Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the labour movement that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large through social ownership.
Council communism or Councilism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. It is regarded as being strongest in Germany and the Netherlands during the 1920s.
Johann Joseph "Hans" Most was a German-American Social Democratic and then anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator. He is credited with popularizing the concept of "propaganda of the deed".
The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany was a centrist Marxist political party in Germany. It was formed as a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD in the autumn of 1931. In 1931, the remnants of Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) merged into the party and in 1932 some Communist Party dissenters also joined the group as well as a part from the Communist Party Opposition. Nevertheless, its membership remained small. From 1933, the group's members worked illegally against Nazism.
The Free Association of German Trade Unions was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany. It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement. The localists rejected the centralization in the labor movement following the sunset of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890 and preferred grassroots democratic structures. The lack of a strike code soon led to conflict within the organization. Various ways of providing financial support for strikes were tested before a system of voluntary solidarity was agreed upon in 1903, the same year that the name Free Association of German Trade Unions was adopted.
Karl Roche (1862–1931) was a German syndicalist and left communist trade unionist. Roche joined the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) around 1900 as a seaman. He became a prominent member of the organization.
Carl Windhoff (1882–1940) was a German syndicalist trade unionist.
Milly Witkop(-Rocker) was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist, feminist writer and activist. She was the common-law wife of the prominent anarcho-syndicalist leader Rudolf Rocker. The couple's son, Fermin Rocker, was an artist.
Der Pionier was one of two official organs of the radical socialist Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG).
German individualist philosopher Max Stirner became an important early influence in anarchism. Afterwards Johann Most became an important anarchist propagandist in both Germany and in the United States. In the late 19th century and early 20th century there appeared individualist anarchists influenced by Stirner such as John Henry Mackay, Adolf Brand and Anselm Ruest and Mynona.
During the First World War (1914–1918), the Revolutionary Stewards were shop stewards who were independent from the official unions and freely chosen by workers in various German industries. They rejected the war policies of the German Empire and the support which parliamentary representatives of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) gave to the policies. They also played a role during the German Revolution of 1918–19.
Der arme Teufel was a leading German-American anarchist magazine, published in German at Detroit, Michigan from 1884 to 1900, and edited mainly by the Detroit anarchist Robert Reitzel from 1884 until his death in 1898.
Sozialistische Arbeiter-Zeitung was a daily newspaper published in Germany between 1931 and 1933. SAZ was the central organ of the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD).
Das Volksrecht was a left-wing newspaper published from Offenbach am Main, Weimar Germany between 1925 and 1933. Initially it was an irregular publication of the communist city council group, but in 1928 it became a local mouthpiece of the Right Opposition. It was published on a weekly basis until the National Socialist takeover in 1933.
Johann Rudolf Rocker was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to an artisan family.
Ludwig Eiber is a German historian and author. He is widely acknowledged as an expert on the post-World War II Allied war crimes trials of the Nazis. In particular, he has expertise in the Dachau trials.
Deutschsozialistische Bergarbeiterverband was a Nazi trade union for German miners in Czechoslovakia. It was founded in 1922. The union was based in Most. As of 1929, it claimed to have 3,371 members. The union was linked to the German National Socialist Workers Party (DNSAP). Heinrich Proste was the leader of the union. Deutschsozialistische Bergarbeiterverband was affiliated with the Reichsvereinigung der Deutschen Gewerkschaften. The union published the monthly Der deutscher Bergmann from Most between 1924 and 1933.
Inge Lammel, née Rackwitz was a German women musicologist, which dealt mainly with industrial folk music. She fled to Great Britain as a Jew in 1939 and became known for her work on the persecution of the Jews during the period of National Socialism in Berlin-Pankow.
The Black Band were resistance groups of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist youth and young adults in the last years of the Weimar Republic.
Helmut Rüdiger (1903–1966) was a German-Swedish journalist and anarcho-syndicalist activist. Born in Saxony, he became involved with the anarchist movement after the German Revolution of 1918–1919, becoming a leading member of the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD). During the 1930s, he moved to Spain, where he participated in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. After the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, he fled to Sweden, where he became a leading member of the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and an influential figure in the "revisionist" tendency of anarcho-syndicalism. He died in Spain in 1966, while trying to make contact with members of the anarchist underground.
