Lehr-Und Wehrvereine

LEHR- UND WEHRVEREINE. The armed workers’ societies of the 1870s–1880s typified the boldness of contemporary radical immigrant efforts and stirred pride among militant workers while provoking fear and hatred among conservatives and business leaders. As early as 1875, a Lehr- und Wehrverein (Education and Defense Society) had been formed in Chicago, in response to the excessive violence of the state militia during the wave of strikes in 1873. Continuing brutal treatment of workers by police and militia during the national railroad strike of 1877 spurred the growth of these societies of armed workers in several cities, especially Chicago. Their stated goals were to preserve the constitutional rights of freedom of the press, speech, assembly, and the right to bear arms. In this sense, such groups “educated” their members about the right to class self-defense. Historic links can be traced to the Turner tradition, to the Swiss defense league Hilf Dir—a militarized association established during the 1860s to found a German republic—and to the ethnic militia units that had fought in the Civil War. The movement spread primarily among German Americans: beyond Chicago, after 1884, there were armed groups in Detroit, Cincinnati, Saint Louis (two), Omaha, Newark, New York (two), San Francisco, Denver, and other cities. These groups numbered from fewer than twenty members to more than four hundred in Chicago.

When these armed societies first sprang up, most German American members of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) appeared to believe them necessary to defend workers’ constitutional rights and to counterbalance the so-called citizens’ militias, which enlisted few workers. Soon, however, the SLP national executive committee began to distance itself from what it considered the confrontational, extremist tactics of the armed organizations. In late 1878 it ordered party members to withdraw from them. The effect of this decree, along with a general disillusionment with electoral politics, caused many individual members and some entire sections of the SLP, especially notable in Chicago, to withdraw from the organization. Until the Haymarket Affair, members of the German and Bohemian Lehr- und Wehrverein marched regularly in Chicago socialist demonstrations. Adverse court action, anti-anarchist hysteria, and a state militia bill put an effective end to this form of organization.

Hess, Christine. “German Radicals in Industrial America: The Lehr- und Wehrverein in Gilded Age Chicago.” In German Workers in Industrial Chicago: A Comparative Perspective, edited by Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983.

Messer-Kruze, Timothy. The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.