Wilhelm Bracke (1842–1880)

Prominent German activist of workers’ movement and publisher; founder of the Brunswick section of the General German Workers’ Association; one of the founders and leaders of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (the Eisenachers).

Bracke was born in 1842, in Brunswick, Prussia, Germany, into a merchant’s family. Bracke joined the workers’ movement in his youth and served as a member of the board of directors of the General German Workers’ Association in 1865. In August 1869, together with Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, he founded the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (the Eisenachers). In 1871, he was arrested and imprisoned for opposing the Franco-Prussian War. Lassalle’s Proposal, written in 1873, criticized Lassalle’s opportunistic theory, especially his proposition of establishing production co-operatives with “state aid”. After Marx sent his Critique of the Gotha Programme to Bracke in 1875, Bracke actively supported Marx’s critique of the Gotha Programme. From 1877 to 1879, he became a member of the German Parliament and always insisted on defending the interests of the working class in the parliament.

In his early years Wilhelm Bracke was a bourgeois democrat who fantasized about relying on “state aid” to establish production co-operatives and radically change the fortunes of the workers. He also had illusions about bourgeois parliamentary democracy, and regarded the state as something supra-class. Afterwards, under the influence of the First International, Bracke began to delve into Marx’s relevant works, and gradually accepted Marx and Engels’ ideological-theoretical viewpoints. Afterwards, through the First International, Bracke began to have a great deal of correspondence with Marx, following Marx’s advice to guide the German workers' movement in concrete terms, and became a friend and comrade-in-arms of Marx and Engels. Whether as an important leader of the Party or member of parliament, Bracke always put the interests of the working class in the first place, and made important contributions to promoting the spread of Marxism and the development of the international workers’ movement. Wilhelm Bracke died in 1880.