Industrial labor between revolution and repression: Labor law and society in Germany, 1918-1945

The history of the working class in Germany has generally been written from three basic perspectives: on the one hand, historians have examined the history of the political parties and labor unions that represent the working class, while others have paid closer attention to governmental social policies that concern the working class. More recently historians have used the history of everyday life--"Alltagsgeschichte"--to examine conditions of working-class life that are not easily subsumed by conventional political discourse.; By concentrating on several laws concerning labor relations in Germany from 1918 to 1945, their intellectual and political origins, creation, jurisprudence, and the effects these laws had on the shop floor, this dissertation incorporates aspects of all three historical approaches. The Plant Closure Decree, the Law of the Severely Disabled, the Arbitration Decree, the Works Council Law and the Labor Courts Law, as well as the Gesetz zur Ordnung der nationalen Arbeit and the institutions they created all afford insight into the changes that occurred in the idea of work, the nature and regulation of the labor relationship, and the socio-political position occupied by the workplace in Germany from 1918 to 1945. By treating the labor law of these periods as a unit (with a healthy glance at either side of these traditional divides), this study also draws out elements of continuity that have been neglected by previous historical accounts. Using published and internal governmental records, labor court decisions, as well as materials from various industrial archives, this study, directed by Professor Charles S. Maier of Harvard University, will illustrate a fundamental shift in how German society viewed the labor relationship, conflict within that relationship, and the nature of the workplace.