knecht gleefully paid the penalty for his crime of lèse-majesté during the winter of 1897–1898, and being released on March 18, the anniversary of the revolution of 1848, more gleefully still recounted his martyrdom to a monster mass-meeting held at Berlin in celebration of the event. "I can be content", he had already written, "with the Breslau trial. If Paris was worth a Mass, this trial was well worth four months in prison. The advantages which we derive from it have been a good bargain."[1] A conspicuous place in every annual report of the party executive, moreover, was reserved for an exhibit of the total terms of detention in workhouse and in prison, and of the total fines meted out to Socialist "martyrs". The exhibit was deemed an excellent bit of propaganda and at least until 1900 was quite imposing.[2]
Meanwhile, the German Social Democracy grew apace. Its popular vote increased to 1,786,700 in 1893, to 2,107,100 in 1898, and to 3,010,800 in 1903, while its deputies in the Reichstag numbered 44 in 1893, 56 in 1898, and 81 in 1903. As in the preceding period, a large part of its electoral increment came from "extra members"; but from regularly enrolled paying members the returns to the party treasury amounted in 1893 to 258,326 marks, in 1898 to 315,866, and in 1903 to 628,247.[3] The causes of this noteworthy growth in votes and in financial resources are to be found in the marvellously rapid contemporaneous expansion of German trade and German industry, in the lapse of the anti-Socialist law, which
- ↑ Der Prozess Liebknecht. Vorhandlung wegen Majestäts-Beleidigung vor dem Landgericht zu Breslau (sixth ed., 1896), preface by Liebknecht, p. 5.
- ↑ After 1900, the average fines remained about the same as before, but the terms of imprisonment tended to decrease in measure as the "loyalty" of the Socialists increased: 35 years in 1901; 68 years in 1906; 36 years in 1907, and in 1910; only 7 years and 8 months in 1912; and for the first six months of 1913, three years and three months! The statistics throughout are taken from the Berichte des Parteivorstandes to the several party congresses.
Imprisonment Fines 1891 87 years, 6 months, 28 days 18,262 marks 1892 117 years," 0 months," 26 days" 20,532 marks" 1893 86 years," 8 months," 26 days" 31,937 marks" 1894 58 years," 8 months," 6 days" 43,747 marks" 1895 83 years," 4 months," 1 days" 34,120 marks" 1896 84 years," 8 months," 8 days" 31,773 marks" 1897 118 years," 8 months," 3 days" 28,229 marks" 1898 54 years," 7 months," 10 days" 19,948 marks" 1899 74 years," 1 months," 0 days" 23,251 marks" 1900 71 years," 3 months," 23 days" 16,427 marks" - ↑ The receipts of the party treasury further increased in 1908 to 852,976 marks and in 1913 to 1,469,718. The surplus of income over expenditure from 1891 to 1913 amounted to more than two million marks.
