Festival newspapers of the social democracy
From 1890 onwards , festive newspapers were published for the German Social Democrats on various occasions . Apart from the many March and May festival newspapers, festival newspapers were also printed for a wide variety of occasions, such as B. Memorial, New Year's, Election and Christmas festive newspapers. Almost all festival newspapers showed similarities and were structured in a uniform manner, with the exception of those that appeared on special occasions. They included an editorial, stories or reflections on the topic, reports, descriptions of experiences, poems and plenty of artistically designed title pages and illustrations inside.
history
May festival newspapers
The eight-hour day was one of the oldest demands of the labor movement . However, it must be warned against the fallacy that the demand for a reduction in working hours was the only reason for the proclamation of the [May 1st | 1. May]. May Day is inextricably linked to the French Revolution of 1789, the replacement of the monarchy and the declaration of human rights. The grandiose slogan of this revolution "Freedom, equality, brotherhood!" Appeared again and again at the German May events.
On February 28, 1889, a conference of representatives of socialist parties in The Hague decided to convene an international workers' congress in Paris on July 14 of the same year . The congress decided to “organize a large international manifestation for a certain time” and it was agreed on May 1st.
The May demonstrations were not just about enforcing social or trade union demands - May Day was political from the start. The labor movement strove to reshape the social order and it made this clear at May demonstrations. From the beginning it was not a nationally limited action; May 1st was and is an international event. Workers shook hands across national borders, they expressed global solidarity. With this expression of will, they set themselves in stark contrast to the ruling political forces, who were patriotic and often chauvinistic and for whom socialists and trade unionists were “patriotic journeymen”.
The May Day newspapers represented a means of agitation to win over those on the sidelines, in this context August Bebel once said: “The workers have the power, they just don't know it”.
May newspapers appeared from 1891, in 1890 only one commemorative sheet was published. In some of the May festival numbers, there is a large number of references in text and images to spring and May 1st, as a symbol of a new era, a time in which the labor movement is seizing power. The May Festival newspapers ran from 300,000 to 500,000 copies. During the First World War , the May newspapers were not published, newspapers were printed again after the end of the war, and in 1933 they were banned.
The May newspapers usually had the title, May Celebration or May Festival.
The "May Day" is now called "Labor Day", "Day of the workers' movement called", "International day of struggle of the working class" or as "May Day".
March festival newspapers
To commemorate March 18, 1848, the March Revolution in Berlin, on which the so-called barricade uprising occurred, eight March newspapers were published in the party publishers from 1893 to 1900 according to the protocol of the party congresses of the SPD. The March newspapers had a circulation of 60,000 to 150,000 copies. Even the March newspaper from 1896, which had been confiscated by the Breslau public prosecutor's office, sold 98,000 copies. Such confiscations meant financial damage to the Vorwärts bookstore at the moment, which was, however, turned into its opposite by the comrades through increased demand, a certainly unintended effect of the prohibitions that hit various festival newspapers.
The 50th anniversary was also intensively prepared by the Social Democrats in 1898 with numerous leading and commemorative articles as well as "March newspapers". According to a police report, 12,000 people visited the cemetery of the March fallen in Berlin-Friedrichshain, a place of pilgrimage for freedom fighters, and laid 465 wreaths.
The following March newspapers have appeared (selection):
- 1895 March 18th : Rudolph Seiffert / Hamburg.
- 1897 March newspaper : Georg Gärtner / Nuremberg. Freedom, agitation, education, organization.
- 1898 March newspaper : Maximin Ernst / Munich. To commemorate the revolution of 1848 50 years ago.
- 1899 March newspaper : Theodor Glocke / Berlin. Karl Marx as Prometheus, with caricature by an unknown artist.
The March festival newspaper published (selection):
- Die Kommune, 1871 - 1901 , by Theodor Glocke in Berlin, the special issue from 1901, which was published in an edition of 112,000 by the publishing house “Buchhandlung Vorwärts” and was dedicated solely to the Paris Commune.
- Free Easter was published in 1902 by Friedrich Fischer in Verlag Dietz in Stuttgart , in which Easter was celebrated as the spring of nations, as the resurrection festival of mankind who freed themselves from their exploiters, the content of the festival newspaper recalls the March events of 1848.
- Karl Marx commemorating the 20th anniversary of his death in 1903 by Wilhelm Paetzel.
- March 1904 , by Wilhelm Paetzel , this is where the Workers' Marseillaise, one of the most sung battle songs of German Social Democracy, was printed.
- 50th anniversary of the death of Heinrich Heine (1906) one of the most important German poets, writers and journalists of the 19th century.
- 100th birthday of Fritz Reuter (1910) the democratic-opposition narrator.
- 100th birthday of Ferdinand Freiligrath (1910) the poet and translator.
The commemorative numbers of Heinrich Heine, Fritz Reuter and Ferdinand Freiligrath appeared in the Vorwärts bookstore in Berlin.
From 1900 the interest in the March celebrations steadily decreased and was increasingly replaced by May 1st as the day of action of the labor movement.
Festival newspapers on special occasions
Besides the March and May festival newspapers, there were other festival newspapers with a circulation of 25,000 to 120,000.
A selection of festival newspapers:
- The century , the title of the New Year's Eve festival newspaper from 1899, Theodor Glocke was the author. This leaflet took stock of 100 years of class struggle. Wilhelm Liebknecht predicted: “The outgoing century belonged to the bourgeoisie and capitalism, the coming century belongs to the proletariat and socialism.” Quotation from the article by Wilhelm Liebknecht “From the Bastille to the prison”.
- Unemployed! the Christmas festival newspaper from 1901, also by Theodor Glocke, for which he was indicted and convicted. The magazine lamented the many tens of thousands of layoffs of his time, as well as the hardship, hunger and disease, and the miserable situation of the unemployed proletariat.
- The Rothe Year 1903 the commemorative festival newspaper from 1902, published by Wilhelm Paetzel, was based entirely on the Reichstag elections in spring and the Prussian state elections in autumn 1903, in which the Social Democrats participated for the first time. August Bebel, Georg von Vollmar , Clara Zetkin and others a. in their speeches called on workers to make every effort to make the election campaign a success.
- Rothe Wahlen , an electoral festival magazine by Wilhelm Paetzel, was also aimed at the 1903 Reichstag election, it was the election of the 11th German Reichstag. It took place on June 16, 1903.
- The work , which appeared in 1903, focused on the working person. It also came from Wilhelm Paetzel and appeared as a New Year's Eve festival newspaper.
- 25 Years of Struggle and Victory 1878 - 1903 (1903), this commemorative publication served to commemorate the enactment of the Socialist Law.
- Cut me out, the central organ for consecrating memorials and home decorations was the title of the New Year's Eve festival newspaper from 1904; 117,000 copies of it were distributed by the Vorwärts bookstore, which satirically ridiculed the “highlights” of the past year.
- 1649-1789-1905 (1905), the headline of the bookstore's last New Year's Eve newspaper , Vorwärts, was displayed as a revolution number. The revolutionary events in Russia were related to the two most important revolutions history had seen so far, the English and French revolutions.
- 100th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Schiller , that was the title of a commemorative festival magazine that appeared in 1905 in memory of the important writer, published in the Vorwärts bookstore in Berlin with articles by Friedrich Stampfer , Kurt Eisner , Eduard David , Hermann Molkenbuhr , Lily Braun and John Schikowski .
- From Geneva to Stuttgart , that was a festival newspaper for the 1907 International Socialist Congress, it appeared without a title and was so named in the minutes of the SPD party congress. The numerous congress photos published in this commemorative issue could also be obtained from the Vorwärts bookstore .
- Cheers to free suffrage from 1910, this illustrated number by Walter Crane the well-known English painter and illustrator and one of the leading representatives of the Arts and Crafts Movement, he documented the struggle of social democracy to obtain universal, equal, secret and direct suffrage in Prussia and its preservation in the German Reich through numerous photos of demonstrations and meetings of the working class. The newspaper had a circulation of 50,000 copies.
Employee
Editors were: Wilhelm Paetzel (Berlin), Georg Gärtner (Nuremberg), Theodor Glocke (Berlin), Maximin Ernst (Munich), Eduard Fuchs (Stuttgart).
Important authors of the festival newspapers were: August Bebel , Wilhelm Liebknecht , Friedrich Engels , Georg Herwegh , Jacob Audorf , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Karl Henckell , Käte Duncker , Luise Zietz , Franz Diederich , Friedrich Stampfer , Eduard Bernstein , Clara Zetkin , Georg Ledebour , Ignaz Auer , Julius Motteler , Georg von Vollmar , Karl Kautsky , August Geib , Georg Gradnauer , Carl Legien , Mathilde Wurm u. a. m.
The following well-known authors wrote for the festival newspapers: Leopold Jacoby , Ernst Klaar , Ernst Preczang , Rudolf Lavant , Ludwig Lessen , Emanuel Wurm , Clara Müller-Jahnke , Ludwig Pfau , Karl Henckell , Georg Weerth , etc.
The illustrators included a. the English painters Walter Crane , Edmund Edel , Max Fabian , John Höxter , Ephraim Moses Lilien , Wilhelm Schulz , Franz Stassen , Honoré Daumier , Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen , Jean-François Millet .
literature
- Udohaben, Illustrated History of May 1st, Oberhausen 1979.
- "Be united, be united! - then we are also free" / Solidarity as a topic of German workers' literature / Köpping, Walter / 1977.
- Salon culture and the proletariat. Ulrich Weitz, Verlag Bernd and Dieter Schütz Stöffler, 1991 - 514 pp.
- Marßolek, Inge. About goddesses of freedom, the giant proletariat and the rise of the masses: May 1st as reflected in the social democratic May newspapers from 1891 to 1932. In: 100 years of the future. Frankfurt / M., Vienna 1990, pp. 145-169.
Web links
- March Revolution
- The fight for the eight-hour day. Festschrift for May 1, 1890.