The German Working Class 1888 - 1933 : The Politics of Everyday Life

When it was originally published in 1982, this book presented pioneering new research into the everyday life of the German working class in the crucial decades between the accession of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Nazi seizure of power. The authors document working-class attitudes to bourgeois convention, authority and the law in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The book includes studies of industrial sabotage, pilfering at work, working-class drinking habits, illegitimate motherhood and the violence of adolescent ‘cliques’ in pre-Hitlerian Berlin. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Original Title Page 6 Original Copyright Page 7 Contents 8 List of Tables and Figures 10 Preface 12 List of Abbreviations 14 1. Introduction: the Sociological Interpretation of German Labour History 16 2. Working-class Crime and the Labour movement: Pilfering in the Hamburg Docks, 1888-1923 55 3. Drink and the Labour Movement: the Schnaps Boycott of 1909 81 4. Steel, Sabotage and Socialism: the Strike at the Dortmund 'Union' Steel Works in 1911 109 5. Illegitimacy and the Working Class: Illegitimate Mothers in Brunswick, 1900-1933 143 6. Organising the 'Lumpenproletariat': Cliques and Communists in Berlin during the Weimar Republic 175 7. Identifying Militancy: the Assessment of Working-class Attitudes towards State and Society 221 Notes on Contributors 248 Index 251