'Localist' Trade Unionism in the German Building Industry, 1868-1893 JOHN
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Lokalisten and Sozialdemokraten: ‘localist’ trade unionism in the German building industry, 1868-1893 JOHN GODDARD UCL Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 I, John Goddard, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. ...................................................................... 2 ‘Lokalisten and Sozialdemokraten: ‘localist’ trade unionism in the German building industry, 1868-1893’ This study looks at the first part of what for want of a better term could be described as the ‘pre-history’ of German syndicalism, that is, at its earliest roots among building worker supporters of the ‘localist’ conception of trade union organization before 1893. Its aim is not to ‘uncover’ the localist movement’s history for the benefit of English- speaking readers unfamiliar with it but, rather, to seek to find in the earlier history of this movement an explanation as to why a branch of trade unionism which initially defined itself as a tactical response to restrictive state legislation (above all, the Prussian Law of Association of 11th March 1850) continued to exist after the ban which most local laws of association placed on political association was over-written by national legislation which guaranteed the right to such (for men) in December 1899. How did a ‘tactical response’ come to assume a longevity none of its earlier advocates had foreseen? This begs a second question: how significant, then, was the legal framework? It is my belief that the answers to these questions can already be found in the localist building worker movement’s earlier history. Two dates framework this thesis. In September 1868, the Berlin Workers Congress was followed by the growth of trade union movements, social democratic and liberal, which contrasted with the isolated establishment of individual trade unions beforehand. In 1893, pottery workers (who included among their number stove fitters) became the last of the four largest groupings of building workers – after the carpenters, building labourers, and bricklayers – to establish a national trade union on a centralist model. After this date, localist building workers dominated a second, formally separate, social democratic trade union movement. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction................................................................................................................................ 8 PART ONE 1. First stirrings: Berlin, the General German Bricklayers Association and the role of Paul Grottkau, 1868-1874……………………………………………………………………………………………38 2. August Bebel, Theodor Yorck, Carl Hillmann: theories of trade union centralization and political neutrality, 1868-1875………………………………………………................................62 3. Hamburg as refuge: trade union unification and the roles of the bricklayers’ and carpenters’ trade unions, 1875-78………………………………………………………………………………89 PART TWO 4. Union re-organization in Berlin: the Anti-Socialist Law and the Bricklayers’ Strike of 1885………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….110 5. Der Bauhandwerker: the localist vs. centralist debate among Germany’s bricklayers, 1884-87...………………………………………………………….........................................132 PART THREE 6. Localism as refuge: the Federation of German Carpenters and the trade union theory of Gustav Kessler…………………………………………………………………………………………….162 7. The Vertrauensmänner system: the examples of the stove fitters and bricklayers, 1884-1892………………………………………………………………………...............................................186 8. Before Halberstadt and beyond: the break with centralism, 1887-1893..................206 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................224 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................236 4 ABBREVIATIONS ADAV Allgemeiner deutscher Arbeiterverein BV Berliner Volksblatt FAUD Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands FVdG Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften FZ Freisinnige Zeitung GBA Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung LaB Landesarchiv zu Berlin LADAV Lassallescher Allgemeiner deutscher Arbeiterverein SA Der sozialistische Akademiker SAPD Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands SDAP Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei StAH Staatsarchiv Hamburg SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands SVP Sächsische Volkspartei VDAV Vereinstag deutscher Arbeitervereine 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Completion of this study has been protracted. It would not have been completed without the help and support through dark times of many people but especially: my brother, Jim Goddard; my aunt, Edna Funnell; my second wife, Margaret Smith, and her family; the good friend of my late first wife Karla Rogers and of myself, Kevin Sutton; my good friends and fellow former trade union activists, Bill Costello and George Wood; the Doddy family of Gurteen, County Sligo, Ireland; my good friend of Berlin and Gummersbach, Heidrun Drath; my PhD supervisor, Mark Hewitson. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Department of German, University College London, for its financial support during the first three years of this research project. I would like also to thank the German History Society for research trip funding in 2005. The idea for this study first took shape during the third year of BA Honours study at Middlesex University while on exchange at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For completion of that year and the achievement of spoken fluency in German (sadly now a bit rusty) I owe a debt of gratitude to my German lecturer at Middlesex, Edgar Schröder. For encouraging me to study history further I would like to thank Martine Morris, History lecturer at Middlesex. The reception staff, librarians, and secretary of the German Historical Institute London have accompanied my long journey to completion and I would like to thank them here for all their help with my queries (and use of their scanner) down the years. In addition, I have found the staff of the following libraries and archives to have been especially helpful and courteous: the Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin (Zweigbibliothek Geschichte); the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Straße, Westhafen); the Landesarchiv zu Berlin; the Bibliothek Wirtschaftswissenschaft FU Berlin; the London School of Economics, Library; the University of London, Senate House Library (Special Collections); the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Standort Bonn; the Staatsarchiv Hamburg; the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg; the Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg; the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Bibliothek. Above all I will always owe a debt of gratitude to my late first wife for her friendship, encouragement, and belief. John Goddard Autumn 2015 London 6 Dedicated to the Memory of KARLA ROGERS (née LUCAS, SOCHOVÁ) 1943 – 2009 “A fighter” 7 INTRODUCTION ‘Lokalisten and Sozialdemokraten: ‘localist’ trade unionism in the German building industry, 1868-1893’ This study looks at the earliest pre-history of German anarcho-syndicalism, that is, at its roots among supporters of the ‘localist’ conception of trade union organization before 1893. Several questions immediately present themselves. Who were the localists and how were they linked to Social Democracy? Why did trade union ‘localism’ find its strongest support among workers in the building industry? Why does this study focus on this particular timeframe? In the course of answering the last of these initial questions, that is, why does this study focus on the period from 1868 to 1893, a contrast will be made between historians of anarcho-syndicalism in Germany (Hans Manfred Bock, Angela Vogel, Hartmut Rübner) and other labour historians (Willy Albrecht, Dirk Müller) for whom the early history of localist trade unionism was a component part of their wider research. This study rests on the premise that ‘formal’ localism (that is, from the mid-1880s onwards), and the ‘centralist’ opposition to it, cannot be fully understood without reference to earlier state repression and trade union theories. This premise informs the key questions which the study aims to answer: why did a branch of trade unionism which had defined itself as a tactical response to restrictive state legislation (above all, to the Prussian Law of Association of 11th March 1850) continue to exist once the ban on political association (for men) was over-written by national legislation at the end of 1899?1 How significant, in the end, was the legal framework? This Introduction contains a guide to the study’s structure before concluding with a brief overview of the wider ‘milieu’ of labour history. Who were the localists? The localists, whose preferred moniker was ‘the locally organized’ (‘die Lokalorganisierten’),2 defined themselves as both an economic and a 1 Paragraph 8, Section (a.), of the Prussian Law, which forbade political organizations from accepting women, school students, and apprentices as members, remained in operation until the adoption of a Civil Law Book (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) for all of Germany in 1908. 2 Contemporary critics (for example, Ignaz Auer) and opponents (Adam Drunsel, Chair of the Pottery Workers Union of Germany from 1899 to 1922) used the shorthand ‘Lokalisten’. ‘Localist’ has been the accepted English