Bismarck’s Anti-Socialism Law

The Antisocialist Law was most stringent instrument of repression of any government in Europe. It was repeatedly prolonged by Parliament.

Continuing Consolidation of Germany,
our selection from Prince Bismarck by Charles Lowe. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Consolidation of Germany.

Time: 1881-1890
Place: Germany

Yet the only outcome of the session was the fall of the Finance Minister and the reluctant granting of a meagre tax on playing cards. Bismarck was in despair. But out of this mood he was presently aroused by the pistol-shots of the Socialist fanatic Hoedel, who had sought to murder the Emperor only a few yards from the spot where the Chancellor himself had been covered by the revolver of Ferdinand Cohen- Blind on the eve of the Austrian war. Next day an order arrived in Berlin from Varzin to draft a law for combating the evils of Social-Democracy, of which the tinker ruffian Hoedel was the clear outcome. In the first German Parliament this party had been represented by only two members, but this number had now increased to twelve. Within the last eight years the movement had been making immense strides in Germany, as in every other military State. Its organic existence, by a curious coincidence, dated from the time when Bismarck became Premier of Prussia. At Versailles Moltke had prophesied that Socialism, even more than France, would be Germany’s great enemy in the future. Bismarck, too, had been equally alive to its danger. We have already seen that this was the ground on which he had successfully brought about a rapprochement of the three empires, and had even addressed the European Cabinets on the necessity of concerting common measures for combating the spirit of international revolution. It now behooved him to do this from a purely national point of view. Two years previously (1876) he had asked Parliament, but vainly, for “means, as yet quite independent of the hangman,” of dealing with Social-Democracy. All he begged for was a rigorous clause in the Penal Code, but it was haughtily refused ; nor could the Reichstag be persuaded to approve the exceptional measure which had now been presented to it as a consequence of Hoedel’s crime. The cure, it was argued, would be worse than the evil, and the bill was rejected by a sweeping majority.

A week had not elapsed since its rejection, when another Socialist, Dr. Karl Nobiling, fired at and wounded the Emperor with a fowling-piece. And then Bismarck, who had returned to Varzin, ill, bitterly disappointed, and big with thoughts of resignation, hurried back to Berlin. There his resolution underwent a complete change. “After beholding my lord and King lying there in his blood,” he said, “I made a silent vow that never against his will would I leave the service of a master who, on his part, had thus adventured life and limb in the performance of his duty to God and man.” He hastened from the palace and dis solved Parliament; and its successor — which had been elected under the influence of the powerful wave of horror and indignation that swept over the empire after this second attempt on the life of its venerable and blameless chief — ended by giving the Chancellor the repressive powers he wanted. But it subsequently rejected the Maulkorbgesetz (“muzzle measure”), by which he also proposed to gag the mouths of the Social-Democrats in Parliament itself.

The Antisocialist Law was most stringent, constituting an instrument of repression such as was, perhaps, possessed by no other Government in Europe, and, though passed for only three years at a time, it was repeatedly prolonged by Parliament, and only dropped by William II two years after his accession to the throne. From the point of view of its authors, had the repressive measure been a success? In answer to this question a few figures may be quoted. At the elections for the first German Parliament in 1871, about one hundred thousand Socialist votes only had been recorded; at the same elections in 1890, Bismarck’s last year of office, this number had risen to one million four hundred twenty-seven thousand two hundred ninety-eight; and three years later this number had further swelled to one million seven hundred eighty-six thousand seven hundred thirty-eight, out of a total ballot of seven million six hundred seventy-three thou sand nine hundred seventy-three. In the first German Parliament the Socialists had been represented by two members, and in the ninth (1893) by forty- two; while, judged by the number of its voters, the party was by far the strongest of all the twelve fractions in the Reichstag. Had the results of the elections of 1893 been true to the principle of proportional representation, the Socialists should have been awarded about a fourth of the whole number of seats (397) in the Reichstag, and then the balance of Parliamentary power would have passed into their hands. At the same time it must be pointed out that, though the party had thus increased so enormously during the operation of the law for its repression, it had also begun to betray a certain distrust of its extreme members, and to believe more in the efficacy of evolution than of revolution for the achievement of its aims.

But Bismarck had never surrendered himself to the illusion that the social problem of the nineteenth century could be solved as the Inquisition sought to settle the religious question of the Middle Ages. All he aimed at with the Socialist Law was merely to prevent the revolutionary movement from spreading, and to render it as innocuous as possible the while he devised radically remedial measures. He was well aware that reform must go hand- in-hand with repression, and accordingly there was now inaugurated what has been called the “Economic Era” of his career. Of this era Bismarck’s transition from free trade to protectionism was the first act. It had already been agreed at a conference of the Finance Ministers of all the various States that “an increase in the revenue of the empire was indispensable, and that this increase should be sought for in the field of indirect taxation.”

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