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21.   Franz Rehbein, Farm Worker (c. 1890)
In the German territories east of the Elbe River, landed estates dominated the agricultural sector. There, large numbers of agricultural day....
22.   Louise Otto-Peters, Women’s Right to Earn a Living (1866)
Louise Otto-Peters (1819-1895) was one of the most famous advocates of women’s rights in the nineteenth....
23.   Ottilie Baader, Seamstress and Home-Worker (1870s)
In nearly every sector of the German economy, the number of female employees grew during the late nineteenth century. In the textile and clothing industries, much of the work was done outside factory....
24.   Miners Petition the King of Prussia for Relief from Intolerable Working Conditions in Essen (June 29, 1867)
The law concerning “the supervision of mining and the relations between mine and steel workers by mining authorities” of 1860 was followed by Prussia’s General Mining Law [Allgemeines Berggesetz....
25.   Werner von Siemens' Enterprise (1872)
A scarcity of skilled workers came with the economic boom that immediately followed German unification (1871) and lasted about three years. As this letter from Werner von Siemens makes clear, the....
26.   Working-Class Hierarchies in a Steel Factory (c. 1880)
While the growth of a working-class consciousness resulted in common demands vis-à-vis the propertied classes, solidarity among workers did not always extend to everyday life. This account of worker....
27.   From "Du" to "Sie": A Bourgeois Social Reformer’s Views on Workplace Relations (1880-1910)
The hierarchical relations between unskilled and skilled workers on the one hand, and their workplace superiors on the other, were also reinforced by a linguistic convention of the German language:....
28.   Police Reports on Strikebreaking and Workplace Conflict in Hamburg (1889)
Towards the end of the Bismarckian era, labor relations deteriorated and workplace conflict escalated into a number of large-scale strikes. As the following excerpt from a report about strikebreaking....
29.   The Titles "Frau," "Fräulein," "Herr," and "Herrlein" (1871)
Women’s emancipation was still a long way off at the time of German unification in 1871. Here, one critic of gender-specific titles points out that language reinforced traditional roles. Unmarried....
30.   The Double Standard: Marital Infidelity among Men and Women (1886)
The double standard for men and women with respect to marital infidelity that has attracted such attention in the case of Victorian Britain was also much discussed in Bismarckian Germany. In this....
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