Christian Trade Unions in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: The Failure of "Corporate Pluralism"

271 Pages·1985·16.091 MB·English

by  William Patch Jr.

CHRISTIAN TRADE UNIONS
in the
WEIMAR REPUBLIC,
1918-1933
The Failure of Pluralism''
~~corporate
William L. Patch, Jr.
I'/
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Haven and London
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Copyright© 1985 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole
or in part, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108
of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Margaret E. B. Joyner
and set in Caledonia type
by The Composing Room of Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America by
BookCrafters, Chelsea, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Patch, William L., 1953-
The Christian trade unions in the Weimar Republic,
1918-1933.
(Yale historical publications. Miscellany ; 133)
Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)-Yale
University, 1981.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
l. Trade-unions. Catholic-Germany-History.
2. Germany-Politics and government-1918-1933. I. Title.
II. Series.
HD6481.2.G3P38 1985 331.88'0943 84-27150
ISBN 0-300-03328-1 (alk. paper)
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Ys
HG3
}33
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To My Parents
William and Barbara
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xi
Acronyms xix
1. THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN TRADE UNIONS IN
IMPERIAL GERMANY 1
The Rise of Socialist Anticlericalism 2
Partners or Patrons? Clerical Organizations for Workers 7
The Christian Unions' Struggle for Autonomy 15
The Trade Unions and the War Effort 24
2. THE FOUNDING OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 34
New Channels of Influence for the Christian Unions 35
Broadening the Boundaries ofTrade Unionism 45
Efforts to Renovate the Social Order 54
The DGB's Campaign for Party Reform 63
3. THE STABILIZATION CRISIS OF 1923-1924 76
The Erosion of the Spirit of Social Partnership 76
vii
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viii Contents
The Crisis of Parliamentary Government 81
The Revival of Class Consciousness in the Christian Unions 90
4. WELFARE LEGISLATION UNDER THE
BURGERBLOCK 102
The Christian Unions and the Formation of the Luther Cabinet 102
The Competition between Industrialists and Agrarians for the
Support of the DGB llO
The Disintegration of the Burgerblock ll8
5. THE BACKLASH AGAINST TRADE UNIONISM IN THE
BOURGEOIS PARTIES 125
The Rise of Alfred Hugenberg 127
The Crisis of Political Catholicism 133
The Ruhr Lockout of November 1928 141
The Schism of the DNVP and the Fall of the Grand Coalition 148
6. DEFLATIONARY ECONOMICS AND TRADE
UNIONISM UNDER HEINRICH BRUNING 157
The Failure of Efforts to Forge a Deflationary Consensus 159
Bruning's Antagonistic Alliance with Organized Labor 166
The Revival of Christian Socialism 176
7. THE RISE OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 188
Attitudes toward Fascism in the DGB 188
Efforts by the DHV to Strengthen the "Nazi Left" 196
The Christian Unions' Campaign against National Socialism 206
Corporatist Reform or Totalitarian Dictatorship? 216
CONCLUSION 228
Bibliography 237
Index 255
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Preface
This book is a substantially revised version of a Yale dissertation completed in
1981, based on archival research carried out in Germany in 1978-79. Thanks are
due to the many German libraries and archives that provide remarkable freedom
of access for foreign scholars, especially to the municipal library of Monchen
Gladbach, the labor history library at the University ofBochum, and the library
of today's German Labor Federation in Dusseldorf. Thanks also to Friedrich
Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, who took time out from a very busy schedule to
help me use the personal papers of his grandfather, Count Westarp. The Ger
man Academic Exchange Service and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation pro
vided generous financial support for the dissertation.
I wish to express my special gratitude to my dissertation adviser and friend,
Henry Ashby Turner, and to Yale's other experts on modern German history,
Hans Gatzke and Peter Gay. They are in large measure responsible for whatever
insight into German society and culture I possess. I am also grateful to Tim
Mason, who helped formulate the original topic, to Hans Mommsen for his
unstinting advice and emotional support during my year of archival research, and
to Gerald Feldman for his suggested improvements of the manuscript.
ix
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Introduction
A wide variety of friendly and hostile commentators in the 1920s agreed that the
leaders of the relatively small blue-collar Christian trade unions enjoyed extraor
dinary political influence because they had established an extensive network of
alliances with white-collar unions, religious organizations, and patriotic leagues.
Yet these alliances struck many observers as unnatural, the unstable achieve
ment of politically ambitious union functionaries who had forgotten the funda
mental interests and values of their followers. Claims by Christian union leaders
to have forged a "Christian-nationalist labor movement" uniting Catholic and
Protestant, blue-collar and white-collar workers were received skeptically by
contemporaries and strike most historians today as implausible. The Christian
unionists' far more ambitious claim that their movement could forge a consensus
in public opinion concerning the most divisive issues of the day seems utterly
fantastic. They nevertheless came surprisingly close to achieving these goals.
The political strategy of the Christian unions rested on the fundamental
premise that the intense class conflict ofWilhelmian Germany resulted from the
temporary disorientation caused by Germany's intense urbanization during the
late nineteenth century. Following the teaching of Catholic and Lutheran social
theorists, Christian workers felt that rapid industrialization "uprooted" indi
viduals and atomized society, and that this led directly to strife, riots, mass
strikes, and lockouts. Social conflict could be expected to diminish in intensity as
people gradually adjusted to the new urban industrial environment, rebuilding
in new forms the associations for mutual aid common in the old society. The
conflicts of interest between industrial employers and workers or between urban
consumers and farmers were immediately apparent, but gradually they would
xi
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xii Introduction
learn of their shared interests as well, of the interdependencies linking the
various sectors of a modern industrial economy.
Thus Christian workers subscribed to what Charles Tilly has termed the
"breakdown" theory of the causes of social conflict. Tilly criticizes this view on
the grounds that disoriented individuals are generally passive, that organization
and solidarity, the essential prerequisites for becoming a contender in the politi
cal arena, have been the major sources of social conflict. 1 Tilly's arguments are
persuasive within the time frame he chooses, ending in 1930, but a recent study
of labor strife in Germany from 1864 to 1975 suggests that the expectations of
Christian workers were not entirely unrealistic. In the period since 1949, when
both employers and workers have been better organized than ever, the frequen
cy and intensity of strikes and lockouts have declined dramatically. This state of
affairs, predicted by Catholic social theorists ever since the 1880s, was slow to
emerge, however. Indeed, the years from 1919 to 1923 witnessed the most
intense strike activity in German history, while the following eight years were
characterized by the most massive lockouts. 2 Christian trade unionists in the
Weimar Republic therefore confronted a contradiction between their premise
that social conflict would abate and the facts of strife around them. They con
cluded that politics and labor relations were rendered unnecessarily bitter by the
survival of old habits of confrontation between "bourgeois" and "proletarian"
camps that were no longer relevant to the vital issues of the day.
Efforts by the Christian unions to end the habits of confrontation took place
on three levels. In the parliamentary arena, the old pattern of class polarization
meant that every major issue pitting left against right tended to coincide with the
fundamental antagonism between the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the
"bourgeois" parties. The determination of Germany's bourgeois liberals to com
bat the privileges of the aristocracy, clergy, and officer corps had ebbed away
under the Empire. After 1880 the SPD remained the only consistent and ag
gressive critic of the established churches, discrimination against women, and
excessive military expenditure. 3 Compulsory disarmament, suffrage for women,
l. Charles Tilly, Louise Tilly, and Richard Tilly, The Rebellious Century 1830-1930
(Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 4-6, 239-43. For the formulation of this theory that most influenced
Christian workers in Germany, see Franz Hitze, Kapital und Arbeit und die Reorganisation der
Gesellschaft (Paderborn, 1880).
2. Heinrich Volkmann, "Modernisierung des Arbeitskampfs? Zum Formwandel von Streik
und Aussperrung in Deutschland 1864-1975," in Hartmut Kaelble eta!., Probleme der Moderni
sierung in Deutschland (Opladen, 1978), pp. 123-27, 136-38.
3. See Friedrich Zunkel, Der Rheinisch-Westfiilische Unternehmer 1834-1879 (Cologne and
Opladen, 1962); James Sheehan, "Conflict and Cohesion among German Elites in the Nineteenth
Century," in James Sheehan (ed.), Imperial Germany (New York, 1976), pp. 62-92; and Richard J.
Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894-1933 (London, 1976), pp. 82-86, 167-90,224-29.
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Introduction xiii
and the disestablishment of the Evangelical Church in 1919 removed many of the
grievances against which the Wilhelmian SPD had protested, but the impression
lingered that the labor movement was the deadly enemy of Christian culture and
national security. Many leading Social Democrats perceived that they should
seek to dispel this impression in order to encourage acceptance of parliamentary
democracy among the middle classes. Indeed, a faction within the SPD inspired
by the writings of Eduard Bernstein had long been arguing that the party must
abandon its Marxist rhetorical style and method of social analysis, which alien
ated small farmers, white-collar workers, clergymen, and idealistic patriots. This
remained a minority view in the SPD of the Weimar Republic, however, al
though it eventually triumphed with the adoption of the Godesberg Program in
1959.4 The danger of an anti-Marxist backlash among groups not directly in
volved in the conflicts of interest between management and labor was perceived
more clearly by the Christian trade unionists.
On the level of economic interest groups, the old pattern of confrontation
meant that all factions of businessmen and landowners joined ranks against the
trade unions whenever important issues were debated. Thus, although the eco
nomic policies of the Wilhelmian government obviously discriminated in favor of
heavy industry, the desire to preserve a united front of employers against the
unions frustrated Gustav Stresemann's efforts after 1902 to organize an effective
protest movement among manufacturers opposed to protective tariffs and mo
nopoly prices. 5 Viable parliamentary democracy doubtless requires a more flexi
ble attitude among the various factions of businessmen and landowners, a will
ingness to form ad hoc alliances that do not exclude trade unions as a matter of
principle. In the 1920s the leaders of both the mammoth Free unions allied with
the SPD and the Christian unions sought repeatedly, with some success, to reach
agreement with the Reich Association of Industry on the broad outlines of na
tional economic policy. Yet only the Christian unions undertook imaginative
approaches to agrarian interests that created a highly fluid situation in the
mid-1920s, when for a short time union representatives became full-fledged
participants in the logrolling 'process whereby lobbyists for the various interest
groups sought to muster parliamentary majorities.
The third level of class confrontation in imperial Germany, that of labor
relations within the enterprise, generated the most difficult and enduring prob-
4. Hans Mommsen, "Die Sozialdemokratie in der Defensive. Der Immobilismus der SPD
und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus," in Hans Mommsen (ed.), Sozialderrwkratie zwischen
Klassenbewegung und Volkspartei (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), esp. pp. 119-21; Richard Hunt,
Gennan Social Derrwcracy 1918-1933 (New Haven, 1964), pp. 111-41; Harold Schellenger, Jr., The
SPD in the Bonn Republic (The Hague, 1968).
5. Hans-Peter Ullmann, Der Bund der Industriellen, 1895-1914 (Giittingen, 1976).
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xiv Introduction
lems. No union could ignore its members' strong feelings about the basic issues
of wages, hours, and authority over the work process, and the Christian unions
generally cooperated closely with the Free unions at the collective bargaining
table. The Christian unions made the first sustained effort within the German
labor movement, however, to persuade workers to moderate their demands for
higher wages and shorter hours so as to promote economic growth and prevent
unemployment. Knut Borchardt has recently provoked lively controversy by
reviving the argument that wage bills and welfare programs so expensive as to
starve industry of investment funds were the major cause of the Great Depres
sion in Germany. 6 Borchardt's argument is certainly one-sided, but the crucial
fact underscored by him and stipulated by his critics, that real wages increased at
a rate greater than national income from 1924 to 1929, remains noteworthy
because it could not have occurred under the empire. Before World War I the
Prussian monarchy banned all union activity among farmworkers and state em
ployees. The army intervened massively in a few major strikes, and policemen
and judges systematically harassed pickets. A favorable political climate enabled
most of Germany's largest corporations to resist unionization drives, and no more
than 15% of all industrial workers participated in collective bargaining. Even by
exerting themselves to the utmost, the trade unions could barely if at all secure
wage increases commensurate with the growth of corporate profits. 7 The situa
tion was rather different in the 1920s, when the balance of social and political
forces had changed to such an extent that, for the first time, trade unions had the
power to ram through wage settlements that could contribute directly to inflation
or unemployment. As the head of the Christian unions, Adam Stegerwald,
warned his followers in 1924, they bore a far greater responsibility to exercise
self-restraint now that they were powerful organizations in a very weak state. 8
The reaction to Stegerwald's plea was mixed even within the Christian unions,
but Free union leaders displayed no comparable awareness of the damage that
they could wreak.
In many ways the Christian trade unionists anticipated the analysis of Charles
Maier, who has argued that the emergence of a new order of "corporate plu
ralism" in the 1920s rendered the traditional terms of debate between leftists and
6. Knut Borchardt, "Wirtschaftliche Ursachen des Scheitems der Weimarer Republik," in
Wachstum, Krisen, Handlungsspielriiume der Wirtschaftspolitik (Gottingen, 1982), pp. 196-205.
For a more detailed discussion, see below, pp. 157-59, 234.
7. See Klaus Saul, Staat, Industrie, Arbeiterbewegung im Kaiserreich (Dusseldorf, 1974);
Klaus Schonhoven, Expansion und Konzentration (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 80-141; Hartmut Kaelble
and Heinrich Volkmann, "Konjunktur und Streik wiihrend des Ubergangs zum Organisierten Ka
pitalismus in Deutschland," Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafts-und Sozialwissenschaften, 92, no. 5 (1972),
pp. 516-27, 536-41; and Volkmann, "Modernisierung?" pp. 131-52, 167-69.
8. See below, pp. 98f.
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