Man of Labor, Wake up!

The memory of "175 years of the 1848/49 Revolution" commemorated last year is fading, but Heinz Siebold did it again. 

This time, he presented the Revolution and the Labor Movement.

The Revolution of 1848/49 was primarily a bourgeois revolution. Its ideas were supported by two population groups, the supporters of a limited monarchy and the liberals, who sought a democratic constitution without a crowned ruler at the head of a united Germany.

In 1850, 55% of the German population was rural and peasant, and workers (24%) only played a role in revolutionary events in large cities such as Berlin or Vienna.

Wilhelm Liebknecht was an active participant in the Baden Revolution,
Ferdinand Lassalle founded the General German Workers' Association, and
Georg Herwegh is regarded as the poet of the Revolution of 1846/49.

A workers' movement had already been organized in the 1830s. Ferdinand Lassalle founded the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (ADAV) in Leipzig on May 23, 1836, and is considered the father of social democracy in German-speaking countries. Note that Lassalle was far from being a proletarian; he died prematurely, shot in a duel over a woman. Red Baron visited Lassalle's grave in Wroclaw, formerly Breslau, in 2010.

The redecorated Tivoli (©A.Savin/Wikipedia)

From 1869, the ADAV competed with the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) until the two organizations met at the Tivoli at Gotha from May 22-27, 1875, and united at the Fusion Party Congress to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, the immediate predecessor of Germany's modern Social Democratic Party (SPD). Red Baron visited Gotha in 2020.

The social question was an essential topic of the Revolution of 1848/49. As early as September 12, 1847, in Offenburg, in the 13 demands of the people in Baden, Article 10 stated: We demand equalization of the disproportion between labor and capital. Society is obliged to elevate and protect labor. 

Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto did not appear until February 21, 1948.

The question of social justice accompanied the Revolution from the beginning to its bitter end. On July 18, 1849, Ernst Elsenhans wrote in one of the last editions of the Festungs-Bote (fortress messenger) before the besieged revolutionaries entrenched in the Federal Fortress Rastatt - their last retreat - surrendered to the superior Prussian army on July 23: 

What is social democracy, and what does it want?

Democracy will give us neither work nor bread, it will not pay our due interest, and it will not free us from worries and suffering, for in solving its task of bringing the people to power, it always comes up against the disproportion of property of ownership. 

Socialism seeks to abolish this inequality, this disproportion, by establishing equality. It wants to put an end to the oppression and untruth that prevails everywhere and to the desolate misery that we see in the lower classes, i.e., in the vast majority of the population. It presses for the continuous improvement of the moral, spiritual, and physical existence of the most numerous and poorest class. It strives for the rule of labor, or at least its equality with capital, instead of the rule of capital. 

The distribution of property, according to the desire of the socialists, is to be made dependent on labor, and thus, the greatest possible equality among men is to be obtained; every industrious, orderly, and skillful man is to be given the opportunity of acquiring as much property as is necessary for the reasonable enjoyment of life. 

The equalization of labor with capital, in other words, the organization of labor, and consequently the abolition of the monstrous disproportion between the haves and have-nots, the so-called proletariat, is what socialism is concerned with.

Today, one would write: Men and Women of Labor, Wake up!

The phrase Alle Räder stehen still, wenn dein starker Arm es will is taken from the Union Song (Bundeslied) for the General German Workers' Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein). The text is based on a poem written by Georg Herwegh in 1863.

Mann der Arbeit, aufgewacht! Und erkenne deine Macht! Alle Räder stehen still, Wenn dein starker Arm es will. […] Brecht das Doppeljoch entzwei! Brecht die Not der Sklaverei! Brecht die Sklaverei der Not! Brot ist Freiheit, Freiheit Brot!

Man of labor, wake up! And recognize your power! All wheels stand still, When your strong arm wants it. [...] Break the double yoke in two! Break the bondage of slavery! Break the slavery of bondage! Bread is freedom; freedom is bread!

The two protagonists of the evening strike up the Internationale.

We did not sing the Bundeslied, but to round off the evening, we sang the Internationale, the most widespread combat song of the socialist labor movement worldwide.

Its original French lyrics are from 1871, written by Eugène Pottier, a poet and active participant in the Paris Commune. This revolutionary city council formed spontaneously during the Franco-Prussian War. The Belgian Pierre De Geyter composed the song's melody in 1888.

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