Workers in Imperial Germany - S. H. F Hickey

Based on detailed local research, this book describes the history of workers in the heartland of German industry before the First World War and throws fresh light on the German labour movement, the problems it faced, and the factors which shaped its historical development. Focusing on the social, industrial, and political experience of the Ruhr miners between the 1880s and 1914, the labour movement appears far less successful and securely based than its apparent strength at the national and international level suggests. By throwing into question recent assumptions about working class solidarity and community, and by highlighting the divisions and weaknesses within the German working class, it raises important issues for the longer-term history of twentieth-century Germany.;Scholars and students of German and European history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly political, social, economic, and labour historians will find it of great interest.