The Anti-Socialist Law that was duly passed by the Reichstag in October 1878 was considerably more draconian than the one that had been rejected as too harsh five months earlier. The new law outlawed “socialistic and communistic” organizations on the grounds that they undermined “harmony between the social classes.” Publications espousing socialist views were prohibited, as were leftist public assemblies in “endangered districts,” such as Berlin. Penalties for transgression included jail, deportation, or “internal exile.” The only parts of Bismarck’s bill that the parliament refused to pass were proposals to strip current Socialist Reichstag deputies of their seats and to ban any future candidates from running on the Social Democratic ticket. Under the new legislation, Socialists could register for election to the Reichstag, but not actively campaign for a seat. Parliament also restricted the law’s validity to two and a half years, after which it would have to be reviewed for possible renewal. (In the event, the law was renewed four times, lapsing only in 1890, when Bismarck was fired.)
The Anti-Socialist Law was applied most vigorously in Berlin, belly of the Red beast. Citing its provisions, local authorities immediately expelled sixty-seven prominent Socialists from the city. Bismarck also tried to jail two Socialist Reichstag deputies, though they successfully invoked their parliamentary immunity. Fortified with an expanded budget, the Berlin police employed an army of informers to ferret out “subversives,” which resulted in a wave of denunciations. “One hears daily,” wrote Georg Brandes, “of house searches, arrests, and [harsh] penalties. . . . Five years’ imprisonment for a murmured curse against the Kaiser is not unusual. . . . A former non-commissioned officer recently got ten years forced-labor because, in a not entirely sober state, he wished death upon the Kaiser. . . . A working-class woman got four years in jail because she laughed at a salute to the Kaiser during an industrial exhibition.” Although Berlin’s judges were apparently aware of the glaring disproportion between the “crimes” in question and the punishment, they justified their political judgments by citing “the [dangerous] atmosphere of the times.”
Socialist Reichstag deputies were allowed to remain in Berlin, but they, like all citizens on the Left, were subjected to constant surveillance and harassment. The police spies, who received two marks a day for their work, followed the delegates wherever they went, and a contingent of informers occupied an entire section of the visitors’ gallery in parliament. Once, in the midst of a speech, a Socialist delegate called attention to the bevy of spies, causing them to decamp en masse “like startled crows.” “At least you have more shame than those who sent you here,” cried the delegate.
Ordinary victims of the persecution campaign responded to it with an intriguing combination of anxious vigilance and resourceful evasion. The writer Max Fretzer recalled how members of a small leftist-oriented “dance club” in Berlin worried that their group had been penetrated by a police spy. Henceforth, they were so wary about what they said that they could take no pleasure in their meetings. At the same time, however, the group got around the banning of Bebel’s pamphlet “Die Frau und der Sozialismus” by wrapping it in blank yellow paper and passing it around among colleagues who knew to ask for “the woman in the yellow coat.” All across Berlin, Socialist workers held outdoor meetings disguised as picnics and staged demonstrations masquerading as funerals or anniversary celebrations. Every year in March, for example, thousands of workers tramped to the cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichshain, where martyrs of the 1848 revolution were buried.
It soon became apparent that Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law, designed to break the back of the Social Democratic Party, was serving only to stiffen its spine. A Berlin police report of December 1879 admitted that the party had “lost nothing of its membership, energy, and hope for the future.” Denied the basic rights of the other parties, the Socialists pulled more closely together. Decried as anti-Christian, they acted in reality much like the Christians of ancient Rome, drawing strength from their very persecution.
Bismarck’s high-handed methods, moreover, also provoked opposition from some elements of the liberal camp, which of course had been tarred with the same “red” brush as the Socialists. Berlin’s mayor, Max von Forckenbeck, a National Liberal, opposed his party’s kowtowing to the chancellor, whom he accused of trying to run roughshod over parliamentary rights. “Are we not being sucked deeper and deeper into the mire?” he asked in January 1879. “Is not opposition our duty?... I for one will under no circumstances swim with the reactionary tide; I’d rather go under.” In April 1881 Theodor Fontane thought he detected a “storm” brewing among the people of Berlin against Bismarck, that plague upon the city. Bismarck’s popularity in the capital might once have been “colossal,” he wrote, but now the chancellor’s reputation was sinking like a rock due to the Berliners’ growing appreciation for the “smallness” of his character.
Bismarck’s failure to curb the opposition, especially in Berlin, was evident in the Reichstag elections of October 27, 1881. In the capital, 45.5 percent of the electorate voted Social Democratic, while the Progressives also fared well. Summing up the result, the left-liberal Berliner Volks-Zeitung said it was obvious that the government had not achieved “in the least” what it wanted. The Bismarckian regime, opined the paper, was like a coachman who could not control his horse, and who responded to advice to go easier on the animal by flailing away all the more vigorously with his whip.
In fact, however, the government was beginning to rethink the tough tactics, if not the principles, of its anti-Socialist campaign. In his first speech to the newly elected parliament, Bismarck spoke of a need to heal “social wounds” and suggested that this might be achieved “not only through [continued] containment of Social Democratic excesses, but also through advancing the welfare of the workers.” He announced that he would consider new insurance and pension programs for incapacitated and elderly workers. Privately, he admitted that what he had in mind was a scheme “to reconcile the workers to the state.” Although expensive, the program would be well worth it if it undercut the influence of the Social Democratic Party and “warded off a revolution.” Here then, was a juicy carrot to go along with the government’s sharp stick.
Bills providing for illness and accident insurance and old-age benefits accordingly worked their way through parliament and became law in 1884. The government’s dubious motives notwithstanding, these measures represented a bold new departure that put Germany in the forefront of the industrialized world in terms of the “social net” it provided its workers. Moreover, the initiatives were combined with a new “mild practice” in the application of the Anti-Socialist Law. The government hoped that German workers, even in unruly Berlin, would now see that the state was their friend.
Like the earlier harsh approach, however, the “mild practice” did not achieve its intended results. Berlin’s workers took advantage of the relaxed climate to build trade unions and to mount strikes for higher wages and better working conditions. In summer 1885, 12,000 Berlin masons went on strike. Because their action drew support from other workers, they managed to win a ten-hour workday and a ten-penny-an-hour wage increase.