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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Although much has been written about the history of the German Communist Party, little is known about who actually belonged to it or supported it. Yet knowledge of the social composition of German Communism is an important, in many ways crucial, factor in assessing the role of the KPD in the development of the German workers' movement during the Weimar Republic. Aside from a census of party members conducted by the national leadership in 1927, and voting returns in elections, there are no national sources on which to base an analysis of the social structure of the Communist movement in Germany. Local and regional sources, though sporadically preserved and until now little exploited, offer an alternative way to determine the social bases of German Communism. This article contributes to the history of the KPD by attempting to analyze one source about support for German Communism in a major industrial city. In October 1923 the KPD staged an insurrection in Hamburg, resulting in the arrest and conviction of over 800 persons. A social analysis of these known insurrectionaries can indicate some of the sources of support for the KPD and suggest some of the ways in which the KPD fit into the history of the German working class and workers' movement.
The research for this article was made possible in part by grant of the Klaus Epstein Memorial Fellowship in German History, administered by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.
1 Angress, W.T., Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–1923 (Princeton, 1963),Google Scholar is the principal account about the background of the insurrection, but the reader should also consult earlier accounts by Flechtheim, O. K., Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt/ M., 1971);Google Scholar Wenzel, O., “Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands im Jahre 1923” (Ph.D. diss., Berlin, 1955);Google Scholar and (Neuberg, A.), Der bewaffnete Aufstand: Versuch einer theoretischen Darstellung (Frankfurt/M., 1971), pp. vi–xii.Google Scholar
2 Comfort, R. A., Revolutionary Hamburg: Labor Politics in the Early Weimar Republic (Stanford, 1966), p. 170.Google Scholar
3 Habedank, H., Zur Geschichte des Hamburger Aufstandes 1923 (Berlin, 1958), p. 197.Google Scholar
4 I used copies of each in the files of the Oberpräsident of the Rhineland in the Staatsarchiv archiv Koblenz, Abteilung 403, Nr 13403: Die Polizeibehörde Hamburg, Denkschrift über die Unruhen im Oktober 1923 im Gebiete Gross-Hamburg. Zum dienstlichen Gebrauch zusammengestellt von der Zentralpolizeistelle Hamburg, and Verzeichnis der wegen Teilnahme an den Umsturzbewegungen im Oktober 1923 verurteilten Personen. Anlage zur Denkschrift über die Unruhen im Oktober 1923 im Gebiete Gross-Hamburg.
5 Habedank mentions the Denkschrift along with other police reports in his introductory chapter on sources. Comfort lists the Denkschrift, but not the Anlage, in his bibliography. Habedank's work is the most detailed and reliable reconstruction of the insurrection itself and the conditions in Hamburg immediately preceding the insurrection. Comfort says surprisingly little about the October 1923 uprising or its background, and what he says is not reliable. He merely recites the events, without analyzing the social situation in Hamburg or relating local events to national developments.
6 For the background of the Hamburg workers' movement and political events leading up to 1923 see Habedank, , Comfort, , and especially Ullrich, V., Die Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung vom Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges bis zur Revolution 1918/1919 (Hamburg, 1976).Google Scholar
7 Habedank, , Zur Geschichte, op. cit., pp. 98–99.Google Scholar
8 chuster, K.G.P., Der Rote Frontkämpferbund 1924–1929: Beitrage zur Geschichte und Organisationsstruktur eines politischen Kampfbundes (Düsseldorf, 1975), pp. 54–55;Google Scholar (Neuberg, ), Der bewaffnete Aufstand, op. cit., pp. 75, 82;Google Scholar Habedank, , Zur Geschichte, p. 99.Google Scholar
9 Schuster, , Der Rote Frontkämpferbund, pp. 53ff.Google Scholar
10 (Neuberg, ), Der bewaffnete Aufstand, p. 175;Google Scholar Habedank, , ZurGeschichte, pp. 98–101, 164–65.Google Scholar Comfort, , Revolutionary Hamburg, op. cit., pp. 124–25ff., incorrectly says that the pro-Communist proletarian hundreds attacked the police stations, but he gives no evidence to back his assertion. Habedank provides ample proof that in fact the KPD relied exclusively on its own paramilitary organ, the Ordnerdienst, instead of the more heterogeneous hundreds.Google Scholar
11 (Neuberg, ), Der bewaffnete Aufstand, pp. 83ff., 88–90.Google Scholar Cf. Habedank, , Zur Geschichte, pp. 92–101, 152–55, 187–200, for information on demonstrations, assemblies, and riots in parts of Hamburg outside the insurrection. Habedank does not provide a systematic account of these, but it seems clear that the KPD merely called on its militants to organize limited protest demonstrations in support of the insurrection, but did not try any largescale mobilization of its working-class followers.Google Scholar
12 For police strategy see Denkschrift über die Unruhen im Oktober 1923 im Gebiete Gross-Hamburg. An analysis of the list of arrested persons and the charges brought against them, combined with the fact that police made no mass, indiscriminate, arrests, further underscores this conclusion.
13 For the 1925 census, cf. Statistik des deutschen Reichs, CDII-CDVIII: Voiks-, Berufsund Betriebszählung vom 16. Juni 1925(Berlin, 1929), and especially Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXII-XXXIII: Die Voiks-, Berufs- und Betriebszählung vom 16. Juni 1925, ed. by the Statistischen Landesamt (Hamburg, 1927). The 1925 census was the closest one to the 1923 insurrection. While the 1925 figures are not exact comparisons, they are generally indicative of the social, economic and demographic composition of Hamburg's population in the early 1920's. Unless otherwise stated, all Hamburg figures given in the article will be from the 1925 census and will refer to the state of Hamburg as a whole (the city of Hamburg plus suburban and unincorporated areas under Hamburg's jurisdiction). The Hamburg figures do not include the suburbs of Hamburg that lay in Schleswig-Holstein or Hanover (provinces of Prussia), nor the cities of Altona and Harburg. The arrested, in contrast, may have lived in the Prussian suburbs of Hamburg. I am using the Hamburg figures only for purposes of comparison with the arrested. They are merely indicative, and conclusions drawn from them cannot be considered absolute. I am working under the assumption that the structure of the population of the greater metropolitan Hamburg area (including parts of Prussia) is accurately reflected in the population statistics for the state of Hamburg alone.
14 Habedank, , Zur Geschichte, pp. 150–51, 189.Google Scholar
15 ibid., pp. 152–55.
16 Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXIII, pp. 192–94, 364–71.Google Scholar
17 For a list of Hamburg's major occupations, see ibid., p. 25. Those manufacturing or transportation industries with large numbers of working-class occupations (metal, construction, harbor and transportation. in addition to smaller ones) were all prominent among the arrested. The primarily white-collar and independent occupations (wholesale and retail trade, rentiers, banking and finance, government functionaries) were all weakly represented among the arrested.
18 ibid., pp. 23–24.
19 Cf. Habedank, , Zur Geschichte, pp. 117ff. Source for Hamburg: Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXIII. pp. 35–36.Google Scholar
20 Flechtheim, , Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik, op. cit., p. 187, noticed this long ago. Habedank also points clearly to the geographic and industrial limits of the uprising.Google Scholar
21 This is even more surprising when one considers that Hamburg was a publishing center for the workers' movement, with Communist as well as Social Democratic presses in operation.
22 Statistik des Hamburgisehen Staates, XXXIII, pp.41–44.Google Scholar
23 Figures for the age of males employed in the metal, construction and transport industries of Hamburg in 1925 are as follows (source: Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXIII, p. 53).
24 The age structure of employed males (employees and workers) in Hamburg in 1925 was as follows (source: ibid., pp. 33, 55).
25 The age structure of these trades for Hamburg as a whole was as follows (source: ibid., pp. 192–94, 364–71).
26 Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXII, pp. 38, 43.Google Scholar
27 In 1910, 122,524 inhabitants of Hamburg, 27.04% of the immigrant population, came from Schleswig-Holstein alone, not including those born in Ahona. Most of Hamburg's Prussian suburbs were in fact located in Schleswig-Holstein, and immigrants to the city from them are reflected in the figures for Schleswig-Holstein.
28 The growth of the residential population in Hamburg's North-Eastern neighborhoods is seen clearly in the following index (1900 = 100; source: Statistik des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXII, p. 16).
29 The unskilled did not come in exceptionally large numbers from the Eastern provinces. Whereas 10.5 1% of all arrested came from Germany's East, only 8.% of the unskilled came from there.
30 Metal workers even came in large numbers from the East. 12% of metal workers came from the East, which included the metal industries of Upper Silesia and the shipbuilding industry of the Baltic seaports. as well as the rural hinterland. Thus, a skilled metal worker was more likely to come from the “backward” East than unskilled workers with no stable industrial occupation.
31 Comfort, , Revolutionary Hamburg, pp. 164–66, has noted the residential differences between skilled and unskilled workers in Hamburg and used these differences for analysis of which workers voted for the USPD (and later the KPD).Google Scholar
32 Cf. Habedank, . Zur Geschichte, esp. pp. 142–43 and 152–55.Google Scholar
33 Cf. Statistik, des Hamburgischen Staates, XXXII, p. 15, for statistics on the growth of Hamburg and immigration. Immigration was exceptionally large before 1890 and again after 1900. The large number of immigrants among the older arrested workers is reflected in the immigration statistics for before 1890. The 1890's was a decade of economic depression, slow recovery and, consequently, low immigration to Hamburg, and, in the city's growth, the greater importance of births than immigration. This is reflected among the arrested in age category II, many of whom were born in Hamburg.Google Scholar
34 For a general analysis of the early 1920's, see Wheeler, R., “Zur sozialen Struktur der Arbeiterbewegung am Anfang der Weimarer Republik: Einige methodologischen Bemerkungen”, in: Industrielles System und politische Entwicklung in der Weimarer Republik: Verhandlungen des Internationalen Symposiums in Bochum von 12–17. 06 1973, ed. by Mommsen, H., Petzina, D.and Weisbrod, B. (Düsseldorf, 1974), pp. 179–89;Google Scholar Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg, chs 7–8, for Hamburg; and Peterson, L., “The Policies and Work of the KPD in the Free Labor Unions of Rhineland-Westphalia 1920–1924” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1978),Google Scholar especially ch. 9, for RhinelandWestphalia. An analysis of the KPD in the late 1920's is provided by Wunderer, H., “Materialien zur Soziologie der Mitgliedschaft und Wählerschaft der KPD zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik”, in: Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie, V (Frankfurt/M., 1975), pp. 257–77,Google Scholar and by Weber, H., Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/M., 1969), I, pp. 28–87.Google Scholar For an analysis of the KPD in the 1928 and 1930 Reichstag elections, cf. Hoizer, Jerzy, Parteien und Massen: Die politische Krise in Deutschland 1928–1930 [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung Universalgeschichte, I](Wiesbaden. 1975).Google Scholar
35 Weber, , Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, I, p. 282.Google Scholar
36 In the mid 1920's some 80% of the KPD's members were workers or craftsmen (ibid.), whereas over 90% of the Hamburg insurrectionaries identified themselves with manual work. The exceptionally heavy participation of workers in the insurrection corresponds to what is known of the history of the socialist movement in Hamburg. Even before 1914, the SPD in Hamburg was disproportionately working-class in composition and never attracted significant numbers from the middle classes. Over 90% of the pre-war SPD in Hamburg was composed of workers or their wives. Cf. Ullrich, , Die Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung. op. cit., pp. 77–78, 83.Google Scholar
37 Cf. Wheeler, who draws similar conclusions, and Peterson, for an analysis of support for the KPD in the labor unions and industries of Rhineland-Westphalia.
38 Weber, , Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, I, pp. 282ff. According to national party-membership figures for 1927,40% of party members were skilled workers, 10% handicraftsmen, 2% agricultural laborers, and only 28% unskilled.Google Scholar
39 Cf. Comfort, . Revolutionary Hamburg, p. 116, for works-councils elections in Hamburg, and p. 185Google Scholar for a break-down of voting returns by neighborhood in the 1921 and 1924 elections. In general, see Peterson, “Policies and Work”. op. cit., for the role of the unskilled in the KPD in the heavy industrial region of Rhineland-Westphaha in the early 1920's, and Schöck, E. C., Arbeitslosigkeit und Rationalisierung: Die Lage der Arbeiter und die kommunistische Gewerkschaftspolltik 1920–1928 (Frankfurt/M., 1977). for an analysis that covers the entire period from 1920 to 1928.Google Scholar
40 Comfort, , Revolutionary Hamburg, pp. 134ff., 164–66, 170.Google Scholar
41 Comfort's evidence on both the leaders and the supporters of the Hamburg KPD is open to many criticisms. His characterizations of the KPD's leadership is based largely on the statements of 14 leaders who were brought to trial after the October 1923 insurrection. Comfort does not identify these 14 leaders, nor does he justify his assumption that they were representative of the party. Indeed, at one point he flatly contradicts himself by saying that only “several were among the leading figures in the Hamburg KPD” (p. 138), not all 14 as he previously asserted. More serious, Comfort makes the elementary error of mistaking the distortions of the KPD's agitprop machine for factual and reliable biographical information about the arrested. In their trials, the fourteen consistently followed the KPD's ultraleftist agitprop guidelines of 1924–1925, playing up their grievances against society for political purposes in a particularly extreme fashion. The fourteen were not directing their statements “at least in part with an eye toward winning the sympathy of the court”, as Comfort naively thinks, but rather in order to appeal above the heads of the court to workers in Germany. The KPD leadership under Fischer, Maslow and Thälmann believed, rightly or wrongly, that such extremely pathetic statements would “expose” the capitalist state and rally workers to the KPD. In any case, the trial statements used by Comfort, when stripped of their ultraleftist rhetoric, boil down to such typical features of a worker's life as unemployment, poor working conditions, degradation of work, job insecurity, wartime experience, or deprivation at home during the war. Virtually all workers in Hamburg would have experienced at least several of these in the course of a normal proletarian life. Comfort's analysis of the KPD's supporters is just as weak. Although he subjects the electoral support of both the SPD and USPD to a detailed social analysis, he does not do the same for the KPD. Nor does he make any attempt to analyze the KPD's support in the free unions, in works councils elections, or in major factories and industries. Having overlooked the most basic and informative sources about the KPD's supporters, Comfort can make only a very superficial social analysis of the party. Even when describing the occupations of known Communists, he displays a very weak grasp of social and economic life in Germany. To give one example, he uses the term “semiskilled trades” to describe the occupations of KPD leaders (p. 137), but he neither defines this term (which seems to be his own invention and which I have not seen used by other German social historians or statisticians) nor explains its usefulness in analyzing the KPD. “Semiskilled trade” is a contradiction in terms: either a worker held a quickly-learned job operating a machine (semi-skilled work rarely taking longer than a week or two to master), or he learned a trade (knowledge of which he could later claim when looking for work). There is a statistical category called “semiskilled worker” (angelerne Arbeiler), opposed to unskilled (ungelernte) and skilled (gelernie). However, the designation “semiskilled” was still poorly defined and rarely used in Germany or Hamburg in the early 1920's, and there was no category of “semiskilled trades”. It is no wonder that Comfort belabors such abstractions as “alienation” when he pays so little attention to the reality of the work processes this abstraction is supposed to describe.
42 ibid., p. 185.
43 This combination of cohesiveness and instability can be found behind the radicalism of many groups of industrial workers in the early twentieth century. See my article “The One Big Union in International Perspective: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism, 1900–1925”, in: Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925, ed. by Cronin, J.E. and Sirianni, C. (Philadelphia, 1983). The Communists themselves identified the party in Hamburg with both transport workers from the city's older harbor neighborhoods and the new working class from the suburbs. In KPD mythology as created in the later 1920's, Ernst Thälmann, the party's national leader after 1925 and a teamster in Hamburg before entering party and union politics, became the model of the revolutionary Communist proletarian. In the early 1930's Willi Bredel, a young Communist worker-writer-revolutionary from Hamburg, wrote two novels which epitomized the Hamburg KPD's self-image. Maschinenfabrik N & K told the story of a Communist-led strike at a metal factory in the industrial belt near the harbor, while Rosenhofstrasse recounted the lives of young Communist workers in one of the tenement complexes of Eimsbuttel, a working-class neigborhood and center of Communist strength in Northern Hamburg.Google Scholar
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