German Trade Unions in the Nineteenth Century: Sociological Foundations in Comparative Perspective*

Abstract

Abstract The article explores the origins of trade unions in the nineteenth-century industrializing German economy. In German territories—in contrast to the United Kingdom and the United States—the labour movement emerged as a political movement, from which trade unions developed relatively late, under the auspices of Social Democratic Party initiatives, remaining under threat throughout the 1870s. We therefore have particular reason to examine the sociological foundations that account for the development of German trade unions in general, which is done here with a broad comparative perspective.