It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement.

The localists rejected the centralization in the labor movement following the sunset of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890 and preferred grassroots democratic structures.

Various ways of providing financial support for strikes were tested before a system of voluntary solidarity was agreed upon in 1903, the same year that the name Free Association of German Trade Unions was adopted.

Disputes with the mainstream labor movement finally led to the expulsion of FVdG members from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1908 and the complete severing of relations between the two organizations.

According to Angela Vogel and Hartmut Rübner, Carl Hillmann, a typesetter and prominent trade unionist in the 1870s, was the "intellectual father" of the localist and anarcho-syndicalist movement.

[6] After the laws were sunset in 1890, the General Commission of the Trade Unions of Germany was founded on 17 November at a conference in Berlin to centralize the socialist labor movement.

Masons, carpenters, and some metal-working professions—especially those requiring a higher degree of qualification like coppersmiths or gold and silver workers—were represented in large numbers.

[14] The early years of the Representatives' Centralization of Germany were dominated by a discussion on how to finance strikes by individual local trade unions.

From 1901 to 1903, many small organizations joined the federation, yet the FVdG's membership fell as the punitive strike support system drove some larger unions out.

[19] In 1903, a dispute between the FVdG and the Free Trade Unions in Berlin led the party commission to intervene and to sponsor talks aimed at re-unification of the two wings of the German labor movement.

The FVdG panel realized this demand was unrealistic, but hoped the expulsion of revisionists from the SPD during the debate on Eduard Bernstein's theses would strengthen their position.

[22] The following year, a proposal by Wilhelm Liebknecht and Eduard Bernstein to initiate debate on the topic was accepted, since they had distanced themselves from Friedeberg's positions.

In 1904, Friedeberg, speaking for the FVdG, advanced the view that the general strike must be a weapon in the hands of the proletariat and would be the last step before the socialist revolution.

In 1908, Kater called the Charter of Amiens, the platform of the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the earliest and largest syndicalist union worldwide, "a new revelation".

British, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Belgian, French, Spanish, Italian, Cuban, Brazilian, and Argentine organizations—both labor unions and political groups — had delegates in London in addition to the FVdG, which was represented by Karl Roche, Carl Windhoff, and Fritz Kater.

The congress had difficulty agreeing on many issues, the main source of conflict being whether further schisms in the European labor movement (as had occurred in Germany and the Netherlands) should be risked.

The 1916 Auxiliary War Service Law established further cooperation between employers, unions, and the state by creating workers' committees in the factories and joint management-union arbitration courts.

[38] After Fritz Kater and Max Winkler reaffirmed syndicalist antimilitarism in the 5 August 1914 Der Pionier edition, the newspaper was banned.

Social Democratic publications on the other hand were allowed by Prussian War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn to be distributed even in the army.

In the first days of the war, about 30 FVdG activists in Cologne, Elberfeld, Düsseldorf, Krefeld and other cities were arrested—some remaining under house arrest for two years.

Although it constantly criticized the Burgfrieden and militarism in general, industrial action was not possible except for a few minor cases (most notably resistance by the carpenters' union to Sunday work).

The faction in the Italian USI led by Armando Borghi, an antimilitarist minority in the French CGT, the Dutch NAS, as well as Spanish, Swedish, and Danish syndicalists were all united with the FVdG in their opposition to the war.

[44] Some claim that the FVdG influenced strikes in the arms industry as early as February or March 1918,[45] but the organization was not re-established on a national level until December 1918.

The delegates reflected upon the difficult times during the war and proudly noted that the FVdG was the only trade union which did not have to adjust its program to the new political conditions because it had remained loyal to its anti-state and internationalist principles.

In addition to reiterating pre-war ideas and slogans, it went further by criticizing participation in electoral democracy, claiming that this handicapped and confused proletarian class struggle.

The FVdG's criticism of the bureaucratic centralized trade unions, its advocation of direct action, and its low membership dues were received well by the workers in the Ruhr region.

However, its Ruhr miners' unions left the craft unionist scheme the FVdG had traditionally been organized by behind, preferring simpler industrial structures.

[50] The end of cooperation between the FVdG and the political parties in the Ruhr region was part of a nationwide trend after Paul Levi, an anti-syndicalist, became chairman of the KPD in March.

Most left communists (including the influential veteran member Karl Roche) had already quit or were in the process of leaving the FAU in Rhineland and Westphalia by this point.

Without the left communists to oppose its adoption, Rocker's thoroughly anarchist "Prinzipienerklärung des Syndikalismus" ("Declaration of Syndicalist Principles"), which the Business Commission had charged him with drafting, became the FAUD's platform without much controversy.