Occidental movement

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Western Movement was a conservative , strongly Catholic and partly clerical school of thought in the post-war period and early Federal Republic of Germany , which gathered in several institutions without any inner unity. The Occidental Academy Munich Eichstaett offered from 1952 to the 1960s the podium for a number of intellectual impulses of this movement.

history

Advocates of this movement were often the editors, editors and authors of the magazine Neues Abendland (1946-1958), the members of the Abendländische Aktion (founded 1951), the board, the board of trustees and the advisory board of the Occidental Academy Munich-Eichstätt (founded 1952) and of the Center Européen de Documentation et Information (CEDI, founded 1952). In doing so, they tied in with ideational and personal relationships from the interwar period . An important financier was the publisher and entrepreneur Count Erich von Waldburg-Zeil until his accidental death in 1953, then his son Georg von Waldburg-Zeil .

The first meeting of the Occidental Academy took place on June 6-10. August 1952 in Eichstätt with broad foreign participation mainly from France and Spain . The Spanish historical philosopher Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola assigned the task of worldwide Catholic missions to the coming Western Empire . After the entry in the register of associations, the CSU politician Friedrich August von der Heydte became chairman, Prince Georg his deputy. The board included the editor-in-chief of Neue Abendland , the journalist Helmut Ibach , Protestants such as the Oldenburg bishop Wilhelm Stählin as well as the study director and philosopher Wolfgang Heilmann , the Munich historian Georg Stadtmüller and Prince Georg von Gaupp-Berghausen's confidante as general secretary. A board of trustees watched over the board of trustees, which included politicians such as Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano , Hans-Joachim von Merkatz , Hundhammer (see below), but also industrialists such as Max Ilgner and high-ranking bishops. Furthermore, an extensive, international advisory board was to accompany the scientific activity, in which the writer Werner Bergengruen , the cultural philosopher Max Picard or the existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel were also present. A few working groups were formed for supra-national order, law, social affairs ( Heinrich Materlik ). Above all Otto von Habsburg was supposed to represent the occidental cultural area.

Committed to the self-image of an elite with the mission to save the “ Christian West ”, the supporters of the idea planned to act as multipliers in politics (advice) and journalism in society. According to Vanessa Conze's research on the history of German ideas in the 20th century, the “Western movement of the fifties bundled Catholicism, anti-liberalism, anti-modernism and nationalist thinking of the Bavarian-Bohemian variety”.

A look at the composition of the members and the group of supporters shows that they still partially succeeded in this, at least in the 1950s. In addition to aristocrats, journalists and academics, these also included “prominent representatives of the conservative, predominantly […] Catholic spectrum”, including “high-ranking politicians of the Union” such as Federal Ministers Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (as a member) and Heinrich von Brentano (on the Board of Trustees). But they no longer wanted a return to a purely Catholic party like the Center Party . Rather, Chancellor Adenauer succeeded more and more in dispelling the accusation of a lack of order in the state through his authoritarian style of government. After the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of the Lechfeld in Augsburg in 1955, Der Spiegel published an article about the movement that attacked it as anti-constitutional. Helmut Schmidt (SPD) took up this in the Bundestag and pilloried the member of the board of trustees von Brentano, who had given the closing speech in Augsburg. After several attempts at defense, von der Heydte resigned in February 1956. The board of trustees definitely distanced itself from the Occidental Action , a public prosecutor's investigation took place. Even the President of the Federal Court of Justice , Hermann Weinkauff (in the Board of Trustees), and the President of the Federal Constitutional Court , Josef Wintrich , whose task was to safeguard the Basic Law. In the end, the planned annual meetings after 1956 were canceled and the magazine was discontinued in 1958. The academy shifted to maintaining international relations, especially with Spain under Franco.

In November 1958, a general meeting of the Occidental Academy in Munich elected former Reich Minister Walter von Keudell , Hans Hutter , Lord Mayor of Eichstätt, and Alois Graf von Waldburg-Zeil as board members. The interdenominational orientation was emphasized more strongly by new members such as Karl Forster , director of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria , and Hans Schomerus , director of the Evangelical Academy in Baden (Axel Schildt, p. 77). From 1960 to 1963, under the new director of studies Walter Werr, annual meetings were held with a more open group of speakers, many of which already showed the progressive spirit of Vatican II . However, since no broader impact was achieved in the end, the movement fizzled out in the 1960s, with the exception of small residues.

Ideas

According to the ideas of the movement, the Western thought structure is based on eight supporting pillars, two of which, the return to Central Europe and the Old Kingdom , glorification of the Middle Ages , should legitimize the past , three others - the evocation of Christian values, Western cultural unity, of federalism - hit the bridge to the present and three others - anti-totalitarianism and anti-communism , anti-liberalism and anti-Americanism - defined policy objectives. On the one hand, the representatives understood the western course of Adenauer's government as a return to the Carolingian beginnings, on the other hand they mistrusted US culture , in particular the "immoral" dangers in films etc. The governments in Spain under Franco and Portugal with Salazar were regarded as a model state social order. Many supported the death penalty very specifically, despite its abolition in the German constitution .

people

On August 10, 1955, Der Spiegel printed a list of the prominent members of the "Occidental Academy" and its organs:

Nobles
Commoners
Clergy

There were also regular conference participants

Publications

  • New Occident . Journal of politics, culture and history. Edited by Johann Wilhelm Naumann . Augsburg: Johann Wilhelm Naumann Verlag 1946–1951. 1951-1958 ed. by Gerhard Kroll and by Verlag Neues Abendland . In 1958 the magazine was closed due to insufficient readers.
  • Gerhard Kroll: Fundamentals of Occidental Culture - The Manifesto of Occidental Action , Verlag Neues Abendland, Munich 1951.
  • Gerhard Kroll: The order picture of the Occidental Action , Verlag Neues Abendland, Munich 1953.
  • The European heritage in today's world . Contributions by Raimondo Panikkar u. a., Occidental Academy, Nuremberg 1963.

literature

  • Vanessa Conze: The Western Movement. In: The Europe of the Germans. Ideas of Europe in Germany between imperial tradition and western orientation. 1920-1970. Inst. F. Contemporary history, Munich 2005, pp. 127–207.
  • Konstantin Götschel: Abendland in Bayern: On the relationship between the Western Movement and the CSU between 1945 and 1955. In: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 69 (2017), no. 4, pp. 367-398, Leiden 2017.
  • Axel Schildt : Between the West and America. Studies on the West German landscape of ideas of the 50s (= systems of order. Studies on the history of ideas in the modern age. Vol. 4). Oldenbourg, Munich 1999.
  • Rudolf Uertz : Conservative cultural criticism in the early Federal Republic of Germany. The Occidental Academy in Eichstätt (1952–56). In: Historisch-Politische Mitteilungen 8 (2001), pp. 45–71, Eichstädt 2000, online at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anselm Doering-Manteuffel: geschichte.transnational / Reviews / Rez. EG: JC Behrends, Av Klimo, PG Poutrus (ed.): Antiamerikanismus im 20 . History-transnational.clio-online.net. March 17, 2006. Archived from the original on June 7, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2010.
  2. ^ Occidental Academy: Where does the nonsense end? In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1956, pp. 18-19 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Wilfried. Loth, Jürgen. Osterhammel: International History: Topics, Results, Prospects . Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56487-0 , p. 132 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 3, 2010]).
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel 33/1955: The missonary monarchy. August 10, 1955, accessed October 31, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Uertz, Conservative Cultural Criticism, pp. 59f.