Alfred Brunner (politician)

Alfred Brunner (born August 21, 1871 in Braunschweig ; † February 12, 1936 ) was a German mechanical engineer and factory director. He was the head of the short-lived völkisch German Socialist Party (DSP) that he initiated, whose attempts to compete with or cooperate with the early NSDAP failed due to Hitler's resistance.

Life

Brunner's father was a lecturer and librarian at the TH Braunschweig . After studying mechanical engineering, he first worked for various companies as a travel and assembly engineer. Later he owned a small factory in Düsseldorf .

Since 1904 Brunner dealt with ethnic issues and was allegedly in contact with the ethnic-socialist movement in Austria. Under the influence of developments in the last year of the war, Brunner developed a clearly anti-capitalist accent. He represented a culturally pessimistic anti-Semitism , proclaimed a “German, ethnic, idealistic, biologically founded factual socialism” and also distinguished himself from the German nationalists and the Pan-Germans . In his memorandum, concluded on December 1, 1918, on the establishment of the German Socialist Party on a Jewish-pure and capitalless basis , he made it clear at the same time that by this he understood above all the fight against the "big and loan capital" allegedly in Jewish hands "Value-creating industrial capital" made a difference. The rejection of everything “un-German” was combined with his feelings against the Catholic Church and so-called ultramontanism . Brunner saw Roman law as "Jewish" and associated with the Roman Church as a political church.

At the same time Brunner tried to collect like-minded people. He advertised his draft program in völkisch publications. The Germanic Order , which financed the publication of the memorandum, made the program their own. In 1919 other German socialist groups were founded independently of one another in German cities, which Brunner recognized as the “intellectual originator” and “founder of the party”, but only maintained a loose organizational relationship with one another. Brunner therefore tried from April 1920 to coordinate the movement, which at that time consisted of 35 local groups with around 1,500 to 2,000 members, under a central leadership, which he did not want to take over himself. The founding party conference planned for April 1920 in Weimar did not take place as a result of the Kapp Putsch . The German Socialist Electoral Association in Hanover then called a party congress in Hanover on its own initiative , at which Brunner was elected head and chairman. The leadership of the movement was then moved to Berlin, where the teacher Emil Holtz took over the chairmanship.

Brunner was also a member of various nationalistic, ethnic associations and federations such as the German National Sales Aid Association and was also close to the Munich Thule Society . In the summer of 1919 he was appointed to the advisory board of the German-Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . In contrast to the information in Werner Maser's book Early History of the NSDAP , Brunner did not take part in the confidential meetings of the DAP leadership and was also not a classmate of Hitler's. Brunner's memorandum, however, was printed on May 31, 1919 under the title Our Political Program in the Münchner Beobachter and agreed on many points with the 25-point program of the NSDAP.

It can be assumed, however, that at this time Brunner published a magazine with the title The Free Opinion , which from 1920 was published by the party newspaper Deutscher Sozialist. Worksheet for the concerns of the völkisch-socialist movement. Bundesschrift the German Socialist Party of Germany was replaced. The editor-in-chief was the later Stürmer- editor Julius Streicher . From October 1921 to 1922 the paper was published under the title Deutscher Volkswille. Weekly paper for the movement towards the German work community .

Brunner saw the NSDAP as a possible partner for a merger, but did not fundamentally reject the democratic party system. Instead, he spoke out in favor of a reformatory evolutionary development and opposed a violent overthrow. When trying to bring about a unification of the nationalist parties, Brunner considered at times to unite the DSP with the NSDAP at all costs in order to be able to push Adolf Hitler aside. Hitler in turn opposed a merger of the two parties in the spring of 1921. The DSP disbanded in autumn 1922 after Julius Streicher had subordinated his strong Nuremberg local group to Hitler's NSDAP and other local groups followed his example.

literature

• Hellmuth Auerbach: Regional roots and differences in the NSDAP 1919–1923. In: Horst Möller, Andreas Wirsching and Walter Ziegler (eds.). National Socialism in the region. Contributions to regional and local research and international comparison. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-64500-5 , pp. 65-85.
• Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen: On the development of national legal thought. Early right-wing extremist programs and bourgeois law. In: Hans Jochen Vogel, Helmut Simon and Adalbert Podlech (eds.). The freedom of the other. Festschrift for Martin Hirsch. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1981, ISBN 3-7890-0699-8 , pp. 77-108.
• Albrecht Tyrell: From "Drummer" to "Leader". The change in Hitler's self-image between 1919 and 1924 and the development of the NSDAP. Fink, Munich 1975. ( digitized online )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: From the "drummer" to the "leader". The change in Hitler's self-image between 1919 and 1924 and the development of the NSDAP. Fink, Munich 1975, p. 72.
2. ^ Tyrell, "Drummers," p. 20.
3. ↑ Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen: On the development of völkisch legal thought. Early right-wing extremist programs and bourgeois law. In: Hans Jochen Vogel, Helmut Simon and Adalbert Podlech (eds.). The freedom of the other. Festschrift for Martin Hirsch. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1981, ISBN 3-7890-0699-8 , pp. 90f.
4. ↑ Hellmuth Auerbach: Regional roots and differences in the NSDAP 1919-1923. In: Horst Möller, Andreas Wirsching and Walter Ziegler (eds.). National Socialism in the region. Contributions to regional and local research and international comparison. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-64500-5 , pp. 75f.
5. ^ Tyrell, "Drummers," p. 234.
6. ↑ Auerbach, root , p. 76.
7. ^ Alfred Brunner's estate in the archive of social democracy .
8. ^ Tyrell, "Drummers," p. 99.