Acción Republicana Austriaca en México

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Acción Republicana Austriaca en México ( Austrian republican action in Mexico , abbreviated ARAM ), was an association of Austrians and old Austrians living in exile in Mexico and who fled from National Socialism , which advocated the re-establishment of an independent Austria. It was originally founded by social democratic exiles, but was later able to unite Austrian communists and commoners. Only from the monarchist circles around Otto Habsburg , which were particularly active in the neighboring USA , were they differentiated. The organisation's mouthpiece to the outside world was the Austrian Libre magazine, which was published in Spanish and German .

development

The first Austrian political refugees came to Mexico as early as 1938, first Spain fighters , socialists and communists, then also former bourgeois supporters of the corporate state . After the outbreak of the Second World War, more people joined the group , including many intellectuals, writers and Jews who had first found refuge in Czechoslovakia and France and then mostly on adventurous routes first to the USA and because of the restrictive asylum policy there Austrian. At first these were strictly split into political camps, and it was only the increasingly bad news from Europe that brought the different groups closer together. On December 3, 1941, a republican anti-fascist Austrian movement of the Austrians in exile in Mexico was founded, called Acción Republicana Austria en México . Founding members were the social democrats Minna and Rudolf (Rodolfo) Neuhaus, Arthur Bonihardy, as well as Resi Mandl, Hans Zagler, Mauricio Luft, Mela Ballin, Otto Hahn and the communists Bruno Frei , Leo Katz and Josef Foscht. The communists in exile in Mexico joined this group because they distanced themselves more and more from the German national statements of the local leader of the exiled KPD, Paul Merker .

It was also the two communists Bruno Frei and Leo Katz who headed the organisation's mouthpiece, the Austria Libre magazine , which first appeared in Spanish in 1941 and later in Spanish and German until 1946. It was also the aim of this magazine to inform the Mexican public about the “real Austria”, especially journalists, politicians and the Mexican trade union movement. In addition to the printed version, the program “ La Voz de Austria ” was broadcast once a week on Mexican radio . When Mexico entered the war on the side of the Allies in May 1942, ARAM was also able to appear more publicly. Between 1942 and 1945, a delegation with the red-white-red flag always marched with the marches on May Day. In 1943 Rodolfo Neuhaus resigned as chairman, which was then taken over by Ing. Franz Schallmoser.

The state of Mexico tolerated or supported the goals of the ARAM. Mexico had already spoken out against the annexation of Austria under the left-wing government of Lázaro Cárdenas and its foreign minister Eduardo Hay . From May 1942 Mexico also entered the war against the German Reich and thus also supported the demand formulated by the Allies in the Moscow Declaration in 1943 for the restoration of a sovereign state of Austria.

Shared loyalties

The various Austrian emigrant groups in Mexico mostly felt obliged to different currents at the same time, depending on their ethnic, religious and political background. Although they rejected the rule of the National Socialists over Austria, they showed solidarity with the German cultural nation . This even included communists and Jews who only distanced themselves from Germany because of the increasingly bad news about the horrors of National Socialism from Europe. Most of the ARAM members also worked in other organizations, such as the Free Germany Movement and its magazine Alemania Libre , the Heinrich Heine Club , the exile publisher El libro libre and the Liga pro Cultura Alemana that had been in existence since 1938 , or in Yiddish publications such as the Mexican magazine Frai Welt .

In addition, there were Mexicans of German or Austrian descent who had lived in Mexico for a long time and tended to be German-nationalist . The latter gathered from the beginning of the war in National Socialist organizations such as the NSDAP faction in Mexico, which, however, was banned after Mexico entered the war.

Numerous Austrians in exile of Jewish descent, on the other hand, sympathized with the idea of Zionism , such as the Hatikwah and Menorah organizations that existed in Mexico , not least because more and more information about the Holocaust came from Europe , in which numerous Austrians were also involved. The previously idealized image of the Soviet Union also grew darker and so for Jewish Austrians, a state of Israel in Palestine was often the only logical alternative.

resolution

After the end of the Second World War, the Austrian emigrant community in Mexico and with it ARAM quickly dissolved. Some went back to Austria, most of the Jewish members went to Israel, and some of the communists, who were still loyal to Moscow, went to the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, which later became the GDR . Sympathizers of the National Socialists, however, preferred to stay in Mexico or other countries in Latin America.

literature

  • Austria Libre. Organo de los Austriacos Anti-Nazis de México . Date of publication: 1.1942–5.1946, no more published. ZDB ID 1006257-9 . Libr. Internacional, México, ÖNB , DNB .
  • Gottfried Fritzl: Bruno Frei in exile in Mexico. Escape route and exile activity of an Austrian . Thesis. University of Vienna, Vienna 1996, OBV .
  • Johann Georg Lughofer: Austria Libre. The exile magazine of the anti-fascist Austrians in Mexico . Thesis. University of Vienna, Vienna 2000, OBV .
  • Christian Kloyber et al. (Ed.), Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.): Austrians in Exile. Mexico 1938–1947 . Deuticke, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-216-30686-0 .
  • Johann Georg Lughofer: The political system of Mexico around 1940 and the Austrian exile in Mexico. Ideological concordances and dissonances . Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 2004, OBV . - Abstract .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Kloyber: Austrian exile culture in Mexico . 2001. - Text online (PDF; 125 kB), accessed on September 9, 2013.
  2. ^ Minna's membership card No. 2, scan
  3. ^ Rodolfo Neuhaus: Communication to the Mexican President about the establishment of the Aram ( Memento of July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Mexico DF, September 1942.
  4. ↑ Christian Kloyber: Austrian authors in Mexican exile 1938 to 1945. (PDF; 28.54 kB) In: Austrian literature in exile. University of Salzburg, 2002, accessed December 24, 2013 .
  5. ^ Franz Pohle: Between the swastika and the star of David. German speakers in Mexico (Part 1): Long-established and Jewish emigrants after 1933 ( Memento from August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: matices.de , accessed on September 9, 2013.