Anti-Socialist Laws

[1] The legislation gained support after two failed attempts to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany by the radicals Max Hödel and Karl Nobiling.

The laws were designed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the goal of reversing the growing strength of the Social Democratic Party (SPD, named SAPD at the time) which was blamed for inspiring the assassins.

August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht protested against the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and expressed solidarity with the revolutionary Paris Commune in 1871, for which they were sentenced in 1872 by the Leipzig Court to two years in prison in a high treason case.

[3] Reich Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck, a conservative and an adherent of monarchical principles of government, with a restrained or even hostile attitude to democratic ideas and a fear of the outbreak of a socialist revolution similar to the one that created the Paris Commune, from the very beginning considered the Socialist Workers' Party as an "enemy of the Reich" and even before the adoption of the law, he took repressive measures against social democracy and the nascent trade union movement.

Bismarck took these attacks as an opportunity to use the Socialist Law to take more rigorous and effective action against the social democracy, which was becoming increasingly influential in the workforce.

Bismarck used the ensuing public outrage to dissolve the Reichstag and campaign against the Social Democrats, whom he accused of ideologically aiding criminals.

In the newly elected Reichstag, a toughened draft of the "Law on Socialists" was presented, over which disputes arose between individual parliamentary groups.

The banning of any group or meeting of whose aims were to spread social-democratic principles, the outlawing of trade unions and the closing of 45 newspapers are examples of suppression.