Workers and Politics in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany

Abstract

Should one study the workers' movement or the working class? The leadership or the rank and file? Politics or everyday life? The national arena or a city, fac tory, or occupation? If all German labor historians face the same questions, they do not give the same answers, and methodological diversity remains strik ing. Histories of the social democratic and communist movements, written from the perspective of the national leadership and stressing institutions, ide ology, and policy, continue to be written.1 So too do examples of the most popular genre of the 1970s?local and regional studies that offer social, eco nomic, and cultural explanations of worker protest and politics. While some authors focus on the development of the organized workers' movement, others are concerned with divisions within the working class. While some emphasize politicization and activism, others explain quiescence as well.2 More recently, factory case studies have come into vogue. They explore the organization of production and technological changes, worker recruit ment, migration and skill, company social policy and community influences, and the presence or absence of workers' organization and protest. Those deal ing with the nineteenth century pose the problem of working-class formation and the limits of social democracy and trade unionism, while those focusing on the 1920s center on the economic and political ramifications of rationalization.3