Wikipedia Deep Dive

Anti-Socialist Laws

9 min read

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who unified Germany through blood and iron, discovered something troubling in the 1870s: you cannot arrest an idea. He would spend twelve years trying anyway, and in the process, accidentally create one of the strongest labor movements in European history.

The story begins with two bullets that missed.

The Pretexts

On May 11, 1878, a young man named Max Hödel fired at Kaiser Wilhelm the First as the Emperor's carriage rolled through Berlin. He missed. Less than a month later, on June 2nd, Karl Eduard Nobiling tried again with a shotgun. This time the Emperor was badly wounded, though he survived.

Bismarck saw his opportunity.

Here's what makes this story fascinating: neither assassin was actually working for the socialist movement. Hödel had been expelled from the Socialist Workers' Party shortly before his attack. Nobiling was motivated by what contemporaries called "personal delusions" — we might today call it mental illness. But Bismarck didn't care about such inconvenient details. He allowed newspapers friendly to his government to spread the narrative that these were socialist attacks, and he used the public fury to push through the most sweeping anti-leftist legislation Germany had ever seen.

The law's official name was almost comically long: "Law against the public danger of social democratic endeavors." Germans, with their gift for abbreviation, called it simply the Sozialistengesetze — the Socialist Laws.

What the Law Actually Did

The Anti-Socialist Law, passed on October 19, 1878, was comprehensive in its restrictions. It banned any organization, meeting, publication, or public gathering that aimed to overthrow "the existing political or social order through social-democratic, socialist or communist endeavors." It prohibited collecting money to support such activities. When an organization was banned, the government could seize its cash, its printed materials, and anything else "intended for the purposes of the society."

The punishments escalated with the level of involvement. Ordinary participants faced fines of up to 500 marks or three months in prison. But those who served as "chairmen, leaders, monitors, agents, speakers, or treasurers" could be imprisoned for up to a year. Distribute a banned publication? Six months and a thousand-mark fine. Provide a meeting place? The government could shut down your business.

Most devastating was the residency clause. Those convicted under the law could be expelled from their home cities entirely. In Berlin alone, 67 social democrats were forced to leave in November 1878. Hamburg saw 350 expulsions in 1880. Many fled abroad — to France, Switzerland, England, and the United States.

But Bismarck made one critical miscalculation.

The Parliamentary Loophole

The law did not touch elections. Men with known socialist backgrounds could still run for office as individuals. If elected, they enjoyed parliamentary immunity — the ancient principle that legislators cannot be prosecuted for what they say in chamber. This meant that August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, two of Germany's most prominent socialist leaders, could stand up in the Reichstag and denounce the very law that had driven their party underground.

Bebel did exactly this during the debate on the law. Speaking under the protection of immunity, he told the Reichstag what had happened during the recent election campaign:

Just as in the Middle Ages religious dissenters were persecuted, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century a general war of hatred was staged against social democrats as political dissenters. Men of social democratic convictions were thrown out of work and bread and their livelihoods were cut off, they were insulted and slandered and declared to be without honor or rights.

The conservatives in the chamber had to sit and listen. They couldn't arrest him for it.

The Underground Resistance

The Socialist Workers' Party's leadership chose an unusual response to repression: strict legality. Rather than attempt revolution, they went underground in the most creative ways possible.

Since political organizations were banned, members formed singing clubs. They established mutual aid societies that pooled money to help workers who were sick or unemployed. These organizations were technically legal — just groups of friends who happened to share leftist politics, singing together and looking after one another.

Publications proved harder to suppress. The main socialist newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat, simply moved to Zurich, Switzerland, in 1879. From there, copies were smuggled into Germany through what workers called the "red field post" — a network of couriers and sympathizers that distributed the paper throughout the country. By 1886, it had reached a circulation of about 10,000 copies per issue. When Swiss authorities, under German pressure, expelled the editors in 1888, they simply moved to London and kept publishing.

The repression had an unexpected effect on socialist ideology. According to historian Volker Ullrich, it was during this period that Karl Marx's theories found their widest audience in Germany. The persecution made Marxism make sense to ordinary workers. His analysis of class conflict explained why the state treated them as pariahs. His vision of revolution pointed toward a better future. The harder Bismarck pushed, the more workers found comfort in Marx's framework for understanding their suffering.

The Carrot After the Stick

Bismarck was not stupid. He understood that repression alone wouldn't work. So alongside the Anti-Socialist Law, he introduced something remarkable for its time: social insurance.

In 1883, Germany became the first country to establish national health insurance. In 1884, accident insurance followed. In 1889, old age and disability insurance. These were the foundations of what we now call the welfare state. Bismarck hoped to show workers that "the state is not merely a necessary institution but also a benevolent one." If the government took care of workers' basic needs, perhaps they would stop voting for socialists.

It didn't work.

The problem was that the insurance programs were relatively weak, and workers weren't easily fooled about their intent. They understood that Bismarck was trying to buy them off. They appreciated the benefits while continuing to vote socialist anyway. In 1881, socialist candidates received 312,000 votes. By 1884, that number had grown to 550,000. In 1887, it reached 763,000. And in 1890, the Socialist Workers' Party received 1,427,000 votes — more than any other party in Germany.

The Anti-Socialist Law was supposed to crush socialism. Instead, socialist votes had more than quadrupled.

The Paradox of Persecution

Why did repression strengthen the movement it was designed to destroy? Several factors converged.

First, solidarity. When the government attacks a group, its members draw closer together. The singing clubs and mutual aid societies weren't just cover for political organizing — they were genuine communities that gave workers a sense of belonging and purpose. The shared experience of persecution created bonds that ordinary political organizing never could.

Second, sympathy. The government's heavy-handed tactics alienated not just workers but middle-class observers as well. Berlin's own police president admitted in late 1880 that "the courage of German social democracy remains unbroken" and that the movement was actually gaining momentum. Even members of the bourgeoisie felt sympathy for persecuted socialists.

Third, the unions. Despite everything, labor union membership grew from 50,000 before the law to 250,000 when it lapsed in 1890. In the final three years alone, there were 670 strikes across Germany. Workers were becoming more organized and more militant, not less.

The Law's Demise

The Anti-Socialist Law had to be renewed every two-and-a-half years. This renewal requirement was actually inserted by the National Liberal Party as a check on government power — they worried that such sweeping authority might someday be turned against them.

Each renewal became harder. By 1890, as the fifth extension vote approached, Bismarck wanted to make the law permanent and even harsher. He particularly wanted to strengthen the residency clause — the power to expel convicted socialists from their home cities.

The Reichstag refused. On January 25, 1890, the extension failed by a vote of 169 to 98. An unlikely coalition had formed: the Catholic Centre Party (which remembered Bismarck's earlier persecution of Catholics in the Kulturkampf), the Free-minded liberals, the Conservatives (who had their own reasons for opposing Bismarck now), and of course the socialists themselves. The law officially expired on September 30, 1890.

For Bismarck, it was the beginning of the end. Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, who had ascended to the throne in 1888, was looking for reasons to dismiss his aging chancellor. The failure of the Anti-Socialist Law and the strength of the socialist showing in the 1890 elections gave him what he needed. Bismarck resigned in March 1890, after nearly three decades as Germany's dominant political figure.

The Aftermath

In the first Reichstag election after the law lapsed, held on June 15, 1893, the Social Democratic Party — as it was now called — received 1,787,000 votes. More than any other party. The movement Bismarck had tried to exterminate was now the largest political force in Germany.

The party would continue to grow. By 1912, the Social Democrats held more Reichstag seats than any other party and had become a model for socialist movements across Europe. They had survived twelve years of repression and emerged stronger for it.

Lessons That Echo

The story of the Anti-Socialist Laws offers a troubling lesson for would-be authoritarians: persecution often backfires. Bismarck had the police, the courts, the power to ban newspapers and exile troublemakers. He combined the stick with a carrot, offering social insurance that was genuinely ahead of its time. And still he failed.

Why? Because you cannot outlaw ideas that speak to genuine grievances. German workers in the 1870s and 1880s faced real problems: dangerous working conditions, poverty wages, no safety net for illness or old age, no voice in the political system. Socialism offered an explanation for these problems and a vision for solving them. No amount of police action could change that underlying reality.

The law also created martyrs. Every expelled worker, every banned newspaper, every shuttered meeting hall became evidence that the government feared socialist ideas. If these ideas were so dangerous that the state had to deploy such force against them, perhaps they were worth believing in.

There's an irony in Bismarck's legacy. He is remembered today partly for creating the welfare state — health insurance, accident insurance, old age pensions. These innovations spread across Europe and eventually the world. Yet Bismarck introduced them not out of compassion but as weapons against socialism. He failed in his immediate goal but succeeded in changing history in ways he never intended.

The Social Democrats he tried to destroy would eventually govern Germany. Their ideological descendants run much of Europe today. And the social insurance programs Bismarck created to undermine them became foundations of modern governance.

You cannot arrest an idea. But sometimes, in trying to, you give it more power than it ever had before.