which "by means of Social Democratic, socialistic, or communistic designs, aim at the overthrow of the existing order of state or of society", were to be prohibited, and likewise such associations, meetings, publications, and collections of money in which these designs, though not the expressed object, appear "to endanger the public peace and in particular the harmony of the different classes of the population". The execution of the law was entrusted not to the regular courts but to the police authorities of the several states and, on appeal, to a special Imperial Commission composed of four members of the Bundesrat and five judges appointed by the emperor. A final section of the law contained the most reactionary provisions: whenever the "intrigues of the Socialists" promised "to endanger the public peace", the ministry of any state might, with the consent of the Bundesrat, arbitrarily suspend constitutional guarantees and decree a "lesser state of siege" (i. e., police law).[1]
And the law was vigorously enforced! During the twelve years from 1878 to 1890, all public activities of the Social Democrats were stopped in Germany, except in the Reichstag and state legislatures; 352 associations were dissolved; 1299 publications were banned; the "lesser state of siege", proclaimed for periods at Berlin, Hamburg, Harburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hanau, Offenbach, Stettin, and Spremberg, led to the arbitrary expulsion of 893 persons, including 504 married men with 973 children dependent upon them; and imprisonments imposed by police authorities for violation of the measure aggregated 850 years, 5 months, and 19 days.[2] But more grievous than the actual imprisonments and banishments under the anti-Socialist law was the fact that many of the people who in 1871 accounted themselves Liberal as well as National now gave support to arbitrary measures which certainly put Bismarck in a class with Metternich. The only difference between the assailants of popular liberties was that Metternich had no popular mandate for his acts while Bismarck commanded a majority of the deputies elected by universal direct suffrage throughout Germany. The German people of the new era must share with
- ↑ An excellent analysis and criticism of the law is to be found in an article by Henry W. Farnam in the Journal of the American Social Science Association, XIII. 36–53 (1880). See also R. von Gneist, Das Reichsgesetz gegen die Gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie (1878), and Bamberger, Die Culturgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Socialistengesetzes (second ed., 1879).
- ↑ These statistics are cited in connection with the Socialists' observance of the 25th anniversary of the passage of the law. Bericht des Parteivorstandes an den Parteitag zu Bremen in Protokoll (1904), pp. 13–14.
