Our club meetings were held in our own suburb in a restaurant which was the official, though not the only, rendezvous of the social democrats of the quarter. The proprietor and his wife were both social democrats, although they conscientiously refrained from taking part in long political discussions. The hostess displayed a coarseness of feeling such as I had never before seen in a woman. I remember well enough how, one evening, yawning and sleepy, she dismissed us, the last guests, with a blasphemy, “I want to go away and be with Christ.” But, as I said, this was not the only meeting-place of social democrats. It may be broadly stated that all of the small restaurants (“kneipen”) of our quarter were kept by social democrats. In two of the largest establishments, where there were spacious gardens, much frequented by the so-called best society of Chemnitz, and where, every Sunday, the best public dance-music was to be found, only the rooms, sublet for “cabmen’s shelters,” were social-democratic in tone. In almost every case it was visibly pure business interest which had converted the saloon-keepers.
The same thing was apparent in the small grocery shops, the “büdchen,” as they are called. I often noticed with what zealous care the shopkeeper, especially if it were a woman, agreed to all the socialistic views of the customer. This socialism for business reasons is far more wide-spread in all such industrial centres than is commonly supposed; it is to be found among a great many different kinds of tradespeople, and is the despair of the ideally-inclined social democrats, for in most cases it is synonymous with absence of genuine conviction. But at the same time it is another proof of what a real power the social-democratic movement has become in such places.
In all the restaurants and beer-shops of which I have spoken, beside the local newspapers of different or no party bias, beside “Kladderadatch” and “Fliegende Blätter,” there were always to be found one or more copies of social-democratic journals, the Chemnitz Presse in especial, and occasional trades publications. It is a fact long since recognised that social democracy wields a mighty weapon of agitation in its army of newspapers – more than 130 at the present time – scattered broadcast over Germany. In our suburb their influence and importance were manifest. It was a matter of course that every workman should read his paper. Here, too, the exception only proved the rule. As a general thing the men subscribed singly, or more often two or three together, to the Social-Democratic Press, a thoroughly circumspect sheet, better edited on the whole than our small provincial local paper, and independent enough to publish now and then a poem of Gerok or Uhland, as well as the windy utterances of the newest German school of poetry, captured by the social-democratic camp. Besides this, the Landesanzeiger (Country Adverliser), a good and discreetly-written paper, was taken, as also its cheaper offshoot, the Neueste Nachrichten (Latest News), a compact and thoroughly unpartisan little sheet. The tolerably fair-minded and patriotic Chemnitzer Tageblatt was glanced at now and then on account of its full advertising columns, but it was regularly read by only a very small number of workmen, the élite of the social democrats, who made it a rule – worthy of recognition and adoption by many a Philistine “patriot” – to subscribe for one paper of each of the great political parties, which, among these people, invariably means a regular and thorough study of them. In this small circle I often found the Berliner Volkstribüne, then under the scientific, straightforward, and high-toned direction of Max Schippel, without personal gossip or party recrimination, virtues which it seems, unfortunately, to have lost under its new, more radical, and demagogic editor, Paul Ernest. Oftener yet I found the official organ of the Metal-Workers’ Trades Union, which by no means confined itself to technical matters.
print version
return to list
previous document