Waldenburg miners strike

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The Waldenburg miners 'strike of 1869/1870 was the largest miners' strike in German history to date . Led by the liberal union of German miners , it ended with a heavy defeat for the strikers. The Hirsch-Duncker trade unions have never fully recovered from this.

prehistory

In 1869 the trade union movement experienced a great boom. This was the case in the social democratic camp, but also in the context of left-wing liberalism. After it was not possible to influence the workers' congress convened by the ADAV in the spirit of the Progress Party , the Hirsch-Duncker trade associations named after their main founders Max Hirsch and Franz Duncker were founded. Since many workers were closer to the Progress Party than to the Social Democrats at that time, the trade unions experienced a strong boost.

course

In the Lower Silesian mining town of Waldenburg in the Waldenburger Bergland , the union of German miners was also founded in 1869 with a significant contribution from Max Hirsch. Despite the moderate orientation, the foundation was viewed as a threat by the mine owners. The union responded to a warning from employers on October 1, 1869 with a petition in which they formulated the miners' concerns for shorter working hours, better treatment from superiors and the setting of a minimum wage. The employers reprimanded the workers involved and partly dismissed them from the company apartments . The miners stopped working. The first major miners' strike in German history began on December 1, 1870. Of the more than 7,400 miners, about 6,400 went on strike. During the entire duration of the strike, an average of 5,000 miners were involved.

The authorities were largely on the side of the employers. A commission traveled to the strike area and asked the miners to resign from the union. Only then is it possible to resume work. The miners did not respond to this. The Prussian House of Representatives debated the events. The strikers sent a delegation to Berlin to present the workers' demands to Wilhelm I. The king did not receive the deputation. This was done by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm .

Well-known left-liberal politicians such as Max Hirsch, Hermann Heinrich Becker , Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch , Wilhelm Loewe and Rudolf Virchow asked for financial support. In fact, considerable donations were received from all parts of Germany. But they were not enough to provide effective support to the strikers. Without sufficient help, the miners tried to find work in the coal field in neighboring Austrian Silesia , but the authorities blocked the borders. Instead, some took up work in the distant Ruhr area . The strike ended on January 24, 1870 with the defeat of the miners.

consequences

Many of them were not employed again and had to move to other areas. In particular, numerous workers moved from the Waldenburg district to Dortmund and other cities in the Ruhr area. This was at the beginning of the immigration from eastern Germany to the Rhineland-Westphalian district.

In Silesia , most of the liberal press had rejected the strike. This contributed to the early separation between the labor movement and political liberalism in this region.

For the liberal trade unions, the defeat meant a setback from which they could no longer recover. The propagated balance of interests between capital and labor seemed unsuitable for asserting the interests of the workers. After the end of the strike, they suffered a sharp drop in membership. Compared to the social democratic competition of the emerging free trade unions , the trade unions fell behind.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Tenfelde : The emergence of the German trade union movement. From the pre-march to the end of the socialist law . In: Ulrich Borsdorf (Hrsg.): History of the German trade unions . Cologne 1987 p. 118
  2. ↑ These and other sources on the strike are printed in: Collection of sources for the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 , Section I: From the time when the Reich was founded to the Imperial Social Message (1867-1881) , Volume 4: Workers' Law , edited by Wolfgang Ayaß , Karl Heinz Nickel and Heidi Winter, Darmstadt 1997, pp. 84f., 90, 94, 99f., 106, 109–114, 116, 124, 134, 161, 247, 250, 254, 310, 374.
  3. ↑ Johannes Hoffmann: People from the East in the Ruhr Area 1869-1990. Traces and stereotypes . In: The German question in the 19th and 20th centuries as a Western and Eastern European problem . Wiesbaden, 1994 p. 23
  4. ↑ Manfred Hettling : Politische Bürgerlichkeit: The citizen between individuality and socialization in Germany and Switzerland 1860 to 1918 . Göttingen, 1999 p. 80f.
  5. ^ Thomas Nipperdey : German History 1866-1919 . Vol. 1: The world of work and civic spirit . Munich, 1990 p. 322

literature

  • Johannes Hoffmann: The miners' strike in Waldenburg (Silesia) in 1869/1870 in the mirror of the Dortmund press. In: Journalism and the Public: A Profession and Your Social Mission . Wiesbaden, 2010 pp. 247-262
  • Dieter Schuster : Chronology of the German trade union movement from the beginnings to 1918. Electronic ed. - Bonn: FES Library, 2000 online version