General German workers' brotherhood

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The Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung was the largest workers' organization in Germany during and after the revolution of 1848 . The gathering movement of various smaller workers' associations is considered to be one of the origins of both the political and the trade union movement.

prehistory

The people (sample number)

When we speak of workers during the revolution of 1848/1849, we only mean factory workers to a relatively small extent; the majority of workers were still part of the small-scale, artisanal world at that time. In the first attempts at organization, therefore, it was mainly the master craftsmen and journeymen who were at risk in their existence who were involved. The General Workers' Brotherhood therefore had roots in both the artisan and labor movement.

This is also shown by the first activities during the revolution. The artisan workers met on July 15, 1848 in Frankfurt for the General Craftsmen and Trade Congress to articulate their interests at the seat of the National Assembly . Masters and journeymen formulated their protest against the triumphant advance of capitalism and industrialization, against free (market economy) competition and freedom of trade. This congress is seen as an attempt to gather together socially conservative forces. The spokesman Karl Georg Winkelblech strove for the reintroduction of guilds and a state-controlled economy.

It soon became apparent, however, that the interests of masters and journeymen were too different. Since the masters wanted to advise alone, the journeymen organized a counter-congress (July 20 to September 20, 1848). For this, it was not the old master-journeyman opposites that played the central social role, but rather the contrast between capitalists and workers in the socialist sense. The journeymen eventually joined the General Workers' Brotherhood.

In Berlin, a “Central Committee of Workers” emerged from the local workers' club, which initially was primarily an umbrella organization for the emerging unions. A programmatic statement stated that the workers wanted to take their affairs into their own hands so that they would no longer be snatched from them; There is still no closed working class in Germany, but in future the working class wants to stand as a “power within the state”; the organization of the workers is therefore the first necessity. In its magazine Das Volk, the committee made demands in favor of the workers at the two national assemblies. It also prepared a general workers' congress.

It was in Berlin from August 23 to September 3, 1848. Workers' committees from Hamburg , Berlin , Leipzig and Chemnitz were represented there . There were also 31 delegates with a focus on Saxony, the old Prussian provinces and northern Germany. The assembly decided, among other things, to found the General Workers' Brotherhood. In addition to general workers' associations, the union-like association of cigar workers that emerged during the revolution also joined the organization.

organization

Stephan Born

The workers 'brotherhood became the largest union of workers' associations during and after the revolution. More than 170 associations from all over Germany with a total of 15,000 members belonged to the workers' brotherhood. There were 64 clubs in Prussia. With 37 clubs and 58%, the focus was clearly in the Rhine Province . The provinces of Brandenburg with 7 and Westphalia with 6 clubs followed. The organization was divided into local and district committees. It was headed by a central committee, first in Berlin and later in Leipzig. However, Dieter Langewiesche notes that the organization of the workers' brotherhood was not very tight. The function of the Central Committee consisted primarily of promoting the further spread of the associations through personal contacts with the local workers' associations and regional associations. However, the individual clubs remained organizationally and ultimately also programmatically independent. An important task of the headquarters was, however, the publication of the journal Die Fraternisation , which was read a lot, especially in Berlin, and contributed to a common will and a feeling of togetherness. The success of the organization goes back not least to the work of Stephan Born .

aims

One reason for the formation of the association was the finding that the demands of the workers in the National Assembly met with little response. The founding congress therefore stated programmatically: "We workers have to help ourselves." Nevertheless, the organization did not pursue an anti-parliamentary course, but instead explicitly supported the bourgeois-democratic constitutional process. An important goal was the recognition of the workers' organizations by the National Assembly. In addition, self-help played an important role as a supplement to the policy of the national assemblies in social policy issues. These included consumer and production cooperatives , benefit and health insurance funds, and the promotion of workers' education . The aim was to integrate the workers into political democracy. Nevertheless, there were also close ties to the Communist League around Karl Marx . For example, there were a number of double memberships, the workers' brotherhood adopted the Communist Manifesto , and Stephan Born even suggested a division of labor between the two organizations. According to this, the Communist League should take care of the program, while the Workers' Brotherhood should be responsible for the practical organization. Later Born, and with him the workers' brotherhood, turned away from the line of the League of Communists and took up positions of social reform. It is no coincidence that the term social democrat was often used in the association's publications . “By the way, and our brothers, the workers, may well know, we reject the riot and protest against any disorder. We are not plotting against the existing government, we just want to be given a place in the common fatherland. "

In a petition to the Frankfurt National Assembly, the fraternization demanded, among other things:

"1. Determination of the minimum of wages and working hours by commissions of workers and foremen or employers.

2. Linking the workers to maintain the fixed wage.

3. Abolition of indirect taxes, introduction of a progressive income tax with tax exemption for those who only have the bare essentials to live on.

4. The state provides free education and, where necessary, free education for young people, taking into account their abilities.

5. Free public libraries.

9. Employment of the unemployed in state institutions, and the state ensures an existence appropriate to their human needs. "

The end of the movement

Despite its reformist attitude, the workers' brotherhood was also heavily involved in the imperial constitution campaign, as it was about the defense of the achievements of March 1848. Their leader Born was also actively involved in the Dresden May uprising. In 1850, the governments of Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria reached an agreement on the persecution of the workers' brotherhood, which was considered to be a "planting ground for communism".

At an illegal congress in Leipzig in the same year, a new central committee without a permanent seat was elected, which was to meet alternately in Bremen and Hamburg. The area of ​​activity of fraternization was subsequently restricted more and more, in Bavaria the organization was banned in the summer of 1850, followed by the same in Saxony. In addition, the association magazine had to stop its publication. Nevertheless, the workers 'brotherhood was able to hold up until the general ban on workers' associations in 1854. After the defeat of the revolution, the workers' brotherhood shifted its actions from political demands to social self-help. With regard to the labor movement that was newly constituted in the 1860s, Toni Offermann in particular was able to establish a considerable continuity between places in which the workers' brotherhood from 1848–1854 and later the General German Workers' Association or the Association of German Workers' Associations were active.

swell

  • Festival songs of the German workers' fraternization on March 18, 1849 . Zschiesche, Berlin 1849.
  • Report on the effectiveness of the Berlin district of the German workers' fraternization . Printed by: SH Hermann, Berlin 1849.
  • Statutes of the Berlin district of the German workers' fraternization. General German Workers' Brotherhood District <Berlin>. Fuchs & Jansen, Berlin 1849.
  • Basic statutes of the German workers' fraternization. Consulted at the general assembly of German workers from February 20-26, 1850 in Leipzig . Printed by the association's printing house, Leipzig 1850.
  • The people. Organ of the Central Committee for Workers. A socio-political magazine. Edited by Stephan Born. (Sample number from May 25, 1848, No. 1 from June 1, 1848 to No. 33 from August 29, 1848) (Reprint Glashütten im Taunus 1973).
  • Stephan Born: Memories of a forty-eight man. With the portrait. of the author . GH Meyer, Leipzig 1898 (Reprint Stephan Born: Memories of a Forty-Eight. Ed. And incorporated by Hans J. Schütz . Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin / Bonn 1978 ISBN 3-8012-0031-0 ).

literature

  • Max Quarck: The first German labor movement. History of the workers' brotherhood 1848/49. A contribution to the theory and practice of Marxism . Hirschfeld, Leipzig 1924.
  • Frolinde Balser : Social Democracy, 1848 / 49-1863. The first German workers 'organization "General Workers' Brotherhood" after the revolution . Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1962 (= Industrial World, Vol. 2).
  • Hermann von Berg: Origin and activity of the North German Workers 'Association as a regional organization of the German workers' brotherhood after the suppression of the revolution of 1848/1849 . Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1981 ISBN 3-87831-346-2
  • Michael Schneiderheinze: On the Development of the Workers' Discussion 1848–1850 | Knowledge Processes in the Formation of Proletarian Class Consciousness; with special consideration of the "General German Workers 'Association" and the Cologne Workers' Association (Leipzig, Univ., Diss. A, 1983).
  • Franziska Rogger: "We help ourselves!" The collective self-help of the workers' brotherhood 1848/49 and the individual self-help of Stephan Born . Born's life, development and his reception of contemporary teachings . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1986.
  • Gerhard Becker : On the work of the communists at the founding congress of the workers' brotherhood . In: Walter Schmidt (Hrsg.): The start of the German labor movement. Contributions to the first period of its history 1836–1852 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1987, pp. 149–192.
  • Klaus Tenfelde : The emergence of the German trade union movement: From the Vormärz to the end of the Socialist Law . In: Ulrich Borsdorf (Hrsg.): History of the German trade unions. From the beginning to 1945. Bonn, 1987, p. 54 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chronicle of German Social Democracy, Vol. 1, p. 15 f.
  2. ↑ Langewiese, Beginnings of German Parties, p. 345 f.
  3. ↑ Article from November 1848 in the fraternization cited. according to Grebing, labor movement, p. 44.
  4. ↑ cit. after the emergence of the labor movement, manuscript, University of Munich
  5. ^ Offermann, Spreading, p. 426 ff.