August Bebel
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German social democratic politician. He is best known as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association to form what would become the Social Democratic Party of Germany. As a leader of the German workers' movement for over four decades, Bebel served as a member of parliament in both the North German Confederation and the German Empire, becoming the movement's leading parliamentary voice.
Born into poverty in Prussia, Bebel was orphaned at a young age and apprenticed as a woodturner. His experiences as a traveling journeyman exposed him to the hardships of the working class and led him to socialist politics in the 1860s. Alongside Wilhelm Liebknecht, he became a central figure in the German socialist movement, opposing the nationalist and state-oriented socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle in favor of a more orthodox Marxist, internationalist position. During the Franco-Prussian War, he gained notoriety for his opposition to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which led to his conviction for high treason in 1872.
During the era of the Anti-Socialist Laws, when the SPD was outlawed, Bebel became the party's central figure, guiding it through years of persecution from both within Germany and from exile in Switzerland. He was instrumental in maintaining party unity, purging anarchist influences, and establishing the party's official newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat. After the repeal of the laws in 1890, Bebel oversaw the SPD's transformation into a mass party, helping to draft its influential Erfurt Program in 1891. In his later years, he defended the party's orthodox Marxist principles against the revisionist theories of Eduard Bernstein while simultaneously pursuing a pragmatic, reformist course in the Reichstag. His work, particularly his influential 1879 book Woman and Socialism, established him as a leading figure in the socialist movement's advocacy for women's rights.
By the time of his death in 1913, Bebel was revered by the German working class and recognized internationally as a major political figure. His funeral in Zurich was a major international event, attended by leaders of the Second International. He left behind a party that had grown into the largest in Germany, and his legacy influenced the course of both West and East German politics in the 20th century.
Early life and career
Ferdinand August Bebel was born on 22 February 1840 in Deutz, a garrison town across the Rhine from Cologne in the Prussian Rhine Province. His father, Johann Gottlob Bebel, was a Prussian non-commissioned officer from the region of Posen, while his mother, Wilhelmina Johanna Simon, was a servant girl and the daughter of a cooper from Wetzlar. The family lived in impoverished conditions in a single room within a fortress casemate. Both of Bebel's parents died of tuberculosis; his father died in 1844, and his mother in 1853. After his father's death, his mother remarried his father's twin brother, Ferdinand August Bebel, who was also a soldier and died of tuberculosis in 1846.Orphaned at the age of thirteen, Bebel and his brother Julius were left penniless. He was taken into the care of an aunt in Wetzlar, where he completed his elementary schooling in 1854. Lacking the funds for further education, he began a three-year apprenticeship as a woodturner under a guild master who was a friend of his late mother. The apprenticeship was harsh, involving long hours from early morning until evening with minimal pay and food. In February 1858, he became a journeyman turner and began his travels, working in various towns across southern Germany and Austria, including Heidelberg, Freiburg, Munich, and Salzburg. During his time in Freiburg, he joined a Catholic educational association for journeymen, one of many such clubs that provided moral and cultural guidance. This experience, along with contact with Christian socialist ideas, likely formed the basis for his early progressive thought. His travels ended on 7 May 1860, when he arrived in Leipzig, Saxony. There, he found employment with the master turner Julius Hahn, manufacturing door handles and billiard balls.
Entry into politics
When Bebel arrived in Leipzig in 1860, he was largely ignorant of politics and socialist theory. His initial concerns were personal and economic; he soon organized his fellow journeymen to successfully demand better meals and working conditions from their employer. Saxony's relatively liberal laws and Leipzig's status as a center of publishing and intellectual life provided fertile ground for the politicization of workers. On 19 February 1861, Bebel attended the founding meeting of the Leipzig Arbeiterbildungsverein, a club promoted by liberal democrats to provide general education to the working class. Initially aligned with the club's conservative, non-political majority, Bebel was elected to its executive committee. As late as 1863, he remained unconvinced of the need for general male suffrage, believing workers were not yet politically mature enough.The German workers' movement was soon split by the ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle, a charismatic lawyer who advocated for a workers' party independent of the liberal bourgeoisie. In the spring of 1862, a radical faction within the Leipzig association, influenced by Lassalle, demanded that the club adopt a political program centered on achieving universal direct suffrage. Bebel initially opposed this, but the club split, with the radical faction forming their own organization, the Vorwärts club. In May 1863, Lassalle founded the General German Workers' Association in Leipzig. Bebel and his associates in the educational associations, wary of Lassalle's pro-Prussian stance and authoritarian methods, founded a rival organization, the League of German Workers' Associations, at a convention in Frankfurt in June 1863. The VDAV, initially guided by liberal-democratic principles, maintained a cultural-educational focus and remained aligned with the progressive bourgeois left.
A decisive turn in Bebel's career came with his association with Wilhelm Liebknecht, a veteran of the 1848 revolutions and a disciple of Karl Marx, who had recently returned to Germany from exile in London. After Lassalle died in a duel in 1864, Liebknecht joined the VDAV and began to steer it toward Marxist principles. Bebel, strongly influenced by Liebknecht's intellect and revolutionary credentials, became his closest ally. After being expelled from Prussia in 1865, Liebknecht moved to Leipzig, where he and Bebel launched a campaign against the Lassalleans and their new leader, Johann Baptist von Schweitzer. By 1866, as many German liberals made peace with the Prussian state and the workers grew more suspicious of their bourgeois mentors, Bebel was converted to the principle of an independent workers' party. Together, Bebel and Liebknecht co-founded the Saxon People's Party in 1866, an anti-Prussian, democratic party that sought to unite working-class and lower-middle-class elements in a broad coalition against Prussian hegemony. In 1867, Bebel was elected as a deputy to the Reichstag of the new North German Confederation for the Glauchau-Meerane district, beginning his long parliamentary career.
Social Democratic Workers' Party
The growing political radicalism of Bebel and Liebknecht culminated in the founding of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany at a congress in Eisenach from 7 to 9 August 1869. The new party, often called the "Eisenachers," was formed by a fusion of the VDAV with breakaway members of the ADAV under the leadership of Bebel and Liebknecht. The Eisenach Program, which Bebel helped draft, was a compromise document that combined Marxist principles, such as affiliation with the First International and the demand for the socialization of the means of production, with some Lassallean and democratic demands, including the establishment of a "free people's state". Bebel was elected to the party's five-member Central Committee.Franco-Prussian War and treason trial
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 placed Bebel and Liebknecht in a difficult position. While Marx and the Brunswick committee of the SDAP viewed the initial phase of the war as a legitimate defense of Germany against the aggression of Napoleon III, Bebel's opposition to the war was unwavering from the start. On 21 July 1870, Bebel and Liebknecht abstained from voting for war credits in the Reichstag, a compromise Bebel devised to avoid either supporting the Prussian government or appearing to favor Napoleon. This stance, though unpopular and opposed by the party executive, isolated the party from the wave of national enthusiasm that swept Germany.After the defeat of Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan and the proclamation of the Third French Republic, Bebel and Liebknecht argued that the war was no longer defensive and voted against further war credits for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. They also expressed solidarity with the Paris Commune in 1871, which Bebel hailed in the Reichstag as a "preliminary skirmish" in the long campaign of the international working class. For their opposition to the war and alleged conspiracy to overthrow the state, Bebel, Liebknecht, and Adolf Hepner were arrested in December 1871 and tried for high treason in Leipzig in March 1872. Bebel used the trial as a platform to defend the principles of the SDAP. He and Liebknecht were convicted and sentenced to two years in a fortress prison. Bebel served his sentence in Hubertusburg, where he dedicated his time to study, reading works by Marx, Friedrich Engels, Charles Darwin, and others, and writing several pamphlets.
Unification and Anti-Socialist Laws
The common struggle against the new German Empire brought the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers closer together. In May 1875, the two parties merged at a unity congress in Gotha to form the . Bebel played a key role in the unification, prioritizing the creation of a single, unified working-class party over doctrinal purity. The resulting Gotha Program was a compromise that incorporated Lassallean concepts such as state-aided cooperatives and the "iron law of wages," which drew a sharp critique from Marx and Engels. Bebel, who had tried but failed to prevent the inclusion of the "iron law", was privately annoyed by the harshness of the critique but remained confident in his ability to steer the new party in a Marxist direction.In 1878, two failed assassination attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I by individuals with tenuous connections to socialism provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with a pretext to suppress the growing movement. Despite the SPD's disavowal of the acts, Bismarck pushed the Anti-Socialist Law through the Reichstag in October 1878. The law banned all socialist organizations, meetings, and publications, forcing the party into illegality for the next twelve years. Party newspapers were suppressed, trade unions dissolved, and hundreds of activists arrested or expelled from their hometowns.
During this "heroic era," Bebel emerged as the undisputed leader of the outlawed party. He assumed the duties of party treasurer and became the central organizer of the clandestine movement, maintaining contact with comrades throughout Germany and soliciting funds. The party's leadership was formally transferred to its Reichstag delegation, which remained a legal entity. Bebel used his parliamentary immunity to agitate against the government and maintain the party's public presence. He was instrumental in establishing the party's illegal newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat, which was smuggled into Germany from Zurich and served as the movement's organizational and ideological center. At the secret party congress at Wyden, Switzerland, in 1880, Bebel successfully led the move to expel the anarchist faction led by Johann Most and Wilhelm Hasselmann, thereby preserving the party's commitment to a political, rather than terrorist, strategy. He formed a major political relationship with Paul Singer, who replaced Liebknecht as Bebel's "right-hand man" in the party leadership from the late 1880s until Singer's death in 1911.