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Introduction When the German Empire (or Kaiserreich) was proclaimed on January 18, 1871, in Versailles ’s Hall of Mirrors following the victorious end of the Franco-Prussian War, socialists played only a very small role in German politics. An organized workers’ movement had existed in the German lands for more than a decade, but its origins lay more in the liberal than in the socialist tradition. The fledgling socialist movement in the united German state had deeply alienated itself from the empire’s supporters, including liberal nationalists and the chancellor, Otto von Bismarck (who had orchestrated the wars culminating in German unification) by publicly denouncing the Franco-Prussian War as an illegitimate power grab. Widespread German socialist support for the revolutionary government of the Paris Commune, which lasted from March to May 1871, when it was bloodily suppressed by the French military, established in public consciousness an image of German socialists as wild radicals bent on violent destruction. The actions of a small but vocal faction of militant atheists further contributed to the socialist movement’s marginality. Forty-one years later, in the last elections of the German Empire in 1912, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) garnered nearly 35 percent of the vote and won the largest share of seats in the Reichstag. When German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne in November 1918, in the last week of the First World War, the new government , soon to become the Weimar Republic, was headed by Social Democrats. How do we account for the extraordinary rise of the German Social Democrats over the nearly five decades of the empire? This is a complex question with multiple answers, but one key dimension of socialism’s political trajectory from outcast minority to mass popular movement was connected to the growth over the course of the German Empire of a political culture that valued open public debate and challenged the nation’s semiauthoritarian constitutional structure. From the mid-1870s until after the turn of the century, one area of ongoing public debate among government officials, politicians, journalists, scholars, and others concerned the extent of Social Democracy’s compatibility with German social and political institutions. In this book I explore one crucial aspect of this public discussion, the question of Social Democracy’s relationship to the threat of revolutionary violence and terrorism. In defending themselves in public debate, Social Democrats both deepened their own commitment to democratic and parliamentary values and refashioned their public image into that of a mass party appealing to a broad swath of the nation’s electorate. A 4 ASSASSINS and CONSPIRATORS crucial aspect of how the Social Democrats altered public perceptions of their movement was by contrasting themselves to anarchists, which is the dynamic at the heart of this book. Socialists distanced themselves from their previous image as marginal, violent revolutionaries by proclaiming their faith in achieving revolutionary ends through peaceful reform and democratic procedure, in contrast to the anarchist belief in clandestine conspiracy and violent revolution. In rejecting anarchist behavior (especially the endorsement of terrorism) and alleged anarchist personal characteristics (such as excitability and cowardice), Social Democrats emphasized their own commitment to gradual change through parliamentary participation and defined the hallmarks of socialist character as discipline, calm, and openness. The reorientation of Social Democracy’s public face coincided with party leaders’ efforts to shift self-perception among the rank and file. Of those who opposed this repudiation of revolutionism, many abandoned the party or were forced out, and some of these embraced anarchism. Anti-anarchist rhetoric became so deeply embedded in Social Democratic thinking that in tactical debates rival Socialist1 factions frequently sought to delegitimize their opponents’ views by characterizing them as anarchistic. The most important phase in the refashioning of Social Democratic identity occurred during the 12 years the party was formally outlawed. In October 1878, five months after two assassination attempts against Kaiser Wilhelm I (one by a young man recently expelled from the Social Democratic ranks, the other by a man with not even a tenuous connection to socialism), the Reichstag passed a law banning all publishing, meetings, and organizations that promoted socialist goals. Passed on a temporary basis for two and a half years, the “Law against the Communally Dangerous Endeavors of Social Democracy” (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie ), universally referred to as simply the Socialist Law, was renewed four times before expiring in 1890. Under the law’s terms, Social Democrats remained able to stand for elections, making the party...

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