A German Revolution

Local change and Continuity in Prussia, 1918 - 1920

Stephen C. MacDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000008210
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: History

Originally published in 1991, although written in the 1970s when the New Orthodoxy was exerting its most powerful influence upon students of the period, this book examines what changed and what did not change in Germany as a result of the Revolution of 1918. It discusses in particular, aspects of German life which the Social Democrats had singled out for change, and specifically political, land, and educational reform and the liberalization of the cultural and artistic climate.

CHAPTER I

THE WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ COUNCILS

In the first week of November 1918 the authority of the old political and military order in Germany, discredited by the evidence of military defeat, evaporated in the face of a sudden insurrection prompted by popular impatience with the government’s inability or unwillingness to end the war. This revolution was not the product of an organized, centrally directed conspiracy; rather, it erupted spontaneously and locally and surprised both the Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Independent Social Democratic party (USPD) which it carried into power. The vehicles of the revolution were the workers’ and soldiers councils. Within six days of the mutiny of the fleet and the organization of the first such body in Kiel on November 3, 1918, workers’ and soldiers’ councils had sprung up throughout Germany and—against very little resistance—had assumed control of the machinery of government.

Workers’ and soldiers’ councils were not new to Germany or to central and western Europe in the fall of 1918. They had first appeared during political strikes in Leipzig in April 1917 and again in Berlin and Kiel in January 1918 when striking workers, disavowed by their labor unions, organized councils on an ad hoc basis to represent their demands. In Vienna and Budapest striking Austrian and Hungarian workers likewise formed councils during the winter of 1917–18. In May 1917 mutinous elements of the French army elected soldiers’ councils, and one month later the Leeds convention of the British Labor Party called for their establishment in England. The Russian Revolution was instrumental in popularizing the councils without carrying any specifically Bolshevik connotations. By the autumn of 1918 the councils were widely regarded as the “natural” organizational expression of popular revolt.¹

Our investigation of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils in the Kassel district focuses on ten of the district’s twenty-four Kreise: the cities of Kassel and Hanau, and the rural counties of Hünfeld, Frankenberg, Wolfhagen, Ziegenhain, Gelnhausen, Eschwege, Fulda and Marburg. These counties were chosen as representative of the district’s economic, social and cultural heterogeneity. Kassel was the preeminent city by virtue of its size, its political functions and its economic significance. with 162,000 inhabitants in 1919, it was the twenty-fifth largest city in Germany and four and one-half times larger than the next most populous city in the district, Hanau. Kassel was the seat not only of the district administration, but of the government of Hesse-Nassau province as well. The city was a major transportation center and served as the northern terminal of rail traffic on the Frankfurt-Giessen-Marburg axis. By 1920 there were 126 manufacturing enterprises with 20 or more employees and a total of nearly 24,000 workers in the city. Four out of five of these workers were engaged in machine and tool fabrication, the textile industry (especially linen manufacture), or the building trades.²

¹On the early history of the councils, see Walter Tormin, Zwischen Rätediktatur und sozialer Demokratie (Düsseldorf, 1954), pp. 26–27, 44–48, 130–134; Eberhard Kolb, Die Arbeiterräte in der deutschen Innenpolitik (Düsseldorf, 1962), pp. 59–60; Kolb, “Rätewirklichkeit und Räte-Ideologie in der deutschen Revolution von 1918/19,” in idem, ed., Vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik (Cologne, 1972), pp. 165–174.

At the district’s southernmost tip, Hanau (population 36,800) was even more heavily industrialized than Kassel: in 1895, 52.7 percent of its wage earners worked in manufacturing compared with 41.8 percent in the district capital.³ Hanau’s enterprises were organized on a smaller scale than Kassel’s, however, for whereas the average industry in Kassel with at least 20 workers employed 189 people, the corresponding number for Hanau was only 81. Hanau’s industrial base was diversified, machine and tool making, cigar and clothing manufacture, and the construction industry all employing sizable numbers of workers. But most important were the precious metal, jewelry, and diamond cutting industries, often organized in businesses with fewer than 20 employees.⁴

²Data on numbers and distribution of work force in Kassel from Rheinhold Böttcher, “Die Einkommensverteilung im Regierungsbezirk Cassel im Jahre 1920” (unpublished dissertation. University of Marburg, 1924), Tables 4, 4a and pp. 39–40; on Kassel’s function as a communication and transportation center, see Kurt Dülfer, Die Regierung in Kassel vornehmlich im 19. und 20. Jahrundert (Kassel, 1960), pp. 79–82.

³Adolf Nebel, Die ländlichen Arbeiterverhältnisse in Kurhessen (Fulda, 1909), Table IV.

Hünfeld, Frankenberg and Wolfhagen were predominantly agricultural counties with small county seats of about 2700 inhabitants in 1919. In 1895 an average of 58 percent of the population in each of these counties worked in agriculture, and by 1920 none had more than 200 people working in industries with 20 or more employees. In Ziegenhain and Gelnhausen a majority of the population also worked in agriculture, but these counties possessed in addition local industries with a noteworthy work force. Lignite mines, basalt quarries and foundries in Ziegenhain employed 1300 workers in 1920; in Gelnhausen over 2500 industrial laborers were engaged principally in cigar manufacturing, earthenware production and quarrying.⁵

In Eschwege and Fulda less than half of the population worked in agriculture by the turn of the century. In both counties the large county seats (12,600 inhabitants in Eschwege, 24,600 in Fulda) tended to dominate economically the surrounding countryside, and each city possessed a substantial body of industrial workers in medium-sized and large enterprises—2400 workers in Eschwege, 4200 in Fulda. In Eschwege manufacturing centered on textiles, leather goods and tobacco products, while in Fulda the main industries were metal fabrication, textiles and tool making.⁶ Marburg presented a special case. There, too, agriculture had ceased to engage the majority of the population by 1900, but large-scale industry did not take its place. The city of Marburg (pop. 22,200) was dominated by the university; apart from small chemical, tobacco and rug-making firms, the principal activity of Marburg’s citizens was satisfying the needs of the learned elite, both professors and students. Moreover, as a 1924 survey of the district’s economy noted, Marburg was also a haven for retired persons, making it a pensioners’ as well as a university town.⁷

⁴Böttcher, “Einkommensverteilung,” Table 4, 4a, and pp. 41–42.

⁵Ibid., Table 4, 4a and pp. 44, 47–48, 51, 59–60; Nebel, Arbeiterverhältnisse, Table IV.

In these counties and throughout the Kassel district, the development of workers’ and soldiers’ councils followed a similar general pattern: military garrisons mutinied and elected soldiers’ councils which together with the socialist parties or other local political groups established these characteristic ad hoc governing bodies. Ziegenhain represents an exception, for there the process seems not to have been completed. Although the Ziegenhain soldiers’ council (founded at the relatively late date of November 19, 1918) called for the establishment of workers councils “where appropriate” in the county, there is no indication from accounts in the Ziegenhainer Zeitung that such a body ever operated in the county seat.⁸

⁶Böttcher, “Einkommensverteilung,” Tables 4, 4a and pp. 48–51; Nebel, Arbeiterverhältnisse, Table IV.

⁷Bö6ttcher, “Einkommensverteilung,” Tables 4, 4a and pp. 54–56; Nebel, Arbeiterverhältnisse, Table IV.

Elsewhere the composition, ideological character and aims of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils varied from place to place according to local political and economic conditions. These councils may be grouped into three principal categories: all-socialist councils domin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter I: The Workers’ And Soldiers’ Councils
• Chapter II: The Farmers’ And Agricultural Workers’ Councils
• Chapter III: Political Reform in Kassel
• Chapter IV: Land Reform in Kassel
• Chapter V: School Reform in Kassel
• Chapter VI: The Revolution and the Arts
• Conclusion
• Bibliography