Carl Legien (1 December 1861 – 26 December 1920) was a German unionist, moderate Social Democratic politician and first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. Biography Legien was born in Marienburg, Province of Prussia, (now Malbork, Poland), to Rudolf, a tax official, and Maria Legien. His parents died in his childhood and Legien grew up in an orphanage in Thorn, Province of Prussia (now Toruń) from 1867 to 1875. He became a wood turner and served in the Prussian Army from 1881 to 1884. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1885, a wood turners’ union in 1886 and worked as a turner in several cities in Germany until 1891, since 1886 in Hamburg. In 1887 Legien became the first chairman of the German Association of Turners and of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions (Generalkommission der Gewerkschaften Deutschlands) in 1891, a position he would hold until its dissolution in 1919. He was elected a member of the German Parliament in 1893 (until 1898) and again in 1903 (until his death in 1920). He became the leader of the SPD's right wing and opposed its more leftist factions. He took part in the International Workers Congresses of Paris, 1889. Legien became Chairman of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres in 1903 and first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions in 1913 until its dissolution in 1919. In 1912, Legien gave a keynote address at the convention of the Socialist Party of America in Indianapolis which was credited with persuading the convention to reject the anarcho-syndicalist program of Bill Haywood. At the outbreak of World War I he supported the war with "patriotic fervor" and the SPD-majority’s Burgfriedenspolitik, a "civil truce", which assured the German government not to "obstruct the German war effort". Legien and other leading Social Democrats expected this policy to end the animosity and discrimination of socialist workers in Germany, while the German Empire's government (particularly the War Ministry) evaluated organised labour as an important factor in war industries. As a result, workers became a mobilized, disciplined loyal force in the war effort in return for concessions, and the German labour movement became an obstacle against opposition to war. In the context of the separation of the opposing Social Democratic minority, which led to the foundation of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), Legien and