Military ban
As a military ban has been in the German Empire a settlement called that forbade members of the military, eat out at certain restaurants. In practice, mostly were social democratic embossed workers pubs affected.
The official justification for the ban was moral and moral concerns. The soldiers should on the one hand be protected from negative influences in line with the politics of the empire, on the other hand one should not see uniforms in unpleasant locations. In everyday life, however, the military ban became a weapon against the growing social democracy. During the time of the German Empire, the industrial cities had a tight network of pubs that served the workers as an "extended living room" and a refuge from their apartments, which were usually too small and poorly equipped. Not only were social democratic newspapers available in these pubs, political talks also took place, the contents of which were in sharp opposition to the authoritarian empire. In addition, pubs and their adjoining rooms served as meeting places for meetings of the SPD . With the military ban, the state tried to keep soldiers away from the social democrats. Military personnel who violated the ban faced military sentences. The military ban was thus one of the means of persecuting and criminalizing the labor movement in the German Empire.
In the years of the 20th century before the First World War , the bar ban was increasingly relaxed. More and more landlords protested against the ban, which brought them considerable economic losses. In a time of slow acceptance of social democracy by the state authorities - which, however, lagged far behind the way Western European democracies deal with their socialist parties - such complaints became more and more successful. In 1901, the display of the Vorwärts in a Berlin bar was enough for a ban, but in 1910 the police chief of Hamburg had to defend himself against allegations that he had imposed a military boycott. The Hamburg police authority then campaigned for many bans to be relaxed. In Berlin, for example, it was already ordered in 1908 to remove bars from the prohibited lists if they were not in the immediate vicinity of barracks. In Saxony, a ban should only be imposed on those days on which the local SPD meetings take place.
The ban was also linked to the monitoring of the innkeepers in the affected bars by the respective police authorities.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ see e.g. B. Richard J. Evans (Ed.): Bar conversations in the Kaiserreich. The mood reports of the Hamburg Political Police. 1892-1914. Rowohlt, Reinbek b. Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-499-18529-6 .
- ↑ s. Landesarchiv Berlin, holdings A Pr. Br. Rep 30; 9607.30
- ^ Vossische Zeitung , May 18, 1910
- ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, holdings A Pr. Br. Rep 30; 15973, 67