Karl Wilhelm Stolle was born into a Protestant family in the village of
Frankenhausen, which today has become part of
Crimmitschau, a short distance to the north of
Zwickau. The "protestant" label appears to have been replaced with a "no religion" one fairly early on. At the same time he was already active in the
workers' education movement from the beginning of the 1860s. In 1866 Stolle joined the newly formed radical democratic
Saxon People's Party, which following party mergers in 1869 made him a member of the new German
Social Democratic Workers' Party ("Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei" / SDAP) and of the
Socialist Workers' Party("Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAP) in 1875. The lifting of the
Anti-Socialist Laws triggered a further consolidated relaunch: that of the
Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1890. Karl Wilhelm Stolle was an activist member throughout these decades. He was a founder of the "International Trades Union Fraternity of Factory and Manual workers" (
"Internationale Gewerksgenossenschaft der Manufaktur-, Fabrik- und Handarbeiter"). Between 1869 and 1916 he was a delegate at several social democratic party conferences and sat on various party committees. This published the
Crimmitschauer Bürger- und Bauernfreund (''"Crimmitschau Citizens' and Rural Workers' Friend "''). The newspaper was suppressed with the implementation of
Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws, which led to the financial collapse, around 1879, both of the printing-publishing co-operative and of Stolle's horticulture business, after which he is recorded as the owner of a guest house, the "Schönburger Hof", in nearby Gesau, close to
Glauchau. At Gesau he sat on the local council between 1886 and 1907. Between 1885 and 1893 He continued to sit for the same electoral district till 1918, representing the same party and, after 1890
its successor, till 1917. Stolle was one of 18 SPD Reichstag members who formed themselves into the so-called
Social Democratic Working Group (
Sozialdemokratische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, SAG) within the party, which on 21 December 1915 voted against the renewal of war credits. As economic destitution at home and industrial-scale slaughter on the frontline mounted, in 1917 the
SPD itself broke apart and Stolle was one of those who went with the breakaway faction, forming the short-lived
Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD). Three years later the USPD itself split, with a larger element of its membership joining the new
Communist Party, but by that time Karl Wilhelm Stolle had died, aged 75, in March 1918. ==Personal==