However, his father died in July 1848[3] and four years later, in 1852, Julius Motteler quit the local teacher training college and embarked on an apprenticeship in the weaving trade.

[1] After he had completed his military service Motteler, who was by now a qualified weaver and textile (buckskin) worker, and also had some commercial training, moved to Augsburg in Bavaria where he gained experience as a book keeper and factory manager.

He relocated again in 1859, this time to Saxony, taking a job in September of that year as a dispatcher and book keeper with a textiles company called "Vigonespinnerei Wolf & Kirsten" in Crimmitschau near Zwickau.

[5] 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.

In 1869 he participated, with August Bebel, in the founding in Eisenach of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands / SDAP), which turned out to be a precursor of the SPD.

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.

[6] By 1878 the chancellor, whose tolerance of liberalism and socialism had always may always have been largely tactical, felt able to revert to the comfortable conservatism of the Junker class into which he had been born.

The "Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie" known in English language sources as the Anti-Socialist Laws was/were one particularly far-reaching manifestation.

As the political heat increased Motteler found himself arrested in Stuttgart on 29 September 1878 and charged with "Kaiserbeleidigung" (disrespecting the Kaiser):[3] however, he was acquitted.

Es tritt jedoch zurück hinter seinem illegalen Werk in den Jahren des Sozialistengesetzes... Als "Roter Feldpostmeister" hat Motteler Wertvollstes, Unvergeßliches geleistet.

..."[8] "What Motteler contributed to the initial, difficult creation and development of the [German]" Social Democratic Party, along with what he did to get the proletarian women's movement going, are more than enough to secure his name a permanent place in history.

[6] 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.

[5] 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".