Karl Wilhelm Stolle

Karl Wilhelm Stolle (19 December 1842 – 11 March 1918) was a German SPD politician and journalist.

Life Karl Wilhelm Stolle was born into a Protestant family in the village of Frankenhausen, which today has become part of Crimmitschau, a short distance to the north of Zwickau. The "protestant" label appears to have been replaced with a "no religion" one fairly early on.

At the same time he was already active in the workers' education movement from the beginning of the 1860s. In 1866 Stolle joined the newly formed radical democratic Saxon People's Party, which following party mergers in 1869 made him a member of the new German Social Democratic Workers' Party ("Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei" / SDAP) and of the Socialist Workers' Party("Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAP) in 1875. The lifting of the Anti-Socialist Laws triggered a further consolidated relaunch: that of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1890. Karl Wilhelm Stolle was an activist member throughout these decades. He was a founder of the "International Trades Union Fraternity of Factory and Manual workers" ("Internationale Gewerksgenossenschaft der Manufaktur-, Fabrik- und Handarbeiter"). Between 1869 and 1916 he was a delegate at several social democratic party conferences and sat on various party committees. This published the Crimmitschauer Bürger- und Bauernfreund ("Crimmitschau Citizens' and Rural Workers' Friend "). The newspaper was suppressed with the implementation of Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws, which led to the financial collapse, around 1879, both of the printing-publishing co-operative and of Stolle's horticulture business, after which he is recorded as the owner of a guest house, the "Schönburger Hof", in nearby Gesau, close to Glauchau.

At Gesau he sat on the local council between 1886 and 1907. Between 1885 and 1893 He continued to sit for the same electoral district till 1918, representing the same party and, after 1890 its successor, till 1917. Stolle was one of 18 SPD Reichstag members who formed themselves into the so-called Social Democratic Working Group (Sozialdemokratische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, SAG) within the party, which on 21 December 1915 voted against the renewal of war credits. As economic destitution at home and industrial-scale slaughter on the frontline mounted, in 1917 the SPD itself broke apart and Stolle was one of those who went with the breakaway faction, forming the short-lived Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD).