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Misguided Martyrdom: German Social Democratic Response to the Haymarket Incident, 1886–87

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Raymond C. Sun
Raymond C. Sun
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

One day after the execution of the Haymarket anarchists, the German Social Democratic leader August Bebel penned a terse commentary to his friend Friedrich Engels: “So in Chicago the execution has been carried out. Abominable (scheusslich). This murder will have the best consequences for the movement. It will bring the anarchists to their senses while again revealing the class state in its nakedness to the workers and destroying any illusions. Such excesses must occur if things are to advance more quickly.”

Type
The Haymarket
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 29 , Spring 1986 , pp. 53 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1986

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References

NOTES

1. Bebel, to Engels, , 12 11, 1887Google Scholar.In August Bebel's Briefwechesel mit Friedrich Engels, ed. Blumberg, Werner. (The Hague: 1965), 314.Google Scholar

2. “Wider einen Justizmord,” Der Sozialdemokrat, 28 October, 1887. (Hereafter referred to as SD).

3. For a concise history of the 1886–87 persecution, see Lidtke, Vernon L., The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany 1878–1890, (Princeton, 1966), ch. 9.Google Scholar

4. The other Social Democratic leaders in question were Ignaz Auer, Karl Frohme, Carl Ulrich, Louis Viereck, and Georg von Vollmar. Another major figure in the party, Johann H.W. Dietz, was sentenced to six months in prison, along with two “minor persons,” Philipp Mueller and Stephan Heinzel. Ibid., 248–49.

5. Linse, Ulrich, Organisierter Anarchismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871 (Berlin: 1969), 41.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., 67.

7. Avrich, Paul, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 48.Google Scholar

8. Linse, Anarchismus, 41.

9. Ibid., 60–61.

10. “Die Muster-Socialisten,” Freiheit 22 January, 1887. “Freiheit was founded for the express purpose of sending it to readers in Germany and Austria,” with 4,500 out of a total number of 5,000 copies printed being smuggled into these two countries in 1886. But by this point the news in Freiheit centered around the American anarchist movement, and only rarely did “correspondence” from Germany allow conditions there to be examined in detail. Carlson, Andrew R., Anarchism in Germany, vol. 1: The Early Movement (Metuchen, N.J., 1972), 205.Google Scholar

11. The following summary is taken from Avrich, 39–51.

12. Ibid., 51.

13. Ibid., 51.

14. Avrich notes that “At the peak of the movement, in fact, the number of German anarchists in the United States probably exceeded that in Germany itself.” Ibid., 84.

15. Ibid., 95.

16. Ibid., 74–75.

17. Ibid., 83.

18. The SLP's membership had slipped to 1500 in 1883. Ibid., 77.

19. Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 78.

20. “In America as well the movement is going very strongly. We clearly find ourselves before a great international revolution (Umwalzung), which is coming faster than I had anticipated” Bebel, to Engels, , 23 04, 1886Google Scholar. In Briefwechsel, 274.

21. “Klassenkampf in der alten und Klassenkampf in der neuen Welt,” SD, 6 May, 1886.

22. “Die Chicagoer Unruhen,” SD, 13 May, 1886.

23. This was in contrast to the following report from the bourgeois Frankfurter Zeitung, which was quoted in this same account in order to illustrate to Social Democratic readers the class prejudice that immediately blamed the assembled workers for the bloodshed: “The mob (naturally!) became wild at the sight of flowing blood, held fast and fired salvo after salvo at the police. The latter fought bravely against the great mass and finally dispersed the same.”

24. Ibid. The anarchists, of course, showed no such moral qualms. The Freiheit declared baldly that “The Chicago bomb was juristically justified and militarily appropriate. All honor to those who created and applied it!” “Die Bombe von Chicago,” Freiheit, 15 May, 1886.

25. Engels, to Liebknecht, , 12 05, 1886Google Scholar. In Wilhelm Liebknecht, Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, ed. Eckert, Georg. (The Hague, 1963), 296.Google Scholar

26. “Aus Amerika,” SD, 27 May, 1886 (original emphasis).

27. “Aus Amerika,” SD, 20 May, 1886.

28. “Die Chicagoer Vorkommnisse,” in “Sozialpolitische Rundschau,” SD 20 May, 1886. The anarchists responded to the Social Democrats' charge by agreeing that “haven't we said the same? Now, when they begin to see that the whole ballyhooed eight-hour movement (Achstundenrummel) was a fiasco, then they hurry to explain it away as cheaply as possible. Oh, these pitiful creatures!” “Notizen,” Freihet, 5 June, 1886.

29. “Amerika,” in “Sozialpolitische Rundschau,” SD, 15 July, 1886.

30. This was in contrast to Freiheit, which devoted extensive coverage to the court proceedings. See especially the two full pages of testimony reproduced in “Die Chicagoer Gerichts-Komödie,” Freiheit, 14 August, 1886.

31. SD, 15 July, 1886. The anarchists strongly opposed this strategy. Freiheit, for example, published a letter from one of the defendants, Adolph Fischer, in which he wrote “If it must be, it is in my judgment better that all of us climb the scaffold than that our organization be led backward into the political fire-waters.” “Mahnruf eines zum Tode verurtheilten Anarchisten,” Freiheit, 28 August, 1886.

32. SD, 15 July, 1886.

33. “Die Rache der gefährdeten Ordnung,” SD, 25 August, 1886 (original emphasis).

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. “Gegen das Chicagoer Bluturtheil,” SD, 22 September, 1886.

37. “Aus den Vereinigten Staaten,” SD, 5 November, 1886.

38. Lidtke, Outlawed Party, 249–51.

39. See, for example, “Aufruf der sozialdemokratischen Fraktion zur dritten Reichstagswahl unter dem Sozialistengesetz. 21 Februar 1887” (Berlin, 14, 1887); “Zum 21. Februar” (lead article from SD, 29 January, 1887); and “Wahlaufruf des sozialdemokratischen Wahlkomitees zur dritten Reichstagswahl unter dem Sozialistengesstz,” 21. Februar 1887, “Zur Pfingstzeit 1887.” Also see “Die nächsten Reichstagswahlen,” SD, 3 December, 1886.

40. Linse, Anarchismus, 61, claims that the government acted in a spirit of calculated disregard of the known facts when it attributed the “revolutionary excesses or expressions of anarchism” to the Social Democrats. But it is entirely conceivable that the government believed its own propaganda in giving credence to an unholy alliance between the two revolutionary movements. On the other hand, the government's use of agents-provocateurs to write inflammatory articles for Freiheit so as to have available manufactured “proof” of the need for more repressive legislation can also be demonstrated. Cf. Carlson, Anarchism in Germany, 235–37, 399.

41. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstages (hereafter RTSB), VI Legislative period, ii Session, v. 6, 17 May, 1886, Anlage no. 297, 1597.

42. RTSB VI Leg., iii Sess., v. 2, 18 September, 1886, 40.

43. Ibid., 41.

44. “Wider einen Justizmord,” SD, 28 October, 1887.

45. “An die Arbeiter aller Laender,” Freiheit, 17 September, 1887 (original emphasis).

46. SD, 28 October, 1887.

47. Ibid.

48. “Socialpolitische Rundschau,” SD, 11 November, 1887.

49. “Der Justizmord in Chicago,” SD, 18 November, 1887 (original emphasis).

50. Ibid. (original emphasis).

51. “Zur sozialen Doktrin des Anarchismus. I.,” SD, 2 December, 1887. See also “Zur sozialen Doktrin des Anarchismus. II.,” SD, 16 December, 1887.

52. Verhandlungen des Parteitags der deutschen Sozialdemokratie in St. Gallen. Abgehalten vom 2, bis 6. Oktober 1887 (Hottingen-Zurich, 1888), 42–43.

53. Ibid., 40.

54. Ibid., 43.

55. Ibid., 43.

56. Lidtke, Outlawed Party, 272.

57. “An Liebknecht und Genossen,” Freiheit, 5 November, 1887 (original emphasis).

58. See for example, “Aus der Rede Bebel's zum neuen Sozialistengesetz,” SD, 25 February, 1888.

59. For example, the book Anarchismus und Sozialismus (1894) by Georg Plekhanov, and Liebknecht's reaffirmation of the St. Gall principles in a speech before the Stuttgart Party Congress in 1898. Cf. Linse, Anarchismus, 62.

60. See the argument by Lidtke, Outlawed Party, 272.

61. “Sozialpolitische Rundschau,” SD, 20 May, 1886.