ABSTRACT
The incontestable impact of German labour organizations on other countries and the staunch self-assurance with which their leaders put forward their organization as an international standard and model tend to hide the fact that in many respects the German labour movement was as much of an 'oddity' as for example French syndicalism. A comparison of the strikes in London in 1889 and in Hamburg in 1896–7 presents a number of striking similarities. Both industrial disputes played an important role in the fresh impetus gained by the organized and unorganized labour movement in each country. Following the Hamburg strike a hotly debated process of 'taking stock' took place within the German labour movement. These essential features of the 1896–7 strike are in many respects clearly more reminiscent of syndicalism in southern Europe or Latin American countries than of a labour movement with a social democratic tradition.
