Study title

“The labor union mobilization of workforce which began again in the 1880s, still under the coalition hostile environment of the Socialist Law, did not take place in a continuous growth process in which various professional groups and regions in Germany participated equally… Size and location of factories, the degree of industrialization of a regions and the legal constitution had a significant impact on the opportunities for expansion of labor union federations… In general it can be stated that the main mass of the free trade union members concentrated in medium and large cities. In major urban areas more permanent solidarity relations between the workers developed at the workplace and in private contexts than in rural areas. The old royal residence, the industrial and trade cities in which since 1848-49 the socialist workers movement had taken root, and where during the 19th century founded and rapidly growing centers of the metal, coal and chemical industry became the centers of the labor union movement. … Huge cities were places where the modern industrial capitalism and with it the antagonism between capital and labor emerged most clearly.” (Schönhoven, a. cit., p. 347ff). An investigation on the regional distribution of Labor unions in the German Empire cannot be grounded on the comprehensive Selection of data of the general commission of German trade unions neither on individual union associations because those sources do not contain data suitable for territorial level of federal states. The present investigation from Klaus Schönhoven is therefore based on a contemporary survey by Walter Troeltsch and Paul Hirschfeld (1905/1908) and on overviews of the distribution of labor unions by states and regions that the statistical office of the German Empire published on1911, 1912, 1913 and 1918. Much more incomplete than for free labor union is the data material for the two other labor union federation, the federation of Christian labor unions and the...