TY - JOUR
AU - Schmidt,, Jürgen
AB - Abstract While generational and biographical approaches are well-established methods in historical scholarship, life-course approaches are less prominent. This article seeks to bridge that gap by applying all these methods to an examination of the early membership of the German labour movement in the 1860s and 1870s. It considers whether we can interpret the rise of the labour movement in the nineteenth century as a generational phenomenon and explain it in light of (work) experiences that were life-phase specific. We see that while life-course experiences were more decisive than generational factors for the making of the movement, the retrospective identification of a founding generation was significant for the creation of the identity of a united labour movement in the years of the Kaiserreich. I. Introduction The labour movement in the German states crystalized in the 1860s. First steps towards the organization of labour interests had been taken during the Revolution of 1848/49 in the form of trade unions and the Arbeiterverbrüderung, a workers’ association initiated by book printer Stefan Born and his comrades, but the 1860s saw the creation of socialist and social-democratic parties and unions.1 Research has long investigated the beginnings of the labour movement through the lens of social and economic change and challenges. Particular weight was given to the rise of class consciousness among workers as a result of industrialization, with the expansion of wage labour, factory work, urbanization and a capitalist and class-based society. Current research looks also, however, at additional factors: well before the cultural turn had reached historical studies more generally, historians of the working class had observed the importance of cultural traditions and cultural elements in the formation of the labour movement. For example, club life with its masculine behaviour, harsh debates and combination of leisure and political disputes both attracted and inspired participants in this shift, creating cohesion within the nascent movement and providing it with bridging and bonding capability.2 Explanations of the formation of the labour movement in Germany in the 1860s still fail to recognize, however, the awakening of political consciousness through life-course events. An early move in this direction was made by Jochen Loreck, who framed his research in light of communication and the rise of party journalism. More recently, Christina Morina has emphasized (among other aspects) childhood conditions, reading experiences and interest in and access to education for young people as explanations for why the prominent leaders of Marxism adopted that cause, but she is more interested in group biography than in life-course approaches.3 In this article I explore four closely linked but distinctive approaches to life trajectories—generation, group biography, individual biography and life course—to shed new light on the initial period of the German social-democratic / socialist labour movement. This approach allows me to explore the rise of the labour movement in the nineteenth century as a generational phenomenon and explain it in light of (work) experiences that were life-phase specific.4 I ask, for example, about the age groups of those involved and about patterns in life course. Can we see a development, as Karl Mannheim proposed, from an already fixed, but still heterogeneous entity of the ‘generation as an actuality’ to concrete, stable and distinct ‘generational units’, terms I will explore below?5 How can such concepts help us understand the history of labour movements? To answer such questions in the limited space of this article, I focus here on the formation period of the German labour movement, between 1862/63 and the intensified persecution of 1875–1878.6 ‘Biography’ functions as an umbrella concept for all four approaches, although each aspect will also appear individually. Research on biography in the early labour movement faces particular challenges in the sources. The well-established social and cultural historical research on the labour movement is indispensable,7 and can be supplemented with fragmented information related to local activists.8 We should also integrate individual life histories, for which we must rely on (auto)biographical writings.9 Such material for German labour history is limited and has been much used, but we can also return to the autobiographies of (politically active) workers in the early phase of the labour movement with new questions. Two distinct age groups were active during these early years: an older generation aged forty and over, and a young generation in their twenties and thirties. While the first age cohort had already been active during the Revolution of 1848, the second cohort was born roughly between 1830 and 1850. Membership of a specific age cohort and the start of political engagement in a specific life-course phase were decisive for inclusion in the data sample.10 In the next section of this article I outline the development of research into generations, biographies and life course. In the third section I analyse socialization and institutions in the life course of members of the labour movement (family, school, apprenticeship) to look anew at points of access to political engagement; additionally, I look here at the aging cohort and at why some individuals remained active and others did not. In the concluding remarks I ponder the different biographical approaches and their use for the history and historiography of the labour movement. II. Research Methods Until the early 2000s the generational concept was rarely used to interpret and analyse the German labour movement,11 although for the broader public the idea of the generation—especially with regard to the ‘68ers’, used in reference to the student protests and changing political climate and culture in the Federal Republic of Germany (and worldwide) in 196812—was a well-established characterization of specific age cohorts. Over the following decade a new interest in the concept of the generation emerged in historical research more generally and in labour history in particular. Thus ‘generations’ and the National Socialist regime attracted public interest, and historians now began to look at at generational identities over a longer time span.13 In 2003 a conference at Heidelberg launched an exploration of generations in the German labour movement, focused primarily on the Social Democratic Party,14 but the generational approach did not develop much further in labour movement history. In 2011 Jürgen Mittag noted in his introduction to a special issue on ‘biographical approaches in the history of the labour movement in the twentieth century’ that ‘the capacity of the generational approach … still has to be fathomed’.15 While the term ‘generation’ can be found frequently in publications on labour movements as a metaphor or rough description of age cohorts, it is absent as an analytical tool.16 The term ‘generation’ was deployed tentatively even in research on tensions between age groups, such as the debates about ‘youth’, its insubordination and its conflicts with older generations.17 This caution is all the more remarkable since sophisticated concepts that allow us to deploy ‘generations’ as a descriptive and analytical tool already exist. As early as 1875 Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the pioneers of thinking on the use of methodologies in the humanities, developed a theory for the study of generations. According to Dilthey, a generation emerges when individuals exist simultaneously, are subordinated to the same ‘leading influences’ and unite in a ‘homogeneous entity’.18 Some fifty years later, Karl Mannheim formulated a seminal understanding of generational cohesion. He distinguished between, on one hand, a ‘generation status / generation location’ (Generationenlagerung), as ‘nothing more than a particular kind of identity of location, embracing related “age groups” embedded in a historical-social process’19 and, on the other, the materialization of this generation location in a closer connection, noting, a ‘further concrete nexus is needed to constitute generation as an actuality [Generationszusammenhang]. This additional nexus may be described as participation in the common destiny of this historical and social unit.’ Mannheim described the distinction vividly in referring to the difference between rural and urban youth in Prussia around 1800. The former were little affected by the upheavals of the age, while the second were much more involved; they existed simply in the same ‘generation location’. But ‘potentially’ they could transform into a ‘generation as an actuality’—as indeed happened during the Napoleonic Wars, when mass mobilization and fighting (successfully) together led to shared experiences among this single generation.20 For even greater precision, Mannheim developed a third category, the ‘generation units’ (Generationseinheiten), which contained a ‘much more concrete bond than the actual generation as such’. He explained: Youth experiencing the same concrete historical problems may be said to be part of the same actual generation; while those groups within the same actual generation which work up the material of their common experiences in different specific ways, constitute separate generation units.21 Two arguments support the case for drawing on Mannheim’s explanation of generation. First, in Mannheim’s definition of ‘generation units’, these entities share common values, interpreting history, change and developments in a similar way. Such is true of members of the labour movements, making his conceptualization a useful tool for labour historians. Secondly, Mannheim developed his understanding of generations in parallel to Marx’s views on class.22 ‘Generation status / generation location’ was similar to ‘class in itself’; ‘generation as an actuality’ had parallels with class-conscious workers; and ‘generation units’ contained an explanatory function much like that of ‘class for itself’, with its sense of organizing one’s class interests—in this instance in labour movements. We are invited, then, to study generations in light of their ‘collective self-interpretation’ and as groupings which share social characteristics.23 Generational structures, class formation and political organizations can be seen analytically to have close connections. Evidently, we have a sophisticated instrument to hand—why then this hesitancy to deploy the concept of generation in labour history? Mannheim’s concept has shortcomings similar to those of conventional class-building models. How did the different stages of generation-making look in practice? Amongst people who were members of a single age cohort and experienced the same ‘generation as an actuality’, why did only some refer to a generational paradigm? Like class, generation can appear a retrospective construct and one that neglects other forms of identity—for example, gender, region, religion and nation—as significant for the individual’s behaviour and agency. Specifically with regard to the labour movement in the formative period of the 1860s, the veterans of the Revolution of 1848 embodied a generational bias. But this generational factor did not drive the movement and therefore generational approaches did not develop in this research field. Mannheim’s definition of generation units, with their ability to ‘work up … their common experiences’ in a specific way, finds marked resonances in group and collective biographies.24 Christina Morina’s group biography of nine Marxist intellectuals who played a crucial role in making Marxism into a leading ideology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sheds new light within an established field of research. By analysing processes of socialization, politicization and engagement, Morina reveals individual preconditions and shared experiences which generated for these intellectuals a fundamental determination and ‘self-imposed revolutionary mission’ to intervene in the course of history. Among these nine intellectuals who were connected in a dense network arose ‘a socializing emotion … to be assigned as a generation to make history’.25 We must bear in mind, however, that alongside qualitative approaches such as Morina’s there exists another method of collective biography writing which combines qualitative and quantitative data to a far greater degree.26 The advantage of such collective biographies is that while they certainly allow conclusions to be drawn about general patterns amongst those who are the focus of this research and their society, they are also open to ‘the untypical, the divergent, the individual’.27 Aware of this character, we can more readily take the next step, towards individual biographies. While, as Alexander Gallus emphasized, historical studies have rarely debated method for collective biographies,28 we find a different situation when we turn to individual biographies. Academic biography writing was out of fashion in the 1970s and 1980s. The medium seemed overly conservative, too concentrated on ‘great men’ and thus on old-fashioned historicism; it appeared to have little to contribute to explanations of structural change in society, economy and state. Individual biographies did not fit within the social-history narratives of structures. Now, however, the intense disputes between opponents and advocates of the individual biography, between historians supporting a structural view of history and those recommending individualized approaches, are more or less over. Outstanding biographies have proved that biography writing can combine the history of an individual with structural considerations, providing new insight into the era in which the subject of the biography lived. Labour historians felt an obligation to this mix of methods, and the last two decades have seen a consistent production of labour-history biographies.29 A biography is based on a life course. This observation may seem tautological, but these forms of access to an individual life differ in both method and approach. Biography has become a widely used and accepted genre of historical writing, while life-course approaches are rare, used principally to analyse particular spans of a life.30 Life course is a developed form of research in sociology, but few connections exist between the two disciplines and their approaches to the topic. For sociologists, individual biographies are not ripe for generalization; for historians, life-course approaches can appear too abstract to be useful.31 However, one should not construct the two disciplines as closed systems. For example, in sociology Karl Ulrich Mayer, Martin Kohli and Glen Elder have located their research in relation to historical developments, historical findings and ‘types of historical evidence’.32 On the historical side Tamara Hareven, who began to combine life course and family history in the late 1970s, saw in the ‘life-course paradigm’ a meaningful way to research how individual lives are interwoven with social, political and economic events and forces, allowing life-course approaches to be related to historical studies.33 In addition, the work of Josef Ehmer is inspired by the paradigm of ‘life-course regimes’, understood as ‘sets of rules, which include informal norms and beliefs as well as formalized (e.g. legal) norms and also practices, which govern the sequence of social positions in individuals’ lives, while remaining open for interpretation and change’.34 Here again we see mirrored developments in life-course sociology, where research is shifting away from the institutional three-stage paradigm of (work) life courses, with phases of education/preparation, gainful activity and retirement, towards a much more elastic approach that emphasizes the ‘flexible change between the three worlds of education, work and leisure’.35 When we survey our four analytical lenses for investigating individual and group lives—generation, collective biographies, individual biographies and life course—we see that each has merits and shortcomings. Yet while these four approaches weigh the importance of individual character, group coherence and structural forces differently, they are closely linked. They are united in tackling the construction of identities (as generation, group or individual), shared experiences and expectations, socializing processes and the exchange between individuals and their social, economic and political environment. In addition, all of them address, if on different levels, the issues of self-perception and awareness of others. III. Ways In and Out of Political Engagement ‘Any man who is not a socialist at age twenty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age forty has no head.’ Like many popular quotations, the attribution of this quotation is unreliable, with British prime minister Winston Churchill, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau and also many other politicians and writers credited with these words.36 Despite its dubious origins, this quotation highlights two significant features of biographies. First, emotion and rationality are two sides of a process that leads to political engagement, and, secondly, this decision to engage politically is significantly dependent on specific life-course phases. Despite its anti-socialist impetus, the quotation is also correct in identifying another aspect of the nineteenth-century labour movement: it was young, in the sense that it attracted younger people. Table 1 shows that local branches were dominated not by the youngest of their members, aged about twenty, but rather by workers in their twenties and early thirties. Table 1: Age structure of local workers’ associations in the 1860s and in Germany in 1875 (men only) age Germany 1875 Augsburg 1869 Dresden 1861–1869 Reichenbrand 1868 Leipzig 1862 % % % % age % under 20 -* 2.3 6.7 0.0 under 20 0.0 21–25 8.3 12.5 6.7 10.3 21–30 51.4 26–30 7.6 24.2 33.3 15.5 31–35 13.3** 21.9 16.7 24.1 31–40 37.4 36–40 17.2 16.7 19.0 41–45 25.9*** 9.4 3.3 12.1 over 41 11.2 over 45 12.5 16.7 19.0 sum (%) 100.0 100.1 100.0 100.0 sum (N) 20.96 mill. 128 30 58 107 age Germany 1875 Augsburg 1869 Dresden 1861–1869 Reichenbrand 1868 Leipzig 1862 % % % % age % under 20 -* 2.3 6.7 0.0 under 20 0.0 21–25 8.3 12.5 6.7 10.3 21–30 51.4 26–30 7.6 24.2 33.3 15.5 31–35 13.3** 21.9 16.7 24.1 31–40 37.4 36–40 17.2 16.7 19.0 41–45 25.9*** 9.4 3.3 12.1 over 41 11.2 over 45 12.5 16.7 19.0 sum (%) 100.0 100.1 100.0 100.0 sum (N) 20.96 mill. 128 30 58 107 Sources: Offermann, Arbeiterpartei, CD-Rom, pp. 144ff.; T. Offermann, Arbeiterbewegung und liberales Bürgertum in Deutschland 1850–1863 (Bonn, 1979), p. 543; Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt (as per n. 37), Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 1882, pp. 6–9. * not comparable; ** 31 to 40; *** older than 41. Open in new tab Table 1: Age structure of local workers’ associations in the 1860s and in Germany in 1875 (men only) age Germany 1875 Augsburg 1869 Dresden 1861–1869 Reichenbrand 1868 Leipzig 1862 % % % % age % under 20 -* 2.3 6.7 0.0 under 20 0.0 21–25 8.3 12.5 6.7 10.3 21–30 51.4 26–30 7.6 24.2 33.3 15.5 31–35 13.3** 21.9 16.7 24.1 31–40 37.4 36–40 17.2 16.7 19.0 41–45 25.9*** 9.4 3.3 12.1 over 41 11.2 over 45 12.5 16.7 19.0 sum (%) 100.0 100.1 100.0 100.0 sum (N) 20.96 mill. 128 30 58 107 age Germany 1875 Augsburg 1869 Dresden 1861–1869 Reichenbrand 1868 Leipzig 1862 % % % % age % under 20 -* 2.3 6.7 0.0 under 20 0.0 21–25 8.3 12.5 6.7 10.3 21–30 51.4 26–30 7.6 24.2 33.3 15.5 31–35 13.3** 21.9 16.7 24.1 31–40 37.4 36–40 17.2 16.7 19.0 41–45 25.9*** 9.4 3.3 12.1 over 41 11.2 over 45 12.5 16.7 19.0 sum (%) 100.0 100.1 100.0 100.0 sum (N) 20.96 mill. 128 30 58 107 Sources: Offermann, Arbeiterpartei, CD-Rom, pp. 144ff.; T. Offermann, Arbeiterbewegung und liberales Bürgertum in Deutschland 1850–1863 (Bonn, 1979), p. 543; Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt (as per n. 37), Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 1882, pp. 6–9. * not comparable; ** 31 to 40; *** older than 41. Open in new tab We can assume that the first contact with the labour movement likely came during the life span of the early twenties. So, for example, the workers’ association in Leipzig was founded in 1862 as one of the first organizations of workers in the German states. Becoming a member of this association was surely a first contact with the newly constituted labour movement, and here more than half of all members were aged under thirty. Associations had existed for longer in other places, and members may have had earlier contacts there. Autobiography writers frequently refer to making contact with the labour movement in their early twenties. We can assume that the decision to participate in the labour movement often fell when an individual was aged between twenty and thirty. It seems that whoever the author of the quotation that launches this section was, he or she was correct to suggest that older individuals tended not to remain active in labour associations.37 Had socialism lost its attraction for them? Or were those who were older less interested in political engagement through the labour movement? To explore attitudes towards the labour movement earlier and later in the life course, I draw here on workers’ biographies in my data sample. Life-course research differentiates between primary socialization, in the family and the home, and secondary socialization, in institutions like schools and craft apprenticeships. Other than in the cases of Wilhelm Blos, Wilhelm Bracke and Wilhelm Hasenclever, even for the more prominent social democrats school education tended to be limited to elementary school (Volksschule). Such was even more the case for locally active party leaders and the rank and file. It has been suggested that in the 1850s about 80 per cent of school-aged children attended school, but often only partially and irregularly.38 School education was not the point of entry to political engagement, for school had ended for nearly all of them by the age of thirteen or fifteen, and their life course therefore contained a gap before they became active in labour organizations. The autobiographical writings tell us that retrospectively the lack of school education was perceived as a severe obstacle, especially because many writers would have loved to learn more.39 Elementary schools offered only basic skills in counting, reading and writing, with much school knowledge limited to learning information by heart and an acquaintance with religious texts and songs.40 In addition, many members wrote of the school experience as oppressive. The Marxist intellectuals in Morina’s research were already self-confident as they developed from older teenagers into adulthood, but such was not the case for the group that I have examined.41 True, some were proud to have been among the best in their school class. Wilhelm Bock, for example, was top of his class in history and geography. But as they took the next steps in their life course, they often could not profit from their achievements. Occupational advancement might face insurmountable obstacles. August Bebel received extra lessons in mathematics and learned logarithms but when, as a 13-year-old orphan, he suggested to his legal guardian that he might study mining, his hopes were ended with a single question: ‘Do you have money to study?’42 In psychological terms, young men with aspirations might find their coming of age a sobering affair or determined by adaption to necessity. They were afforded little room in which to search for a self-identity, being pressed instead into predetermined roles. Precarious family circumstances made it harder to flee one’s fate. Although Ottilie Baader’s father taught her counting, reading and writing, she attended school only briefly: ‘When I was thirteen years old, we moved to Berlin, and there for me school was over. I had to work and had to participate in earning.’43 Most authors of autobiographies, including those who like Wilhelm Bock grew up in poor households, highlighted their interest in reading when they were teenagers. One can even recognize a common canon, centred on popular fiction: stories of American Indians, of knights and robbers and of fairies, and pulp fiction (Kolportageromane). These reading adventures are introduced to the life courses in various ways. As an apprentice with no contact with his peers, Bebel could retreat into reading; others sought out reading as part of a fight for individual space, for in many workers’ families reading was seen as neither useful nor gainful. In addition, reading was deemed retrospectively a demonstration of a will to learn and to make progress, a means to separate oneself from the subproletariat, although not as a reflection of the social and working reality, but as an escape from it.44 However, in emphasizing the popular character of the texts they read, the autobiographers described themselves not as an aloof aristocracy but as part of the regular workforce.45 Later in life, when they came in contact with socialist literature, the autobiographical writers transitioned their teenage reading experiences into intensive, emotional, systematic and rigorous reading.46 The most important part of secondary socialization among the researched group was their time as apprentices in a variety of crafts. Of seventeen autobiographical protagonists only Leonhard von Bonhorst, Wilhelm Bracke, Wilhelm Blos and August Geib did not share this training—they became merchants, a journalist or a teacher—while Richard Köhler was the only unskilled worker. Therefore, for nearly three quarters of the authors, their passage to adulthood was shaped by the traditions, skills, organizations, advantages and structures of the world of craft. In Erfurt, of thirteen labour-movement activists born between 1837 and 1850 all except one (a factory worker) had artisanal backgrounds. Among fourteen Augsburg labour-movement activists who became involved in the 1860s, seven certainly had an artisanal background, five were metal workers and had probably been trained in a craft and only two did not come from a craft (a former soldier and later factory weaver, and a worker).47 For the age group born in Augsburg in the 1830s and 1840s, five out of eight were definitely skilled journeymen, and the three others may have been too.48 All these journeymen were still teenagers when they started to work as artisan apprentices. Childhood in the mid-nineteenth century was perceived differently from childhood today, with contributing to the family income from a very young age deemed a necessity. At the age of five, Joseph Belli had been required to carry dung in his parents’ vineyards. Aged ten, Wilhelm Blos was already helping his forester stepfather. Aged around ten, August Bebel worked with his brother in an inn in the evenings, where they had to set up skittles.49 These few examples show the early intertwining in workers’ biographies of the life-course stages of childhood/education and gainful employment. In addition, most of the youngsters did not have, or had to fight for, a free choice of occupation. ‘Despite my great distaste I bowed to my mother and my (older) brother and started working, at the age of 14, in a porcelain factory,’ Bock recorded, but his ‘aversion grew from day to day’ and his appeal to take up another occupation became ‘more insistent’, until he was able to ‘enforce’ his beginning an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.50 Experiences and expectations following the completion of an apprenticeship varied greatly, often as a result of the craft that had been learned. For example, Josef Schiller’s apprenticeship as a weaver proved a dead end and he shifted to casual work. A pathway to one’s own workshop and the position of master did certainly exist, but it was not guaranteed and self-employment could be precarious. Johann Most learned the craft of bookbinding and became self-employed, for starting a bookbinding business did not require much capital. However, he could barely make ends meet and had to abandon the trade he had learned. For Julius Vahlteich, born 1839, progress was straightforward: he learned his father’s trade as a shoemaker in his hometown of Leipzig and after travelling and working elsewhere, he returned to Leipzig and became a master shoemaker. And we have the success story of August Bebel: he started out in the household of his master in the small town of Wetzlar as a sole apprentice, learning the craft of woodturning, especially how to make pipes; during a period of travel after his apprenticeship he then learned to turn door and window knobs. In Leipzig, with its flourishing construction industry, he developed into to a prosperous tradesman from the late 1860s, selling door and window knobs so successfully that he bought a steam engine and employed several turners.51 Young workers in the artisanal work sphere experienced socialization in their early life course that merits the description ‘life-course regimes’ in line with the definition by Josef Ehmer quoted in the introduction. In the 1850s and 1860s it was still common, but no more than a general rule, for an apprentice to become part of the master’s household.52 This integration brought shelter and security but could also lead to exploitation and endless working hours. Integration could also mean isolation, for handicraft workshops were small-scale production units and work-place contact could be limited to a very few, if any, companions. In Leipzig in 1860/61, after seven years of training and work in his home town of Wetzlar and many other locations in southern Germany, Bebel found himself sharing his work place with other colleagues for only the second time in his working life.53 An integral part of artisanal life as a young man was formed by the period of ‘wandering’ (Wanderjahre) that followed apprenticeship. This phase accompanied other individual life-course events, such as finding an identity, a role in society and a future occupation, and could function as a time of reflection. For the first time, the young journeyman was fully self-reliant, with neither his family or his master’s household at his back. Young journeymen filled these years with adventurous, touristic travels; they improved their artisanal skills, acquired business knowledge that they might need to start their own master’s shop, and encountered colleagues from different places and learned of their experiences. It could be a period filled with hope, opportunity and aspirations but it came with risks too—unemployment, a transient existence and perhaps even the need to beg.54 Still, if they took their vocational peregrinations seriously and saw them as an opportunity, these young journeymen might rely on institutions that were part of their trade. Artisanal inns, guilds, journeymen’s brotherhoods and the rites of one’s trade provided norms and traditions that enabled socialization among one’s kind. Here were places journeymen might meet mentors who could shape their future lives.55 While their masters were perceived like substitute fathers, young journeymen could communicate and exchange more freely with such individuals. Suggestions and advice from mentors could find fertile ground among journeymen, young and at a stage of life that was full of insecurities and hopes. In addition, at these institutions journeymen encountered a (semi-)public sphere of meetings, festivities, discussions and printed sources. They might be appointed to a particular office and engage for the sake of their craft. Nothing here necessarily led to a commitment to the labour movement. Journeymen in prosperous and traditional crafts, butchers or bakers for example, had good career prospects. They could continue along predetermined tracks and were encouraged by their mentors to do so.56 At the same time, at a specific life-course phase these craft institutions and traditions provided windows onto alternative thinking and acting. For example, in 1866 at a public lecture by the head of the Kolpingverein, a Catholic association for journeymen, Joseph Belli, seventeen years old, heard for the first time of Ferdinand Lassalle and the aims of the social-democratic movement.57 During his itinerant years Friedrich Dürr, born in 1834 and active in Augsburg, met Jacob Audorf, who was one year older and also a mechanic. As an apprentice, Audorf had already become a member of the Educational Association for Workers (Bildungsverein für Arbeiter) in Hamburg. He came from a Hamburg family and even before 1848 his father had been active in socialist circles and in the labour movement. When Friedrich Dürr settled in Augsburg he remembered his politically educated former companion who had meanwhile become one of the founders of the General German Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein).58 Dürr was eager to become active in the new organization, and Audorf suggested he establish a branch in Augsburg. Dürr was recommended by Audorf to Lassalle, president of the General German Workers’ Association, as a man of ‘good will, clear head and brave character’.59 In general, the mobile years after the apprenticeship and the contact made with peers could be a basis for network building. Thanks to the institution of the Wanderjahre, in their early working life young journeymen experienced different workplaces. Possibilities for communication varied across workshops and factories, but while working, during breaks or after work, when they might come together after ten or more hours spent together that day, colleagues had the opportunity for face-to-face communication and the exchange of information. In Jochen Loreck’s data sample, twenty-one of thirty-three social-democratic autobiographers had experienced politicizing contacts at the workplace.60 Aged twenty-one and employed at a turner's workshop in Leipzig, August Bebel was, as mentioned above, now only for the second time working not alone with his master but together with colleagues, which led to his first participation in a common action which aimed to secure better food, more pay and shorter working hours.61 And Joseph Belli recalled from his time in a Munich workshop in 1872/73 that other than gossip about a spectacular crime, all talk in the workshop had revolved around the labour movement.62 Craft traditions and institutions also offered young journeymen leisure activities, with opportunities to meet, discuss and celebrate. A precarious masculinity was attached to the status of journeyman. Rules and traditions, but also practice, dictated that in this period of the life course, journeymen would remain unmarried. In 1857 only 7 per cent of the journeymen in Vienna-Schottenfeld were married; in 1875 two thirds of all tailor and locksmith journeymen in Leipzig were unmarried as were 95 per cent of all butcher and baker journeymen.63 Journeymen’s accommodation tended to be anything but comfortable, and as noted, journeymen not infrequently lived in their masters’ households. Many of these journeymen yearned for free space and autonomy and wanted to enjoy their youthful years. Artisanal organizations with their guesthouses, guilds and brotherhoods offered one possibility, but even they were regulated and controlled by the authorities and employers. Gambling and drinking were two forms of uncontrolled leisure activity for these young men, but those who were eager to advance or who reflected on their place in society, perceived such leisure only as a dissatisfying surrogate for engaging politically.64 Additionally, the greater economic freedom of the 1860s challenged the artisanal institutions and traditions on which the age cohort born in the 1830s and 1840s relied. Alternative models of organization were required, and new workers’ associations responded to that need. They offered a mixture of education, alcohol, tobacco and discussion, along with opportunities to explore the future for the individual and society. In addition, these new organizations radiated freshness; their provocative ideas seemed adventurous, something not yet forbidden but still dangerous. Those who found their way to such associations and their activities could participate in heated debates and defend their positions and by in doing so demonstrate a particular form of masculinity.65 Such features were especially attractive to younger people still in an unstable, open phase of their life. However attractive such institutions might appear, they were from the start exclusionary. First, this was a male world. Not only were women legally prohibited from participating in political associations, but meetings took place in an atmosphere of performed masculinity. Sexualized talk, to counter any possible accusations of a deficit of masculinity, was a tradition of craft socializing and the members therefore had little desire to see women participate in their associational life.66 Second, discussion played an important role at the institutions’ meetings. Words, ideas and arguments circulated first, before the beer flowed. Joining in the late-night socializing meant not just less sleep but also acceptance of organizational procedures. For those unfamiliar or unhappy with these operations, membership might soon lose its attraction. For many journeymen an evening in a public house that did not require they listen to the elaboration of Lassallean programmatic texts was the more desirable option. Thirdly, such organizations were more accessible to those who had already experienced such associational paradigms, and here journeymen with their socialization in artisanal structures had a clear advantage over rural or factory workers. It was not a matter of these working forces being actively excluded from the labour movement, but rather the reverse, with the associational life of the political labour movement remaining an alien world to them.67 The enthusiasm of youth could not surmount these obstacles on its own. We can follow such access and entry to political engagement from a life-course perspective more readily than we can explore departure from the movement. Most of the protagonists in our data sample stayed in the labour movement during their life course and only a few discuss a decision to quit. Yet, as we have noted, older age cohorts were in the minority in the labour movement. Demographic developments cannot explain this picture. Although life span in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was much shorter than today, in 1865–1867 people aged thirty years old had a life expectancy of a further 30 to 35 years, and those aged forty-five still had an expectancy of another 15 to 20 years.68 Early death could not be the reason for political retreat. Where did the older cohort go? Does that sarcastic observation in the opening quotation about the right-thinking 40-year-old bear weight? Looking through our life-course lens, we must consider the impact of marriage and family. Yet that turning point has two possible broad implications. On one hand, responsibility for a family brought new needs to the fore. Time for political engagement was lacking; the iterant years were over and the field of contacts narrowed. It has been assumed that after they had founded a family, American workers in the late nineteenth century did not necessarily leave the labour movement but were less interested in ideological, programmatic questions and more concerned about bread-and-butter issues. On the other hand, being situated in a family brought a stability that could generate the sense of self that young journeymen had looked for during their itinerant years, a psychological effect that might foster engagement in the political movement.69 Additionally, the family man might seek to flee the narrowness of the family experience. Several autobiographies of labour-movement activists contain contemptuous comments about wives who were jealous of their husbands’ activities or wanted to prevent their political activities.70 Having a family undoubtedly influenced engagement in the labour movement, but how this life-course event played out is not clear-cut and deserves further research. Wages had a more obvious effect on departures from labour movements. The life-course wage curve for workers in the nineteenth century shows a high-wage period from the age of twenty to the age of forty to forty-five. Membership information for associations in Augsburg, Dresden, Reichenbrand (close to Chemnitz) and Leipzig shows that older workers became less likely to be members at the point when they entered a lower-wage period. Some workers may have been unable to afford their membership. More fundamentally, the rank and file who faced a decline in their income may also have faced changes in their employment—they might, for example, look for a new job, return to their home location or become dependent on family members. No retirement system was in place and unions’ benevolent funds were limited, if they existed at all. The political labour movement had nothing to offer in this respect. In this instance insecurity did not lead to activity, commitment and agency.71 Although older workers did not necessarily renounce their socialist ideals, they were now a minority in the labour movement. Political persecution formed a third reason for the under-representation of older workers. Ernst Vierrock, born in 1843 and politically active in Erfurt since 1875, lost his job in a workshop of the Prussian state railway in the late 1870s because of his ‘socialist activities’; in 1881 his living quarters were searched several times. Young activists were also subject to harassment, but for older workers with family responsibilities the risks were greater and they were more likely to leave the movement as a result of such persecution. Thus, in 1870 Johann Salm wrote to August Bebel apologizing for not being more active for the labour movement and explaining that as the father of three children he feared persecution and becoming ‘breadless’ and had therefore ceased his involvement.72 Personal issues also influenced the age profile of the labour organization, for example health concerns or political work’s infringement on regular employment. Significant political differences and personal rivalries within the organization could also lead to departures. As members became older, they appear to have been less willing to expose themselves to such conflict.73 Furthermore, when the Anti-Socialist Law was allowed to lapse after 1890, a new generation emerged in the movement, often young men in their twenties and early thirties, so born as the previous cohorts were already becoming politically engaged.74 We must take care to put the withdrawal, retirement and resignation of older labour-movement members in perspective. A number of contextualizing factors should be noted. First, those who did stay in the movement during their life-course were acknowledged and could advance within it, if only at the local or regional level. Many of those whose autobiographies are available to us experienced a professionalization that brought them into positions of power and influence; in some instances they even generated an income from their political engagement, for example as journal editors. However, the members for whom we have personal accounts formed only a small minority in a growing movement. Secondly, the membership grew markedly from the mid-1890s, with those in the middle of the age span increasingly well represented while the oldest grouping was also more prominent within membership statistics. Thus, of 15,170 Social Democratic Party members in Hamburg in 1903, about 35 per cent were aged between thirty and forty, 24 per cent between forty and fifty and 11.6 per cent were older than fifty.75 Thirdly, the presence of an older cohort in the labour movement has to be viewed in light of member fluctuation, a feature that is not central to the argument of this article but does reveal the complexities of the situation. We can track membership fluctuation only for the period after 1900. Let us take the example of a Berlin social-democratic election association. Of the 1,200 members in 1896, only 256 (21.3%) were still members nine years later; of the 352 men who became members in 1897, only 49 (13.9%) belonged in 1905. Yet in 1908 only a very small part of the membership, around 1 per cent, officially ended their membership, while the membership of about 16 per cent of the 20,967 members was cancelled because they had not paid their dues. Many members simply moved away.76 In such cases, continuing membership was not an ideological issue but a structural matter. Yet the largest influx of members was still formed by men in their twenties, and the number of men who joined when older than thirty-five was small. Did the age cohort that was born between the 1830s and 1850 and became politically engaged two decades later form a ‘generation unit’? Two features help us frame a response to that question. First, when they became politically active in the 1860s and 1870s, these men ‘worked up the material of their common experiences’ (Mannheim) in light of ideas associated with Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. They deployed a new vocabulary of class struggle, productive forces and capitalistic exploitation, while by contrast the ‘generation as an actuality’ formed by contemporaries with similar experiences of changing economic systems involving industrial and capitalist production found such language of no interest. Secondly, in hindsight we can see that the age cohort born in the 1830s and 1840s were the founders of the German social-democratic labour movement, joined by a small but influential group of ‘1848ers’. Although the younger cohort did not have the older’s ‘common experience’ of the Revolution, both age groups have been deemed founding generations. This perception is strengthened because this double generation, with its two age cohorts, also resisted the persecution of the Anti-Socialist Laws between 1878 and 1890, and helped the political labour movement survive. The actors themselves celebrated this time as a ‘heroic age’ and thus constructed in retrospect a unit which can be labelled ‘generation Bebel’.77 This influential construction of a generation seems all the more valid because for decades activists born in the 1830s and in particular in the 1840s occupied important positions within the social-democratic movement, most prominently August Bebel (1840–1913) and Paul Singer (1844–1911) as co-chairmen of the Social Democratic Party. The life-long political careers and influence up to the First World War of the younger age cohort in the ‘founding generation’ contributed to a perception of persecution as a generation-building factor, while the significance of 1848 waned. IV. Conclusion Viewing the formation of the German labour movement, with its political associations and organizations, in light of biographical approaches reveals how decisions were both emotionally and subjectively determined. During their individual socialization, young men, mostly artisans, experienced both optimism and pessimism. While they hoped that later in life they would become respected artisan masters, they also feared the dark shadow of the factories. Journeymen trained in popular crafts—tailors, shoemakers and carpenters, for example—had to recognize that their occupational training no longer led as a rule to self-employment–indeed such was now rather the exception–or that it might result in the precarious existence of ‘lone master’ (Alleinmeister), who worked alone, without apprentices or journeymen. Migration, urbanization and industrialization all affected the craft worker’s life course. The young men in this data sample responded actively to such social change. Rather than show despair, they acquired knowledge and new ideas, built up networks and sought out comrades and colleagues who shared their interests. Most of these young men were not driven by hubris and the conviction they could change the world by themselves (unlike the Marxist intellectuals that are the subject of Morina’s research) but sought instead to be part of a movement that would change the world. Thanks to the experiences of their (occupational) life course, journeymen possessed from an early age the preconditions which facilitated such a worldview and helped them build up or integrate into the institutional frameworks of labour organizations. Rural workers with precarious and unstable earning opportunities should not be reproached for their political ‘inactivity’; they lacked the key that unlocked doors to involvement in the political labour movement. Thus, the perspective afforded by individual biographies and life-course interpretation allows us to identify the ‘meso-level, concerning [for example] specific social classes’.78 So, indeed, the creation of the German labour movement in the 1860s was influenced not just by specific life-course factors but also by how individuals perceived their social status. Was the making of the German labour movement in the nineteenth century a generational project? Generation, we have seen, was not influential in the same way as life course. Thus, while in the 1860s the German labour movement had a generational base in the 1848ers, younger age cohorts which did not share the moment of revolution (and its partial failure) were also vital to the movement. Although the structural economic and social changes experienced during the life course of the cohort born during the 1830s and 1840s were part of another type of revolution, as the industrial revolution, their effect was creeping and they did not have the abrupt impact of political revolution, with its condensed and intense experiences. In addition, the labour organizations and their members did not socialize according to a self-perceived generational paradigm but associated in light of social and economic inequalities in a milieu that was socially and culturally determined.79 Finally, almost all the life courses presented here were shaped by political commitments and engagement in the labour movements.80 Until 1908 that involvement was prohibited by state laws to women, whose life courses are therefore absent. The biographies that have been analysed were highly gendered, moulded by a dominant masculinity that had great influence on the associational life of the labour movement. But despite the relative homogeneity of the data set in terms of gender, education and occupation, life-course developments were evidently varied. Individual decisions, for a particular craft, for example, combined with structural advantages over which the individual had limited influence to generate collective or individual agency. The ability to combine individual experiences, feelings, desires and thoughts81 with structural social, economic and political challenges makes life-course research a useful paradigm. I suggest that a generational approach is less conclusive. The definition of this age cohort as the ‘founding generation’ of the German labour movement is purely retrospective; their ability to act as group and their will to engage politically did not originate in feelings of generational belonging. However, as Mannheim emphasized, ‘generation units’ are formed by those whose self-perception includes a sense of a unique, value-based collectivity. Such was certainly the case for the social-democratic labour movement, whose generational identity embraced socio-economic class structures, experiences of political exclusion, individual connections to a social-moral milieu and participation in working-class culture and life. Footnotes * I would like to thank Stefan Berger, Josef Ehmer, Jürgen Kocka and the fellows of the International Research Centre ‘Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History’ at the Humboldt University Berlin for their comments and advice. I also thank an anonymous reviewer for the recommendation to flesh out the context provided by labour movement historiography in the introductory part of this article. Rona Johnston helped me polish the English. 1 J. Schmidt, Brüder, Bürger und Genossen: die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung zwischen Klassenkampf und Bürgergesellschaft 1830–1870 (Bonn, 2018). 2 See for an overview of German labour historiography, J. Kocka, Arbeiterleben und Arbeiterkultur: die Entstehung einer sozialen Klasse, in collaboration with Jürgen Schmidt (Bonn, 2015), pp. 16–28; Schmidt, Brüder, pp. 41–9. Here I am also referring to Robert Putnam’s idea of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social capital; see R. D. Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone. America’s Declining Social Capital’, Journal of Democracy, 6 (1995), pp. 65–78. 3 J. Loreck, Wie man früher Sozialdemokrat wurde: das Kommunikationsverhalten in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung und die Konzeption der sozialistischen Parteipublizistik durch August Bebel (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1977); C. Morina, Die Erfindung des Marxismus: wie eine Idee die Welt eroberte (Munich, 2017). 4 I use ‘labour movement’ here only in the sense of political associations and organizations. Trade unions, strikes and grassroots activism are not included, although they are all also present in most of the individual biographies I draw upon. 5 K. Mannheim, ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Paul Kecskemeti (ed.), Karl Mannheim: Essays (1928, in German) (1952, reprt. London, 1972), pp. 276–322. 6 See also J. Ehmer, Soziale Traditionen in Zeiten des Wandels: Arbeiter und Handwerker im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 1994), pp. 290–300. 7 T. Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit: die deutsche Sozialdemokratie vom Vormärz bis zum Sozialistengesetz (Bonn, 2000); T. Offermann, Die erste deutsche Arbeiterpartei: Organisation, Verbreitung und Sozialstruktur von ADAV und LADAV, 1863–1871, includes CD-Rom (Bonn, 2002). 8 I considered local active members in the Prussian town of Erfurt and the Bavarian town of Augsburg; see for these groups J. Schmidt, ‘Sozialdemokratische und bürgerlich-nationale Milieus: Parteiführungen und Parteikarrieren in Erfurt (1871–1924)’, in D. Dowe, J. Kocka and H. A. Winkler (eds), Parteien im Wandel vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik: Rekrutierung—Qualifizierung—Karrieren (Munich, 1999), pp. 229–67, here pp. 237–50; K. B. Murr and S. Resch (eds), Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’: Protokollbuch des Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitervereins Gemeinde Augsburg, 1864–1867 (Bonn, 2012), pp. 199–209. In Erfurt 20 men belonged to this active group, of whom 13 were born between the 1830s and 1850; in Augsburg 14 men were pioneers of the local organization, but only 8 were born in the relevant decades. The figures for ‘politically active members’ are related only to people about whom I have additional biographical information; the number of members was higher—for example, the association in Augsburg had 61 members (Murr and Resch, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’, p. 14). 9 A combination of methods, approaches and sources for researching working biographies is also suggested by Lutz Raphael for the late twentieth century; see L. Raphael, ‘Arbeitsbiografien und Strukturwandel “nach dem Boom”‘, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 43 (2017), pp. 32–67, here p. 35. 10 I have used autobiographical writings by Ottilie Baader (1847–1925), August Bebel (1840–1913), Joseph Belli (1849–1927), Wilhelm Blos (1849–1927), Wilhelm Bock (1846–1931), Hermann Enters (1846–1940), Carl Fischer (1841–1906), Josef Holzhammer (1850–1942), Robert Köhler (1841–?) Johann Most (1846–1906), Andreas Scheu (1844–1927), Heinrich Scheu (1845–1926) and Josef (Seff) Schiller (1846–1897). In addition, I have integrated life-course facts for further prominent labour movement activists for whom we have no autobiographical writings: Leonhard von Bonhorst (1840–1915), Wilhelm Bracke (1842–1880), August Geib (1842–1879), Wilhelm Hasenclever (1837–1889), Julius Motteler (1838–1907) and Julius Vahlteich (1839–1915). 11 See for the concept of generations in labour history in general A. Blok (ed.), Generations in Labour History: Papers Presented to the Sixth British Dutch Conference on Labour History, Oxford 1988 (Amsterdam, 1989). 12 An analysis of the significant year 1968 from a global perspective can be found in J. Kastner and D. Mayer (eds), Weltwende 1968? Ein Jahr aus globalgeschichtlicher Perspektive (Vienna, 2008). The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 saw a flood of books published in Germany. 13 U. Herbert, Best: biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn, 1996), pp. 42–50; M. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg, 2002); J. Reulecke and E. Müller-Luckner (eds), Generationalität und Lebensgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2003); A. Schulz and G. Grebner (eds), Generationswechsel und historischer Wandel (Munich, 2003). One possible explanation for the growing interest in the concept of ‘generations’ could be the success of Florian Illies’s bestseller Generation Golf: eine Inspektion (Frankfurt/Main, 2000), which entertainingly and reflectively described the generation born between around 1965 and 1975 as hedonistic. 14 K. Schönhoven and B. Braun (eds), Generationen in der Arbeiterbewegung (Munich, 2005). 15 J. Mittag, ‘Biografische Forschung und Arbeiterbewegung: einleitende Anmerkungen’, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, 45 (2011), pp. 5–20, here p. 17 (my translation). 16 A similar observation is found in L. Fasora, ‘Der Generationskonflikt in der Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie in den böhmischen Ländern um 1920’, in L. Fasora, E. Hiebl and P. Popelka (eds), Generationen in der Geschichte des langen 20. Jahrhunderts—methodisch-theoretische Reflexionen (Vienna, 2017), pp. 77–87, here p. 77. 17 A. Gestrich, Traditionelle Jugendkultur und Industrialisierung: Sozialgeschichte der Jugend in einer ländlichen Arbeitergemeinde Württembergs, 1800–1920 (Göttingen, 1986); G. A. Ritter and K. Tenfelde, Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 1871 bis 1914 (Bonn, 1992), pp. 644–8; J. Reulecke, ‘Neuer Mensch und neue Männlichkeit: die “junge Generation” im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbuch des Historischen Kollegs (2001), pp. 109–39, esp. pp. 114–15, 126–8, 137–8. 18 Dilthey’s generational approach is concisely explained by S. Willer, ‘Biographie—Genealogie—Generation’, in C. Klein (ed.), Handbuch Biographie: Methoden, Traditionen, Theorien (Stuttgart, 2009), pp. 87–94, here p. 90; see also B. Weisbrod, ‘Generation und Generationalität in der Neueren Geschichte’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 55, 8 (2005), pp. 3–9, here p. 3; J. Ehmer, ‘Generationen in der historischen Forschung: Konzepte und Praktiken’, in H. Künemund and M. Szydlik (eds), Generationen: multidisziplinäre Perspektiven (Wiesbaden, 2007), pp. 59–80, here pp. 65–6. 19 Mannheim, ‘Problem of Generations’, pp. 303, 292. On Mannheim’s definition of generations see V. Depkat, ‘Ein schwieriges Genre: zum Ort der Biografik in der Arbeitergeschichtsschreibung’, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, 45 (2011), pp. 21–35, here pp. 32–3, and U. Jureit, ‘Generation, Generationality, Generational Research’, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 9 Aug. 2017, http://docupedia.de/zg/jureit_generation_v2_en_2017. 20 Mannheim, ‘Problem of Generations’, pp. 303–4 (emphasis in original). 21 Ibid., p. 304 (emphasis in original). 22 U. Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte: Theorien, Praxis, Schlüsselwörter (5th edn, Frankfurt/Main, 2005), p. 336. Ulrike Jureit and Michael Wildt, in contrast, see more parallels with Max Weber’s class model; see U. Jureit and M. Wildt, ‘Generationen’, in U. Jureit and M. Wildt (eds), Generationen: zur Relevanz eines wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs (Hamburg, 2005), pp. 7–26, here p. 11. 23 A. Schulz and G. Grebner, ‘Generation und Geschichte: zur Renaissance eines umstrittenen Forschungskonzepts’, in Schulz and Grebner, Generationswechsel, pp. 1–23, here p. 10. 24 See the definition in A. Gallus, ‘Biographik und Zeitgeschichte’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 55, 1–2 (2005), pp. 40–6, here p. 42: collective biographies deal with ‘life courses of—exactly definable—social or political groups’. 25 Morina, Erfindung, p. 477 (my translation). 26 This is similar to the prosopographic approach emphasized by Lawrence Stone; see L. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus, 199, 1 (1971), pp. 46–79. See also with regard to more than 600 intellectuals in the Communist Parties in four European states T. Kroll, Kommunistische Intellektuelle in Westeuropa: Frankreich, Österreich, Italien und Großbritannien im Vergleich (1945–1956) (Cologne, 2007). 27 W. H. Schröder, ‘Kollektivbiographie: Spurensuche, Gegenstand, Forschungsstrategie’, Historical Social Research Supplement, 23 (2011), pp, 74–152, esp. p. 131. See for this approach with regard to the labour movement: W. H. Schröder, ‘Politik als Beruf? Ausbildung und Karrieren von sozialdemokratischen Reichstagsabgeordneten im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik’, in Dowe, Kocka and Winkler, Parteien, pp. 27–83 and Schroeder’s handbook Sozialdemokratische Parlamentarier in den deutschen Reichs- und Landtagen, 1867–1933: Biographien, Chronik, Wahldokumentation. Ein Handbuch (Düsseldorf, 1995) and data set: http://zhsf.gesis.org/biorabkr.htm. 28 Gallus, ‘Biographik und Zeitgeschichte’, p. 40. 29 On the labour movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, recent publications to note are J. Sperber, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-century Life (New York, 2013); T. Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (London, 2009); W. Mühlhausen, Friedrich Ebert 1871–1925: Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2006); B. Braun, Hermann Molkenbuhr (1851–1927): eine politische Biografie (Düsseldorf, 1999); J. Schmidt, August Bebel: Social Democracy and the Founding of the Labour Movement, trans. C. Brocks (London, 2019). Biographies too numerous to mention here were published in 2018 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of Marx’s birth. 30 M. Mitterauer, Sozialgeschichte der Jugend (Frankfurt/Main, 1985); J. Ehmer, Sozialgeschichte des Alters (Frankfurt/Main, 1990), pp. 11–12, 17. 31 R. Sackmann, Lebenslaufanalyse und Biografieforschung: eine Einführung (Wiesbaden, 2007); H.-W. Wahl and A. Kruse (eds), Lebensläufe im Wandel: Entwicklung über die Lebensspanne aus Sicht verschiedener Disziplinen (Stuttgart, 2014)—this edited volume does not address historical scholarship. 32 K. U. Mayer, ‘Gesellschaftlicher Wandel, Kohortenungleichheit und Lebensverläufe’, in P. A. Berger and P. Sopp (eds), Sozialstruktur und Lebenslauf (Opladen, 1995), pp. 27–47; M. Kohli, ‘The World We Forgot: A Historical Review of the Life Course’, in W. R. Heinz, A Weymann and J. Huinink (eds), The Life Course Reader: Individuals and Societies across Time (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 2009), pp. 64–90, here p. 70; G. H. Elder, Jr., ‘Perspectives on the Life Course’, in Heinz, Weymann and Huinink, The Life Course Reader, pp. 91–110. 33 T. K. Hareven, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, Social Science History, 30 (1996), pp. 314–44, here esp. pp. 332–5. 34 J. Ehmer, ‘Work and the Life Course. Examples from European History’, working paper, presented at re:work on 13 Dec. 2016. Ehmer is referring to H. Krüger, ‘The Life-Course Regime: Ambiguities between Interrelatedness and Individualization’, in W. R. Heinz and V. M. Marshall (eds), Social Dynamics of the Life Course (New York, 2003), pp. 33–56. 35 L. Amrhein, ‘Der entstrukturierte Lebenslauf? Zur Vision einer “altersintegrierten” Gesellschaft’, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform, 50 (2004), pp. 147–69, here p. 147. Amrhein discusses the liberal-individualistic view of ‘flexible life courses’, ponders the advantages and disadvantages and concludes that the better qualified and financially and socially better-off are the principal beneficiaries of such flexible life courses. 36 R. Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (New York, 2006), pp. 27, 196, 204, 328. 37 With regard to the total population we can assume that those who were younger were overrepresented and those who were older were underrepresented in the labour organizations. Unfortunately, owing to a lack of data, I can only compare the results with age groups in general, according to which in 1875 only 15.8% of the male population in Germany was aged between twenty and thirty, 13.3% was aged between thirty and forty, and more than 25% of male Germans were aged over forty; therefore, in all other associations apart from the Reichenbrand association, elderly people were underrepresented. See Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt (ed.) Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich. 2. Jahrgang (Berlin 1881), pp. 6–8. 38 Kocka and Schmidt, Arbeiterleben, p. 279. 39 See Hermann Enters, Die kleine, mühselige Welt des jungen Hermann Enters: Erinnerungen eines Amerika-Auswanderers an das frühindustrielle Wuppertal (2nd edn, Wuppertal, 1971), pp. 69–70. Enters was born in 1846 and wrote his autobiographical sketches in the early 1920s. 40 Kocka and Schmidt, Arbeiterleben, pp. 274–90. 41 Morina, Erfindung, p. 76. 42 August Bebel, Aus meinem Leben (Munich, 1995; 1st edn, in three parts, 1910–14), p. 24. 43 Ottilie Baader, Ein steiniger Weg (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 10 (my translation). 44 This is an obvious difference to the Marxist intellectuals and their first reading experiences; see Morina, Erfindung, p. 116. 45 Franz J. Ströbel, born 1820, a former soldier, factory weaver and self-employed producer of jigsaws, donated the middle-class journal Illustriertes Familien-Journal. Eine Wochenschrift zur Belehrung und Unterhaltung to the library of the Augsburg labour association; see Murr and Resch, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’, p. 65. 46 Loreck, Wie man früher Sozialdemokrat wurde, pp. 165–77. 47 This confirms the currently predominant interpretation of the early German labour movement as very strongly shaped by artisans; see F. Lenger, ‘Die handwerkliche Phase der Arbeiterbewegung in England, Frankreich, Deutschland und den USA—Plädoyer für einen Vergleich’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 13 (1987), pp. 232–43; Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit. 48 Murr and Resch, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’, pp. 199–209. 49 Joseph Belli, Die rote Feldpost unterm Sozialistengesetz. Mit einer Einleitung: Erinnerungen aus meinen Kinder-, Lehr- und Wanderjahren (Stuttgart, 1912), p. 7; Wilhelm Blos, Denkwürdigkeiten eines Sozialdemokraten, vol. 1 (Munich 1914), pp. 8–9; Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, pp. 20–1. 50 Wilhelm Bock, Im Dienste der Freiheit. Freud und Leid aus sechs Jahrzehnten Kampf und Aufstieg (Berlin, 1927), p. 9. 51 Josef Schiller, ‘Blätter und Blüten aus dem Kranze meiner Erinnerungen’, in Josef Schiller, Auswahl aus seinem Werk, ed. N. Rothe (Berlin/GDR, 1982), pp. 56–100; Johann Most, Memoiren. Erlebtes, Erforschtes und Erdachtes, 4 vols (New York, 1903–7), vol. 2, p. 62; Schmidt, Bebel, pp. 17–28. 52 In 1857 in Vienna-Gumpendorf, of those young workers and artisans aged between 15 and 19, 45% still lived in the household of their employers, but 40% lived in rented apartments and 15% were lodgers. For those aged between 20 and 24 the rates were 35% (with employer), 34% (rented apartment), 31% (as lodger), and for those aged between 25 and 29 the rates were 39% (with employer), 27% (rented apartment), 34% (as lodger). Of the oldest age group (for ages 40 to 44), 75% had their own flat, 20% were lodgers, and only 5% lived with their employer; see Ehmer, Soziale Traditionen, p. 65. 53 Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 41. 54 See, in general, S. Wadauer, Die Tour der Gesellen: Mobilität und Biographie im Handwerk vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 2005). 55 The role of peers (in the sense of those belonging to the same group with regard to status, age etc) in the life course plays a prominent role in the perspective adopted by social science and development psychology, but the role of mentors is, surprisingly, less prominent; see V. Gecas, ‘Self-Agency and the Life Course’, in J. T. Mortimer and M. J. Shanahan (eds), Handbook of the Life Course (Berlin, 2006), pp. 369–88, here pp. 376–7. 56 For the different expectations for craft workers and artisanal food producers see F. Lenger, Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Handwerker seit 1800 (Frankfurt/Main 1988), pp. 92–103. 57 Belli, Die rote Feldpost, p. 32. See also Bebel’s positive experiences, Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 28. 58 Here the roles of peer and mentor coincide. 59 Murr and Resch, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’, p. 199. 60 Loreck, Wie man früher Sozialdemokrat wurde, p. 178. 61 Schmidt, August Bebel, p. 25. 62 Belli, Die rote Feldpost, p. 61. 63 Kocka and Schmidt, Arbeiterleben, p. 153. 64 See especially Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, pp. 28–9, 32–3. 65 Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit, part two; Schmidt, Brüder, pp. 436–52. 66 ‘Finally [in the dormitory at the guild house] our old fellow told immoral stories till we fell asleep’, quoted in Schmidt, Brüder, p. 97, see also p. 91 for the 1830s. Other explanations for the exclusion of women must also be considered, in particular the economic and ideological position that their employment supressed wages. In large and successful associations women were included in public festivities, decorated rooms, stitched banners and were seen as supporting their politically active husbands (ibid., pp. 449). 67 The nature of strike actions also varied between the two groups: factory workers stayed at their workplace but stopped work, while artisans left the workplace; see Ehmer, Soziale Traditionen, p. 274. 68 P. Marschalck, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Deutschlands im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main, 1984), p. 164; the figures held for men and women. 69 Ehmer, Soziale Traditionen, pp. 207–8. With regard to the American case, Ehmer refers to J. Bodnar, ‘Immigration, Kinship, and the Rise of Working-Class Realism in Industrial America’, Journal of Social History, 14 (1980), pp. 45–65. 70 See Bock, Im Dienste, pp. 70–1; Julius Bruhns, ‘Es klingt im Sturm ein altes Lied!’: Aus der Jugendzeit der Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1921), p. 75. 71 See also the discussion in sociological research on life courses about whether old age tends to produce disengagement or engagement: A. Kruse and H.-W. Wahl, ‘Lebenslaufforschung—ein altes und neues interdisziplinäres Forschungsthema’, in Wahl and Kruse, Lebensläufe, pp. 16–38, here pp. 26–7. 72 File note by police officer, 21 Apr. 1887, Stadtarchiv Erfurt 1–2/120–2, fol. 275; Schmidt, Brüder, p. 435. 73 Murr and Resch, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’, pp. 102, 200, with regard to the founder of the Augsburg association Friedrich Dürr. 74 B. Braun, ‘Die “Generation Ebert”‘, in Schönhoven and Braun, Generationen, pp. 69–86, here p. 71. 75 D. Fricke, Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1869–1917, 2 vols, (Berlin/GDR, 1987), vol. 1, p. 336. This development was again a starting point for discussion about the aging of the labour movement. 76 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 309–11. 77 T. Welskopp, ‘Die “Generation Bebel”‘, in Schönhoven and Braun, Generationen, pp. 51–67. 78 Ehmer, ‘Work and the Life Course’, p. 4. 79 K. Schönhoven and B. Braun, ‘Vorwort der Herausgeber’, in Schönhoven and Braun, Generationen, p. 8; K. Tenfelde, ‘Generationelle Erfahrungen in der Arbeiterbewegung’, in Schönhoven and Braun, Generationen, pp.17–49. 80 Carl Fischer and Hermann Enters were the exceptions: neither ever joined a labour organization. 81 See also E. M. Bruner, ‘The Opening Up of Anthropology’ (1984), quoted in A. von Posen and A. Th. von Posen, ‘Grundlagen der ethnologischen Lebenslaufforschung’ in Wahl and Kruse, Lebensläufe, 2014, pp. 64–74, here p. 67. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Generational, Biographical and Life-Course Approaches to the History of the German Labour Movement in the Nineteenth Century
JO - German History
DO - 10.1093/gerhis/ghz039
DA - 2019-09-20
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/generational-biographical-and-life-course-approaches-to-the-history-of-d8EWCkOFiV
SP - 295
VL - 37
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -