(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) Berlin has never been an easy city to manage. When Goebbels was the head of the Nazi local party department, he once said that Berlin was the "reddest European city" after Moscow. From the tailor revolution of 1830, to the street struggles of 1848, to the rise of the working class in the late 19th century, revolution, protest and rebellion can be said to run through the entire history of Berlin.
When Marx, who would become a German philosopher and socialist revolutionary, was still in high school in the Rhine Province of Prussia, Berlin had become the center of the German workers' movement.
The "March Revolution" that broke out in 1848 aimed to establish a democratic country for the German nation. Although this revolution ended in failure, it gave birth to the "All-German Workers' Brotherhood", which was also the earliest workers' organization in Germany.
From the 1870s to the 1880s, a large number of large factories in machinery manufacturing, railway engineering and garment manufacturing emerged in Berlin. As the workforce continued to grow, the city's political culture also gradually changed.
Axel Weipert, a historian and author of the book "Red Berlin", told DW: "From a positive perspective, Berlin has become more popular. It has got rid of the bourgeois political elite that has dominated Berlin for a long time, and ordinary people have gained more participation rights. At least male residents have become important voters."
The rise of the radical labor movement
The workers' movement in Berlin became increasingly radical. To some extent, this was also a response to the iron-fisted rule of Imperial Chancellor Bismarck. Bismarck established the first modern welfare state in an attempt to stem the rise of the socialist movement. At the same time, he also enacted laws banning socialist and communist organizations, newspapers, and rallies, and outlawed independent trade unions.
In 1890, following Bismarck's resignation, anti-socialist laws were abolished. The rapid spread of the ideas of Karl Marx and his revolutionary partner Friedrich Engels also laid the ideological foundation for what Weipot calls a "real mass movement." In 1875, the All German Workers' Federation and the Social Democratic Labor Party announced a merger to form the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which is also the oldest political party in Germany. Before the outbreak of World War I, the SPD's vote share in Berlin had been much higher than in other parts of Germany.
In 1914, the SPD and trade union leaders decided not to oppose Kaiser Wilhelm II's war plans, which greatly affected the reputation of the labor movement. But starting in 1916, Berlin gradually became the center of the anti-war general strike movement. One of the earliest strikes was to protest the trial of the socialist anti-war activist Liebknecht. Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and other radical leftists founded the Berlin Spartacist League, an underground organization that would later become the predecessor of the German Communist Party.
Under the combined influence of war fatigue, food shortages, economic collapse and other factors, in January 1918, about 500,000 Berlin workers launched a general strike. This anti-war strike movement was led by the "Revolutionary Stewards" and supported by the Spartacist League. The "Revolutionary Workers' Chiefs" were a secret organization composed of workers and trade union representatives in armaments factories and steel plants. The organization was also the core force behind the overthrow of the Kaiser's rule on November 9, 1918.
Left-wing organizations move from unity to fragmentation
War and violent revolution plunged Berlin into endless chaos. In 1919, the "Spartacist Uprising" broke out here again. The rebels tried to overthrow the German Provisional Government and establish a republic with workers' power. The uprising was violently suppressed and dozens of people died. Both Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed by soldiers from right-wing militia groups, and the left-wing organization began to split.
As the capital of the newly formed Weimar Republic, Berlin was a center of radical political movements until the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II. This is particularly true in urban areas with a large number of rental apartment buildings. Thousands of workers live in appalling apartment buildings in urban areas such as Wedding, Kreuzberg and Neukölln. At the same time, Berlin, with its many large factories, could easily promote the common interests of the working class, thus laying the foundation for collective action.
In 1919, the illegal "May Day Parade" was brutally suppressed, killing more than 30 people, and became known as "Bloody May" in history. At that time, the Berlin Police Chief of the Social Democratic Party ordered a ban on all demonstrations during May Day, but the Communist Party refused to accept this ban. Eventually, the police opened fire on street demonstrators, and some residential buildings were even hit by gunfire. Violent incidents mainly occurred in urban areas such as Weiding and Neukölln, where workers live.
During the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933, the SPD lost a large number of voters in Berlin, where unemployment surged. Pamela Swett, a historian at the University of Rhode Island, said: "Unemployment is a very serious problem because these unemployed people have lost their ties to the factories and unions dominated by the Social Democratic Party. After the normal rhythm of life was disrupted, these men began to look for new ties and new ways to regain their self-esteem and sense of belonging." Some of them joined the Communist Party, so much so that the Communist Party was once called the "party of the unemployed." Others joined far-right paramilitary groups such as the Nazi Stormtroopers.
Student sit-ins and the housing crisis
After the Nazis came to power in 1922, a large number of labor movement leaders were either killed or exiled abroad. After the end of World War II, Berlin was divided into two political camps. East Berlin became the capital of the communist-led German Democratic Republic. As for West Berlin, which was isolated from the rest of the Federal Republic of Germany, the labor movement gradually weakened along with the process of deindustrialization, and the Social Democratic Party gradually turned to the right.
During the Cold War, many leftist youths moved to West Berlin to avoid military service. These young people further fueled the student movement centered at the Freie Universität Berlin. College students often stage sit-ins to protest against what they see as authoritarian rule and the continued presence of Nazis in high positions in the past. In 1967, during a protest against the Persian king's visit to West Berlin, police shot and killed university student Benno Ohnesorg. The incident radicalized the students and eventually triggered a wave of protests that swept across Germany in 1968.
In the early 1970s, a serious housing shortage prompted a group of university students, apprentices, and young immigrant families to begin occupying vacant houses in West Berlin. Ralf Hoffrogge, an expert on the history of the labor movement at the Freie Universität Berlin, said: “Among the participants in the housing occupation movement, there are both immigrant workers and young workers, so this is also an integral part of the working class’s resistance to the capitalist housing system.”
Nowadays, as the so-called "gentrification trend" sweeps across Berlin, Berlin has also formed the most powerful and radical tenant movement in Germany. According to a 2021 poll, 59% of respondents supported nationalizing the properties of large private real estate companies. Hoflog, himself a member of the tenants' movement, wrote in Das laute Berlin that the housing crisis was becoming a catalyst for Berlin's "socialist renaissance."
“This is not a struggle of tenants against landlords in Berlin, but a struggle between tenants and global capital,” Hoflog said. “I think people are realizing the contradiction, and that’s why policies based on class divisions are gaining popularity again.”
