Workers' Brotherhood (1848–1854)
노동자 형제회 (1848–1854)
The largest workers' organisation of the revolution, founded under Stephan Born's leadership at the general workers' congress in Berlin from 23 August to 3 September 1848. With more than 170 associations and 15,000 members, it declared "We workers must help ourselves" and built trade unions, cooperatives, mutual funds and workers' education within the constitutional order. Counted among the origins of both the political and the trade-union labour movement in Germany, it lasted until the general ban on workers' associations in 1854.
In depth
Its central committee sat first in Berlin and after the counter-revolution in Leipzig, publishing the paper Die Verbrüderung. Thirty-seven of its 64 Prussian associations were in the Rhine Province. Some members also belonged to the Communist League and the Communist Manifesto was read, but Born and the Brotherhood drifted towards social reform and used the term "Social Democrat". It petitioned the National Assembly for joint commissions to set minimum wages and working hours, a progressive income tax and free education.
The Brotherhood took part in the Imperial Constitution campaign of 1849, and Born fought in Dresden. In 1850 Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria agreed to persecute it as a "nursery of communism". Research has found marked continuity between the places where it was active and the strongholds of the General German Workers' Association of the 1860s.