Julius Motteler

Julius Motteler (18 June 1838 – 29 September 1907) was a pioneering German Socialist and businessman. He was also instrumental in the establishment of trades unions in Germany, and an early champion of the Proletarian Women's Movement . He was a member of the inner circle of left wing leaders that also included August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht.

Life Early years Julius Motteler was born the ninth of twelve children in Esslingen, some southeast of Stuttgart. His father was a prosperous hotelier. The boy attended the Pädagogium (school) and four years later, in 1852, Julius Motteler quit the local teacher training college and embarked on an apprenticeship in the weaving trade.

Socialist beginnings In Saxony Motteler increasingly focused on trades union and political activities. In 1860 he joined the politically liberal German National Association, itself a precursor to a political party. This was where he first met August Bebel. In 1863 he was one of the founders of the (Workers' Educational Association) in Crimmitschau, which quickly became part of a nationwide movement. In the same year, with the creation of the ("Association of German Workers' Associations"), he gave expression to a separation of the workers' movement from what socialist innovators of the time would have identified as "Bourgeois liberalism". He adopted the programme drawn up by Karl Marx for the First International as a political road map. In 1866 he was a founding member with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht of the Saxon People's Party.

The next year he lost his job with "Wolf & Kirsten" who objected to his election campaigning, and joined "Spinn- und Webgenossenschaft Ernst Stehfest & Co", still in Crimmitschau, working as a buyer. He was not alone in losing his job for political reasons, and his new employer was a co-operative enterprise, founded on 8 July 1867 by a number of textile workers who had lost their previous jobs for political campaigning. Nevertheless, in the longer term this union can be seen as a forerunner of the German Textile Workers' Union founded in 1891 following the lifting of the Anti-Socialist Laws (although later closed down by the Nazis in 1933).

In addition to campaigning actively for women's rights long before most of the issues involved found their way into mainstream socialist politics, Motteler also argued vehemently against the use of child labour in factories. Later in 1878 he relocated - as matters turned out briefly - to the Nymphenburg district of Munich.

Zürich exile, London exile

The Anti-Socialist Laws that came into force in October 1878 were a watered down version of the original proposal that Bismarck had tried, and failed, to get through the Reichstag in May 1878. They nevertheless included or were accompanied by a range of repressive measures including the outlawing of trades unions and the closing down of 45 leftwing journals and newspapers. Social Democrats responded by standing for election not as SAP members but as independent candidates, while a number of prominent party members relocated to Switzerland where there was no ban on producing Social Democratic newspapers for distribution in Germany. Motteler moved, with his wife Emilie, to Zürich in November 1879 from where he organised the production of Der Sozialdemokrat (a weekly newspaper), and its distribution into Württemberg and from there, using an increasingly sophisticated network of trusted "Red postmen", right across Germany, earning himself the soubriquet ("The red army postmaster"). From Zürich he also headed up ("Black Masks"), a counter-espionage outfit intended to counteract German spying activities against the group of exiled social democrats in Switzerland. Motteler's management experience, his meticulous attention to detail and his sheer talent for conspiratorial organisation were important to the success of the newspaper venture, and also enabled him to unmask several German government spies operating within the group. Although, or possibly because, distribution in Germany of the newspaper printed in Switzerland took place outside the law, the 1880s saw a maintained, and in the view of some commentators an intensified national Social Democratic identity in which the activities of the Zürich exiles played an important part.

Someone who undoubtedly appreciated the effectiveness of the Social Democratic caucus in exile was the German Chancellor who eventually managed to persuade the Swiss national government to expel the team producing "Der Sozialdemokrat". The team arrived in London in June 1888, accompanied by 16 large crates of scrupulously archived and indexed documentation. "Der Sozialdemokrat" was printed in London from October 1888 till September 1890. By this time relations within the team producing the newspaper had become acutely frayed, while back in Germany Bismarck had finally retired, in March 1890. The retirement came about after the Reichstag had refused, in January 1890, to renew the Anti-Socialist Laws, which had come to be seen increasingly as wrong, ineffective or counter-productive. Early in 1891 Julius Motteler organised the crating up and transfer to Berlin of a portion of the by now prodigious "archive" accumulated during the years of exile. He nevertheless retained many of the party records, since for Motteler himself the London exile was not over. His listing, in German police files, as an outlaw was not at this point rescinded, and he therefore continued, with fellow exile Eduard Bernstein to operate from London a highly effective branch in exile of the Social Democratic Party which was now relegitimised in Germany.

Return from exile Motteler and Germany were finally able to return to Germany in 1901. Thanks to their enforced absence they had been unable to play a leading role in the SPD's formative decade. Motteler was accompanied by more Social Democratic documentation, and he also organised the repatriation of all the archived documents from the Marx-Engels of which he had been given charge following the death, in exile in London in August 1895, of Friedrich Engels. On returning to Germany Motteler immediately returned to the newspaper business, becoming the printing manager and publishing director of the (newspaper). In the 1903 General Election he won a Leipzig seats for the Social Democrats, and he sat in the Reichstag till 1907. He died a few months after the 1907 election, having remained active as a social democratic activist and newspaper manager almost to the end.

Personal Between 1870 and 1878 Julius Motteler was married to Emilie Henriette Kyber from Crimmitschau. Later he was married to Emilie Schwarze from Esslingen. With his first wife he had one recorded son, who died of Typhus in 1879.