Carl Windhoff was a German syndicalist trade unionist.

He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 (SPD) in 1890. He was one of the most important SPD leaders Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 until he left the party in 1901. He then joined the Free Association of German Trade Unions

Free Association of German Trade Unions

The Free Association of German Trade Unions was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany. It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement...

 (FVdG) and become one of its most prominent members in the Rhineland

Rhineland

Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....

. In 1913, Fritz Kater

Fritz Kater

Fritz Kater was a German trade unionist active in the Free Association of German Trade Unions and its successor organization, the Free Workers' Union of Germany...

, Karl Roche

Karl Roche

Karl Roche was a German syndicalist and left communist trade unionist. Roche joined the Free Association of German Trade Unions around 1900 as a seaman. He became a prominent member of the organization. In 1913, Carl Windhoff, Fritz Kater, and he were the FVdG delegates at the First International...

, and he were the FVdG's delegates at the First International Syndicalist Congress

First International Syndicalist Congress

The First International Syndicalist Congress was a meeting of European and Latin American syndicalist organizations at Holborn Town Hall in London from September 27 to October 2, 1913...

 in London. After World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, he was one of the leaders of the FVdG in the Ruhr region and helped re-build the organization. He became the head of the agitation committee of the Free Workers' Union of Germany

Free Workers' Union of Germany

The Free Workers' Union of Germany was an anarcho-syndicalist trade union, which existed from the renaming of the Free Association of German Trade Unions on September 15, 1919 to its official disbandment in January 1933 after the Nazis came into power, although many of its members continued to be...

 (FAUD), the follow-up organization of the FVdG, in 1922. After the Nazi Machtergreifung

Machtergreifung

Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...

in 1933, he was arrested in 1937 and convicted to three years in prison. He died three years later.