HANDWERK AND THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC: HOW GERMAN ARTISANAL ORGANIZATIONS OVERCAME THEIR ISOLATION OF THE WEIMAR PERIOD TO WORK WITH OTHER MITTELSTAND ORGANIZATIONS, 1945-1953

Abstract

During the interwar period, artisans, or Handwerker, felt threatened by both competition from industry and socialism and they became early members of and voters for the NSDAP. Subsequently, during the Third Reich, artisans did not get the social protectionism they had expected. However, they did achieve certain institutional gains and authority and, as a result, their leaders actively pursued a strategy of adaptation and social partnership in the postwar period. This article analyses the subsequent eorts to establish a corporatist economic council to function in coordination with a representative parliament, as well as the admission of craftsmen as representatives on the boards of chambers’. Accepting such a form of representation, rather than pushing for alternative forms, was born of pragmatism with a view to convincing the Western occupying authorities to allow Handwerk institutions to keep the authority they had won during the Third Reich. Handwerk leaders thus appear convinced that the way to avoid a repetition of the class antagonisms during Weimar that
had led to Nazism was by institutions of social cooperation. The topic of this article encompasses aspects of a larger story concerning the transition of German society and economy from one of class antagonism, followed by dictatorship in the 1920s and 1930s, to one of class collaboration and
parliamentary democracy after 1945.