects of class struggle. The term “people” was taken in the partisan sense of social democracy, even if the calendars were not only addressed to workers and peasants, but also to craftsmen and low-ranking officials.
The most important changes in content consisted in the fact that the history calendars and their "miracle stories" or the "heroic histories" adopted from the traditional "people's calendar" were omitted and were now filled with data from world history, the revolutionary democratic and German workers' movement. The main topics were the revolution of 1848 , the Baden uprising of 1849 and the First International from 1864 to 1876, as well as the internationality of the workers' movement, but also the increasing interest in internal wars and class struggles.
Around 1870 the workers 'calendar offered a picture of limited diversity, the content of the contributions changed, if they did not consist at all of historical reports of the workers' movement and its history, they told stories, the examples from revolutionary history, mainly from the peasant war , but also from the turmoil of the Thirty Years 'War , the Civil Revolution or the current internal disputes, and last but not least, the workers' calendars also included articles on tragic love stories between workers and higher daughters.
In addition to the central party calendars z. B. in Berlin and Leipzig there were also regional editions. There were workers' calendars that were addressed directly to party members, others remained general and sought to attract supporters in undeveloped layers. Wilhelm Bracke's “People's Calendar”, for example, specifically addressed farmers, while the “Mecklenburg People's Calendar” addressed workers , cottagers and Büdner .
In contrast to the content, the worker's calendars used to follow the bourgeois folk calendar in terms of form, presentation, arrangement and basic subject matter. In order to reach their readers in the first place, the habits of the traditional calendar should be maintained, but nevertheless the working-class calendars should above all communicate new content. It was a mistake that the worker in a bourgeois society was free from bourgeois behavior; on the contrary, he was often shaped by it in his private life, so that these habits, which were only slowly changing and changeable, had to be linked. The following passage from the "General Workers 'Calendar for the Year 1886" proves that the editors of workers' calendars were well aware of this:
“There are indeed books that find their way into the poorest huts and are therefore best suited to fulfilling the mission of educating and enlightening the people: these are the calendars. A calendar can be found in the most limited household, and in some families it is the only spiritual treasure that can be nourished for a whole year. Here, however, the lever would have to be used to have a powerful effect on the education of the lower class. "
If one takes this intention into account, then the formal link to the bourgeois calendar represents the strategy of fulfilling the usual need for the people's calendar to the outside world, while at the same time disseminating the new content.
The workers' calendar also took part in the painful innovations of the bourgeois calendar, the conversion of the Fraktur font to the Antiqua , which was truly revolutionary for the calendar reader, the introduction of photography, which replaced traditional woodcuts, or the turnaround to advertising. Lassalle wanted to ban bourgeois advertisements, but Bebel thought it foolish to leave the material means of power to the bourgeoisie. The dispute between purists and pragmatists lasted at the party congresses until 1908. Eventually the purists succumbed. The entire content of the calendar cannot be affected by the advertisements to the extent that one can speak of a scandal. The workers' calendar was not exactly revolutionary in this regard. Nevertheless, the well-thought-out and ingenious education of the working class carried out by various means is the basic merit of the working-class calendar.
The most important German workers' calendars:
| title | Publishing house / editor | Place of publication | Publication date |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Eichhoff's German Workers' Calendar | Albert Eichhoff | Berlin | 1868 |
| General workers calendar for the leap year 1872 | Joseph Dittrich u. August Otto-Walster | Dresden | 1872 |
| People's state calendar: for the year ... | Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company | Leipzig | 1873-1875 |
| W. Grüwel's German Workers' Calendar | Grüwels German workers calendar | Berlin | 1874 |
| German workers calendar of the New Social Democrat: for the year ... | Ihring | Berlin | 1875 |
| Poor Conrad : Illustrated calendar for the working people for the year ... | Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company | Leipzig | 1876-1879 |
| Omnibus : Illustrated folk calendar for the year ... | finch | Leipzig | 1880-1882 |
| Illustrated New World Calendar : for the year ... | Hamburg: Auer Stuttgart: Dietz [in comm.] |
Hamburg, Stuttgart |
1883-1951 |
| Historical calendar, forward Berliner Volksblatt | Publisher of "Vorwärts" | Berlin | 1895-1913 |
| Workers calendar | German publisher of the Comintern | 1923-1933 | |
| German folk calendar | Nau | Hanover | 1953-1954 |
| New world calendar | Bonn: New forward-Verl. Nau | Hanover | 1955-1968 |
literature
- Calendar history and calendar, by Ludwig Rohner, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1978.
- Calendar stories Text editions on early socialist literature in Germany, Akademie-Verlag, 1975.
Web links
- German people's calendar 1870 digital
- German people's calendar 1871 digital
- Poor Conrad: Illustrated calendar for the working people. 1876 digital
- Omnibus: Illustrated folk calendar. 1880 digital
- Pioneer: Illustrated folk calendar 1897, 1899–01, 1904–05, 1909, 1912–13 digital
- Workers' calendar 1924–1933 digital
Individual evidence
- ^ The German calendar history by Jan Knopf, Verlag Suhrkamp 1983.
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse The red tear-off calendar. History pictures as wall decorations , in: Photo History , Issue 144, 2017
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: The red tear-off calendar. Revolutionary history as wall decoration (material collection, PDF, 19 MB), Lübeck 2019