The Berlin Socialist Trials of 1896: An Examination of Civil Liberty in Wilhelmian Germany

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor L. Turk

Punctually at 8:00 A.M. on 26 November 1895, teams of police officers in Berlin began to search the homes of nearly eighty members of the Social Democratic Party, and the city offices of their organizations. These surprise raids, over by 10:00 a.m., were ordered by the Prussian Minister of Interior, Ernst Köller, to obtain evidence that the Socialist organizations had been working with one another to promote their political goals. In 1895 it was illegal in Prussia, and in most of the other states of the German Empire, for political associations of any kind to work together. Yet the evidence so efficiently confiscated on that gray November morning ultimately put not only the Socialists on trial, but government policy and the fundamental political rights of German citizens as well. Neither the national constitution nor the federal law codes provided protection for the rights of association or assembly at that time. In the absence of such guarantees, the political organizations had to cope with the particularities of the various state laws.

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-454
Author(s):  
Lee S. Greene

Among the experiments in government which have taken place in post-war Germany, one of the most varied in form is to be found in the theory and practice of direct legislation. The referendum, initiative, and a type of recall exist in national, state, and local governments. The experience of the German people with these constitutional practices has been treated occasionally in studies of the national and municipal governments, and this note is designed to perform a similar service with regard to the German states.Studies of the constitutional convention at Weimar seem to indicate that direct legislation was adopted for the national constitution without a great deal of study. The Germans had, however, been acquainted with the idea of direct legislation for some time, and a proposal for its use had found expression in the Erfurter Program of the Social Democratic party. The provisional arrangements for the national government during the revolutionary period included machinery for an appeal to the electorate in cases of disagreement between the ordinary organs of government. But the widest use of the various forms of direct legislation is first to be found in the provisional constitutions of the states.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Arizka Warganegara

This study is about the law development of social democracy in the perspective of Eduard Bernstein andAnthony Giddens. It applied the method of qualitative analysis and used the library research, the data inthis study analyzed with the content of analysis. The main purposes of this study wants to describe andanalysis of Law Development of Social Democracy in the perspective of Bernstein and Giddens.Socialism Democracy of Bernstein and Cosmopolitan Democracy of Giddens used as toll of comparative.Social Democracy has been revision three times, Bernstein is the first generation, The second generationis Social Democratic Party of Germany with The bad Godesberg Program and the last is Giddens. Theinteresting of this study is the basic difference among Bernstein and Giddens in the understanding ofconcept of Social Democracy. The different time and context imply the different ontology andepistemology to this ideology. If Bernstein lived in the time of raised of capitalism and Industrialization inEurope, Giddens has lived in the time of this ideology must be against the raises of Neo liberalism andGlobalization. Actually The basic concept of Social democracy of Bersntein is his critics to the theory andconcept of Karl Marx, this causes the different perspective with Giddens. Finally Giddens made thisideology more Liberal than before, many political scientist assume that The Third Way of Giddens is thecontinuously of Capitalism.Keywords : Social Democracy, Bad Godesberg and Capitalism


Author(s):  
Ashoka Mody

This chapter discusses how Gerhard Schröder, leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party, proposed to delay the euro's birth rather than start with members who had not achieved the required fiscal discipline. Campaigning to replace Helmut Kohl as chancellor in March 1998, Schröder observed that some countries would struggle to survive the rigors of the monetary union. However, once Schröder was elected chancellor in October, his hands were tied. In April 1998, the Bundestag had already authorized Germany's shift from the deutsche mark to the euro, Germany had made commitments to its European partners, and preparation for launch of the euro was in full swing. Ultimately, the euro was born uneventfully on January 1, 1999. Schröder continued the narrative of Europe's eventual political awakening; he even called for greater European “political union.” To the contrary, Schröder quickly developed a confrontational relationship with European institutions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mads Thau

Abstract In Denmark, as in other Western European countries, the working class does not vote for social democratic parties to the same extent as before. Yet, what role did the social democratic parties themselves play in the demobilization of class politics? Building on core ideas from public opinion literature, this article differs from the focus on party policy positions in previous work and, instead, focuses on the group-based appeals of the Social Democratic Party in Denmark. Based on a quantitative content analysis of party programs between 1961 and 2004, I find that, at the general level, class-related appeals have been replaced by appeals targeting non-economic groups. At the specific level, the class-related appeals that remain have increasingly been targeting businesses at the expense of traditional left-wing groups such as wage earners, tenants and pensioners. These findings support a widespread hypothesis that party strategy was crucial in the decline of class politics, but also suggests that future work on class mobilization should adopt a group-centered perspective.


1974 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felice Rizzi

A FEW YEARS AGO, GALL1 AND PRANDI WROTE THAT THE UNIFICATION of the socialists represented a phase of rationalization of the Italian political system. Not only did the re-unification of the PSI (Socialist Party of Italy) and the PSDI (Social Democratic Party of Italy) lead to a simplification of the party subsystem (by reducing its excessive numbers), thus rendering the choice between alternatives easier for the electorate. But at last a single voice seemed to emerge which could undertake the task of opposing the twenty years of Christian Democrat predominance, which had been responsible for so many aspects of political ‘immobilism’. Moreover it was possible to discern a strategic design in the socialist plans — an optimistic design perhaps, but entailing possible innovations. The formation of a strong Socialist Party might have led to the overcoming of one of the principal - if not the greatest - defects of the Italian party system: the absence of a mechanism of rewards and punishments.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubomír Kopeček ◽  
Pavel Pšeja

This article attempts to analyze developments within the Czech Left after 1989. Primarily, the authors focus on two questions: (1) How did the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) achieve its dominance of the Left? (2)What is the relationship between the Social Democrats and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM)? We conclude that the unsuccessful attempt to move the KSČM towards a moderate leftist identity opened up a space in which the Social Democrats could thrive, at the same time gradually assuming a pragmatic approach towards the Communists. Moreover, the ability of Miloš Zeman, the leader of the Social Democrats, to build a clear non-Communist Left alternative to the hegemony of the Right during the 1990s was also very important.


Author(s):  
N. Rabotyazhev

The article is devoted to the evolution of the West European social democracy in the late 20th and early 21st century. The author analyses the causes of the social democracy crisis in 1980-90s and considers its attempts to meet the challenges of globalization and the “new economy”. Modernization of the British Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership and updating of the German Social Democratic Party initiated by Gerhard Schröder are thoroughly examined in the article. Political and ideological processes ongoing in such parties as the French Socialist Party, the Dutch Labour Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Austrian Social Democratic Party are also considered. The author comes to a conclusion that the radical shift towards social liberalism took place merely in the British Labour Party. Schröder’s attempt to modernize the German Social Democratic Party turned out to be unsuccessful, while other European social democratic parties did not regard Blair’s “Third Way” as a suitable model for them.


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