The 19th century up to the German Empire

The 19th century was a time of profound economic and political change, both throughout Europe and in Germany: Industrialization and mass impoverishment on the one hand, but on the other, a gradual increase in general prosperity and the politicization of broad sections of society. The first German attempt at a republic or at least a democratic monarchy failed, but on the other hand there was an unstoppable rise of the workers' movement and a democratic consciousness, which subsequently gave rise to the short-lived Weimar Republic.

Democratic and revolutionary approaches, which were linked to the French Revolution of 1789 and had an impact on Europe far beyond France, were omnipresent during the 19th century. Freedom struggles, democratic republican groupings and, in some cases, open rebellions were also on the agenda in the German states. However, the demands made by political activists were not only for more rights for the individual in the sense of a democratic approach to equality, but also mostly referred to the creation of a unified German nation state. In addition to the unrest of the 1930s and, for example, Georg Büchner's "Hessischer Landbote", the pre-parliament of March 1848 and the National Assembly, which was appointed by election and formally entered Frankfurt's Paulskirche on May 18, 1848, must be seen against this revolutionary background.

However, the rather conservative and reformist line of the Pre-Parliament and subsequently also of the National Assembly prompted Friedrich Hecker to pursue a violent revolution in southern Baden, which of course failed - Hecker managed to flee to the USA.

However, the parliamentary work of the National Assembly progressed only slowly. The deputies, who were often renowned but inexperienced in parliamentary work, first had to painstakingly learn the rules of parliamentary procedure. For example, it took some time before parliamentary groups were able to act. Endless and sometimes unproductive debates may have served to discredit the idea of parliamentarianism not only among conservative MPs, but also among some spectators. A certain sense of relief may therefore have been felt when Heinrich von Gagern, the conservative president of the assembly, "boldly" proposed an "imperial administrator" as the presumed guarantor of the unity of the German states from the legacy of the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". The Austrian Archduke Johann was elected, "not because, but although he is a prince". The fact that the imperial administrator was not responsible to the National Assembly, but only to the ruling sovereigns, points to the rather questionable democratic character of this and other decisions.

An important product of the National Assembly of 1848/49 were the "Fundamental Rights of the German People", which definitely showed a progressive aspect on many levels. Individual rights and significant progress compared to the conditions that had prevailed until then were the positive aspects of these fundamental rights. However, all social reform approaches that went beyond the legal protection of the individual were not approved by the majority of the assembly. Although the mass misery of the incipient industrial revolution, which had led to the alienation and uprooting of the lower classes in many areas, was already fully apparent by the middle of the 19th century, there is nothing in the fundamental rights about the social obligation of property or a claim to social security. This aspect was criticized at the time by workers' and journeymen's associations as well as by staunch democrats. Questions about social antagonisms, which among other things caused a profound division in the National Assembly, remained unresolved.

However, the real failure of the National Assembly took place under different circumstances. Above all, it revealed its inability to implement parliamentary resolutions on the current dispute with Denmark over Schleswig - Holstein. The National Assembly had neither its own troops nor sovereignty over the units of the individual German territories. Comparable to the United Nations, which in the present day is dependent on the goodwill of those nations wishing to provide these troops for its blue helmet missions, the inability of Parliament to act was demonstrated by the fact that Prussia, for example, concluded a special peace with Denmark despite resolutions to the contrary.


The disagreement over the future form of government of a united Germany, as well as the ultimate failure of the monarchy sought by a majority as a result of the rejection of the German imperial crown by the Prussian King Frederick William 4th, led to a lasting decline in the reputation of the National Assembly. Revolutionary unrest had already broken out in Frankfurt in September 1848. When this uprising was put down by Prussian and Austrian troops, the parliament's dependence on the old powers became clear, but it also gave the territorial princes who were hostile to the parliament the opportunity to act in their own interests. Even before the Prussian king had rejected the imperial crown, counter-revolutionary offensives were also carried out in Vienna and Berlin, which generally proved fatal to the democratic movement. Unsuccessful revolutionary uprisings to establish a republic in southwest Germany as well as the flight of the democratic rump parliament to Stuttgart and its eventual dissolution characterized the further course of the revolutionary year 1848/49, with no political change as a final result.


As a result of the failed uprisings and the resulting re-establishment of reactionary positions in the German states, the freedom of opinion and freedom of the press that had been achieved was once again undermined by censorship and police informers.
In 1851, the German Confederation revoked the "fundamental rights of the German people". The reinstatement of the previously dissolved German Confederation - as a union of reactionary princes - by Austria and Prussia was further proof of the failure of the new ideas. Liberals, democrats and social revolutionaries were subsequently arrested and sentenced to long prison terms, and all suspicious associations were banned.

Mass emigration to Switzerland, Great Britain and, above all, the United States resulted from the suppression by the old forces. The attempt to found a constitutional empire by the German people had failed; the subsequent founding of the Wilhelmine Empire followed other laws. Changes in the German territories after 1848/49 can also be seen in connection with developments in the field of technology. At the beginning of the fifties of the 19th century, the actual phase of the industrial revolution began in Germany in parallel with a worldwide economic upswing. Railroad construction and heavy industry were the dominant sectors. At about the same time as the rail network was steadily expanding, steam engines and machine tools became established in production.

The operation of these machines was simple in that it did not require many years of craft training - but it also made human labor cheaper. The workers employed in the factories were largely recruited from the declining branches of the skilled trades, but above all from the East German agricultural proletariat. These developments were accompanied by a rural exodus to the large industrial centers. Necessary investments in factories could no longer be made with family capital, and industrial progress led to the rise of large banks and joint stock companies.

It is particularly noteworthy that the situation of industrial workers did not improve at all due to more favorable economic data. Above all, the living conditions of the proletarians who moved to industrial cities remained inhumane. On the outskirts of Berlin, for example, workers' quarters were built in which an average of six to seven people had to live per room. The 18-hour day, wages on the edge of subsistence level and child labor further increased the misery of the industrial workers.

This impoverishment forced people to take a stand in various ways, which resulted in the founding of political parties. Above all, social democracy should be mentioned, which - fed by various local sources - ultimately had two larger organizations in the rather reformist "General German Workers' Association" dominated by Ferdinand Lassalle and the more Marxist "Social Democratic Workers' Party" under August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. In 1875, the two competing groups united in Gotha to form a single German workers' party. This "Socialist Workers' Party" was re-established in 1890 as the "Social Democratic Party of Germany".

Under different auspices, conservative groups fought against the consequences of the industrial revolution, which they saw as a development contrary to divine order. Acting from such motives, it was primarily the fight against a rights-demanding, liberal groupings, after all, had already come onto the scene with their demands for legal certainty and individual freedoms in the context of the German National Assembly of 1848/49, but continued to pursue these goals in the period before and after the unification of the Reich in 1871. Although characterized by progressive demands, the liberal positions were largely indifferent to the plight of the workers: Concern for social welfare still appeared to be placed in the hands of the individual.

These developments were accompanied by an increasingly recognizable rise of Prussia within the German states. With the war against Denmark in 1864, a continuation of the conflict of 1848 over Schleswig - Holstein, and then above all with the "inner-German Prussian - Austrian war" of 1866, the course was set for Prussian dominance in Germany. With the annexation of large parts of the Rhine region, but also the Free City of Frankfurt, the seat of the German Confederation and, of course, the former meeting place of the National Assembly, which had a symbolic significance that could hardly be overestimated, Prussia finally became the most powerful German state. The German-French War of 1870/71 and the foundation of the German Empire in Versailles were the other most important events in Prussia's rise to power

Political changes and the democracy movement

After the defeat of Napoleon and the Rhine Confederation princes allied with him, the governmental relationships in Offenbach also changed. In 1815, the Offenbach office initially passed from Isenburg ownership to Austrian rule and was finally transferred to the Grand Duchy of Hesse - Darmstadt in 1816. The castle remained in the hands of the Isenburg princes, who retained their right to have a say in the filling of the French Reformed parish, for example. The government of Hesse-Darmstadt had a liberal basic tendency, which meant that progressive ideas continued to fall on fertile ground in Offenbach - in continuation of the Isenburg orientation of the 18th century.
The 19th century was generally characterized by a series of innovations on an economic level, but also on a democratic political level, which can be linked above all to the National Assembly in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt and the preceding epoch, the Vormärz. This turbulent period also saw the publication of Georg Büchner's "Hessische Landbote", which, despite its seemingly tranquil title, sought to bring nothing other than "Peace to the huts" and "War to the palaces" when it was printed in Offenbach in 1834.

Thus a new spirit also manifested itself in Offenbach, as a city of industry and commerce "prone to reform". On March 5, 1848, a citizens' assembly took place, which can be interpreted as a reaction to the February riots in Paris. A delegation led by Joseph Pirazzi and Salomon Stern presented the Offenbach demands in the royal seat of Darmstadt on March 6, 1848, whereupon a liberal constitution was issued for the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. On their return a day later, the Offenbach delegation was greeted with storms of enthusiasm.
Dr. Lorenz Diefenbach, who was made an honorary citizen of Offenbach on 6 March, became a delegate to the pre-parliament. On March 19, on the occasion of a liberal folk festival for "freedom, unity and brotherhood", Diefenbach gave a fiery speech to the allegedly 15,000 participants: "The great builder of the people's temple is none other than the spirit of the people itself, the spirit and the united strength of the German people. Only under this master builder do we journeymen want to work, not according to French or North American building plans, least of all according to the layout of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg!"

In the course of this democratic and revolutionary awakening, it is understandable that Robert Blum, who later became a member of the Paulskirche, was frenetically celebrated during a speech. The founding of a "workers' education association" in April 1848 also coincided with this political mood. However, the dark side of the revolutions was also felt in Offenbach from around Whitsun that year: unrest, some of which was quelled by force, the participation of Offenbach citizens in the Frankfurt uprising of September 18, 1848, and finally the failure of the parliamentary movement in 1849. The reactionary forces triumphed: Theodor Reh, for example, the Offenbach member of the National Assembly, did not move from Frankfurt to Stuttgart to join the remaining rump parliament; the "Offenbacher Freischar" initiated by the "Vaterländischer Verein", which was supposed to help implement the resolutions of the National Assembly, disappeared relatively quickly into the general citizens' militia. The Offenbach regiment even took part in the suppression of the last uprisings in Baden and the Palatinate. The fact that the "revolutionary élan" of the Offenbachers waned and their revolutionary-democratic associations disbanded was very fitting in this development. The only long-lasting result of this period of unrest was the "Workers' Education Association", which subsequently sought to promote both the general and political education of workers.

The era of revolutionary upheaval also saw Offenbach's rise as an industrial city in the broadest sense. This development was accelerated by the aforementioned fact that the town had been annexed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse - Darmstadt in 1816 following the Congress of Vienna. On the one hand, this was associated with important transport policy decisions, as a separate Offenbach bridge was to bypass the Frankfurt customs, and on the other hand, the framework conditions for industrialization were now also created. The Hesse-Darmstadt government saw Offenbach as the most important industrial town in the state, which it did its utmost to promote during this phase of political and economic consolidation. Offenbach was thus included in a series of functionally defined Hesse-Darmstadt centers: the residential city of Darmstadt, the commercial and episcopal city of Mainz, the university city of Giessen and the industrial city of Offenbach. The factory owner Philipp Casimir Krafft was the first representative from Offenbach to sit in the parliament of the constitutional Grand Duchy. This marked the beginning of a liberal electoral tradition in Offenbach. For a long period of time, the majority of workers and small craftsmen followed the recommendations of the factory owners; it was only a few years before the turn of the century that this attitude changed in favor of social democracy.

The Grand Duchy was a largely agrarian state, although it also had a few scattered textile production sites. The largest industrial city in Hesse - Darmstadt was now Offenbach, which was able to occupy a prominent position due to its location on the Main and, above all, its proximity to Frankfurt and its trade fair. It only took until 1819 for Offenbach to actually become the "industrial capital" of Hesse - Darmstadt. The "complete bourgeois freedom of trade" passed in 1819 was to attract industry and business to the city. It was only two more years before the Chamber of Commerce was founded in Offenbach in 1821 with the support of the Grand Duke. Road connections to Seligenstadt, but also to Sprendlingen, and above all the "Schiffsbrücke" (ship's bridge) over the Main, further promoted the development into a production center.

The refusal of the neighboring city of Frankfurt to join the Prussian-Hessian customs treaty as a free city led to the establishment of a "trade fair city of Offenbach" between 1828 and 1835. The municipal warehouse built specifically for trade fair purposes became the building of the German Leather Museum a century later. In 1829, a Grand Ducal proclamation stated that "for the duration of these trade fairs (...) the trade traffic of nationals and foreigners visiting Offenbach who are not native to the city is exempt from all trade tax and from the restrictions imposed by the guilds and corporations". Finally, Frankfurt's ratification of the customs treaty ended that brief era as a trade fair center.

However, despite the fact that its role as a trade fair city remained ephemeral, the trade fair was a stimulus for pronounced economic growth. Offenbach's economic boom was evidenced by the installation of the first steam engine in the Hauff cotton mill in 1832. The same year also saw the founding of a school for craftsmen, which can be regarded as the earliest predecessor of today's Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG). Also in 1832, the Siegmund Merzbach bank was opened in the former Judengasse (today's Große Marktstraße). A municipal savings bank was opened in 1833 and a local section of the Hessian State Trade Association was founded in 1844 to support the local economy.

In addition to these and other "2 internal advantages" offered by the Grand Ducal industrial center, the "hostility to progress" of neighboring Frankfurt was one of the main reasons for Offenbach's economic rise. Offenbach, which was more liberal in many respects, offered much better opportunities for industrial modernization than the economically guild-oriented Frankfurt. In addition to the already existing leather industry, machine industry, printing companies, lithographers, type foundries and chemical companies also settled in the city, where odor nuisance was handled more "liberally" than in Frankfurt. As the corresponding Frankfurt regulations were more rigid, light and soap production was established in Offenbach - including the well-known Martin Kappus soap factory.

However, in addition to such framework conditions, Offenbach's transport infrastructure was also a guarantee for the city's growth. Initially, the opening of the Main - Neckar - Bahn seemed to promote Offenbach's position on the sidelines. For this reason, Valentin Otto, member of the Second Chamber in Darmstadt, head of the Offenbach customs office and later honorary citizen of the city, in particular, promoted the idea and implementation of a rail link to Frankfurt. In the context of the March riots of 1848, Joseph Pirazzi and Salomon Stern in particular, as spokespersons for the Offenbach citizens' delegation in Darmstadt, were able to force the commissioning of the railroad to Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen, which had been completed long before. However, the "great dream" of a connection to Frankfurt in the west and Hanau in the east only became reality years later.

The most important field of industrial production in Offenbach was and remained the manufacture of leather goods. However, larger factories were in the minority; small and medium-sized enterprises predominated. Many companies in the Offenbach leather industry emerged from family businesses before they developed to their final production size. The leather goods industry was dependent on supplies from the metalworking industry, which also had an upward trend as a result. Having grown out of the shadow of the leather industry, important metal goods and mechanical engineering companies established themselves in Offenbach over the course of the 19th century in addition to the original suppliers. The graphic arts and printing industries also played a special role. The "industrial cloverleaf" of the Grand Ducal town was completed with the establishment of a chemical industry in the town, which mainly produced paints, varnishes and soaps. As early as 1857, 25 steam engines were running in the industrial city.

Offenbach's burgeoning industry also provided many jobs for the population of the surrounding area. Partly by wagon, but mainly on foot, crowds of workers from the surrounding villages came to the town early in the morning. If the journey was too long, many lived nearby or even in their factory during the week. Only after an exhausting 80-hour week did the workers visit their hometown on Sunday.

Over time, many of these daily or weekend commuters decided to move to Offenbach to avoid the arduous commute or the long absence from their families. For this reason, the demand for affordable living space increased enormously, although this could only be created in part with newly built residential quarters of cheap construction. The character of these buildings as functional structures, with the aim of accommodating the largest possible number of people, can be seen in the standardized, often inadequate construction. Residential and commercial areas were not strictly separated, so that a further purpose of concentrating workers close to their workplaces was also fulfilled. The upswing of the town and its attractiveness for residents from the surrounding area is also evidenced by the increase in Offenbach's population: from 1815 to 1895, it rose from 6,000 to 40,000; by the First World War, it had doubled again to just over 80,000 people.

As early as the middle of the 19th century, infrastructural deficits due to the growing population were clearly noticeable - and were in part successfully combated. In 1851, for example, out of a general sense of civic responsibility, those Offenbach citizens who had housed troops in their homes waived the quartering fees they were entitled to in favor of the construction of a water pipeline. Just one year later, 22 sickness funds joined together to form the "General Sickness Support Association".

The importance of the town as a political administrative center also increased. The Offenbach district, which had been dissolved in 1848, was re-established in 1852. However, the district area was changed: The division of some areas in the south - from Babenhausen to Urberach - was balanced out by the annexation of the area around Langen. The office of district councillor was transferred to Wilhelm Willich. Another "geographical change" concerned the area of transportation: the rocks in the Main at the Kaiserlei ford were blown up to create the necessary channels for the increasingly intensive use of the river by steamboats.

On October 28, 1858, a hospital was opened on what is now Kaiserstrasse. The building later served as a school, town library and, from 1945 to 1971, as the town hall. It was also the seat of the public prosecutor's office before the listed building suffered partial collapses during renovation work in 2004 and was subsequently granted a demolition permit. In the same year, 1858, the first waterworks and parts of the water pipeline were put into operation. The founding of several schools in the first two thirds of the 19th century also points to infrastructural changes that took place in Offenbach and bear witness to the city's growing prosperity.

The city's development as an industrial center of the Grand Duchy of Hesse was severely disrupted by the political events of 1866, as Offenbach was also affected by the consequences of the Prussian-Austrian War. After the Grand Duchy of Hesse - Darmstadt had sided with Austria, Offenbach, like neighboring Frankfurt, was occupied as enemy territory. In order to alleviate the immediate consequences of the military conflict, the Offenbach Gymnastics Club founded a "medical corps".

Despite all the turbulence of 1866, Offenbach's development was not fundamentally different until the founding of the German Reich in 1871: the electorate elected representatives of the "Progressive Party", an art and industrial school run by the local trade association enriched the education on offer in the town of 20,308 people from 1868, and the representatives of Offenbach's workforce, of whom around 5,000 to 6,000 were now working in the leather goods industry, became more closely organized and took part in a workers' congress (1868) in Nuremberg, among other things. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, which led to the foundation of the German Reich, the Offenbach gymnasts' medical corps was once again deployed.