Action française

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Charles Maurras (left) with Maxime Real Del Sarte , the heads of Action française and Camelots du roi

The Action française is a right-wing extremist , nationalist and monarchist political group in France , which was formed in 1898 under the impression of the Dreyfus Affair .

history

The former republican and later nationalist-royalist philosopher Henri Vaugeois and the philosopher, journalist and militant royalist Maurice Pujo founded the Comité d'action française in April 1898 . L'Action française was the title of the magazine, the first issue of which appeared on August 1, 1899, and which became the mouthpiece of the movement. From March 21, 1908, the paper appeared as a daily newspaper, the circulation rose to 60,000 by 1941.

From November 1908, the Camelots du roi , founded by Pujo, organized their distribution. They staged numerous violent conflicts with socialists and were often entangled in overturning plans. At times they owned u. a. also Georges Bernanos , Robert Buron , who later became minister under de Gaulle , and Alexandre Sanguinetti , minister under Georges Pompidou .

The main leaders of Action française were the journalists and writers Charles Maurras (member of the Académie française since 1938 ) and Léon Daudet , a son of Alphonse Daudet . The historian Jacques Bainville , who had also been a member of the Académie française since 1935 , and for a time the religious scholar Georges Dumézil were particularly influential .

The Action Française was initially republican, populist, nationalist and anti-Semitic oriented. Under the influence of the ideas of Maurras ( Integral Nationalism ) it changed on the eve of the First World War into a monarchist and anti-republican organization, which was also militantly Catholic (and therefore the breeding ground for Integralism ) and anti-German, it fought parliamentarism and democracy . Its goal was the re-establishment of an absolute hereditary monarchy , but in fact it came closer and closer to fascism . As early as 1914, Pope Pius X judged the political worldview to be incompatible with the Catholic religion, although Maurras had praised the Pope as the “savior of France” for his rejection of secularism . Because of the war, the publication of this papal doctrinal condemnation, which Pope Pius XI. then announced in December 1926. Prior to this, a dialogue with the leaders of Action française had proven impossible. Sections of the organization rebelled against the papal condemnation, for which a political interpretation of the papacy (cf. ultramontanism ; but this does not mean concrete obedience to office) was an indispensable part of their ideology.

Anti-Semitism also remained a central ideologue of Action française . Inspired by Édouard Drumont's conspiracy theories and anti-capitalist ideas, the Jews, along with foreigners, Protestants and Freemasons, were sorted into an imaginary “anti-France” that allegedly intended to destroy France. Action française therefore called for the civic equality of Jews , which had been achieved during the French Revolution , to be reversed: Jews allegedly could not be French. The French Revolution itself saw the action française as the devil's work of Jews, Freemasons and foreigners and openly declared a turning point.

Ultranationalist French ideas of a post-war order in Europe (1915), as represented by Action française

During the First World War , Action française developed plans for expansion beyond the Rhine and some bridgeheads on the right bank of the Rhine. Action française's ideas about the future of Germany were based on the example of the Peace of Westphalia , i.e. aimed at the destruction of German unity. During the war she adopted a governmental stance and supported the government; even the prime minister and former Dreyfusard Georges Clemenceau could count on their support. The Action Française pursued during the ruling in the war truce the common policy on most determined and implacable. Their share in the war propaganda was therefore considerable.

The Action française tried to unite all nationalist, anti-Semitic and royalist forces, but never got beyond the stage of a link between dignitaries and mass organizations.

The Action Française marked with their daily newspaper while the position of the extreme right in France and had some weight because of their resolute appearance, but stood by its antiquated royalism himself on the political sidelines. The group with its petty-bourgeois base and noble financiers under intellectual leadership could only find stable support in the centers of royalism. The ideology of the action française was not just an arbitrary accumulation of prejudices, but was essentially characterized by a religiously disguised, but anti- humanitarian , anti-enlightenment and counter-revolutionary fundamentalism . This mixture of nationalism, racism or anti-Semitism and the leader principle as well as an elite conception derived from alleged inequality (also the glorification of violence as a means of foreign and domestic political disputes) made Action française a pre-form of a fascist movement .

Crisis and decline

This "political naturalism " and "social modernism " of Action française was on the part of the Catholic Church on December 20, 1926 by Pope Pius XI. condemned as incompatible with the Catholic faith. The ban triggered a serious crisis in French Catholicism, which was strongly anti-liberal and anti-republican. On December 29, 1926, writings by AF founder Charles Maurras were placed on the Librorum Prohibitorum index , as was the newspaper L'Action française .

Leading Catholic intellectuals submitted to the judgment of the Holy See. In March 1927, the members of the AF were excluded from receiving the sacraments . The papacy emerged from the crisis stronger, the movement weakened. From 1936 onwards, the Spanish Civil War and Stalinism ( “Great Terror” 1936–1938 ) triggered increased anti-communism within the Church, and numerous clergymen, including the Carmelites from Lisieux , pleaded in Rome for a reconciliation with the Action française . In July 1939, the newly elected Pope Pius XII. the ban on. The French government dissolved Action française on February 13, 1936, and its newspaper was banned in 1944 (there were several follow-up publications).

The newspaper opposed France's entry into World War II in 1939 , and after the armistice in 1940 it sided with the Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain . Supporters of the Action française were prosecuted as collaborators after the end of the war , although some had also joined the Resistance . The Action Française was constituted in 1947 new and today operates under the name Center d'Action Française royaliste ; it no longer plays a major role within the French extreme right (see also Front National (France) ).

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pierre Nora: Les deux apogées de l'Action française. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilizations. 1964 digitized .
  2. ^ Dominique Trimbur: Action française . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin / Boston 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027878-1 , p. 2 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  3. ↑ Dieter Wild: France - that is Petain . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1992 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Andreas Zobel: France's extreme right before the First World War with special consideration of the "Action Française". An empirical contribution to the definition of the term prefascism. Berlin 1982, p. 310 f. and 319.
  5. ↑ Ernst Nolte (ed.): Fascism in its epoch. Action française, Italian fascism, National Socialism. Piper, Munich / Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-492-20365-5 , p. 111.
  6. ↑ Andreas Zobel: France's extreme right before the First World War with special consideration of the "Action Française". An empirical contribution to the definition of the term prefascism. Berlin 1982, p. 331 f.
  7. ↑ Ernst Nolte (ed.): Fascism in its epoch. Action française, Italian fascism, National Socialism. Piper, Munich / Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-492-20365-5 , pp. 106 and 112.
  8. ↑ a b Andreas Zobel: France's extreme right before the First World War with special consideration of the "Action Française". An empirical contribution to the definition of the term prefascism. Berlin 1982, p. 331 ff.
  9. ^ Eugen Weber: Action Française. Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1962, p. 235.
  10. ^ Gregor Paul Boventer: Limits of political freedom in the democratic state. The concept of militant democracy in an international comparison. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-05782-1 , p. 170.