Pan-German association
Pan-German Association was the name of a völkisch , anti-clerical intergroup of the Vienna Reichsrat founded in 1901 , which was founded in 1891 by Georg von Schönerer under the name Pan-German Movement and which saw itself as identical to the German national movement . She was also the founder of political racial anti-isemism in Austria-Hungary and between 1901 and 1902 acted unsuccessfully as a movement party ("Pan-German Party") within the Austrian national camp .
From 1882–1896 the pan-German association acted under the name “Deutschnationale”, 1896–1901 under the name “Deutsche Volkspartei” and 1901–1907 under the name listed here.
In 1899/1900 it was also one of the ideological pillars of the most radical wing of the Völkisch , the "German Völkisch movement", which also claimed to be identical with the German national movement.
The Pan-German Association of Schönerers certainly served as a role model for the Pan-Germans in Germany, who founded the Pan-German Association in 1894 . They were particularly fond of radical anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the connections between the two organizations were only unofficial and not free from conflict, as it turned out especially in 1901.
In 1901, Georg von Schönerer attempted to transform the association into a movement party ("Pan-German Party for Austria"), in which he stepped in opposition to the Pan-Germans in the German Empire , who officially defined their association as non-partisan and therefore used the term "Pan-German" rejected as partisanship. In 1901, von Schönerer also announced an “Pan-German basic program” that replaced the Linz program that had existed since 1882 and was modified by him in 1895 . The main points of this program were the state dismembration of Austria-Hungary, federal annexation of the "German federal states" of Austria to Germany, disempowerment of the Roman Catholic Church and the demand that "the Germans of Austria" join the "German Church" (= Protestant Church), creation a "racial racial state" with federal involvement of today's Benelux countries . " All-Germany " should also get back by 1950 all territories that had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire up to the 16th century . The core of this all- Germany was to form Greater Germany , the German-speaking areas of Austria, which had belonged to the German Confederation until 1866 , and the German Empire. This essentially corresponded to the Greater German solution of 1848/49. It was left to Switzerland to decide whether it would join all of Germany as a whole or only with the German parts of the country .
Already in autumn 1901 there was an open rift between Karl Hermann Wolf and von Schönerer after it became clear that the former was recognized by the majority of the German Nationals, German Liberals and Christian Socials as the real leader of the Pan-Germans due to his not so radical stance . Therefore, the "Schönerianer", that is, the Schönerer wing in the pan-German association, started a character assassination campaign against Wolf by accusing him of "dishonor" in the "Ostdeutsche Rundschau" after Wolf founded the "Freialldeutsche Vereinigung" with some like-minded people in October 1901 “Had justified. In December 1901, Wolf began his retirement from politics.
In 1902 Wolf sold the Ostdeutsche Rundschau and founded the Freialldeutsche Party , although from that point on he only appeared as a speaker. The Freialldeutsche, like the other Pan-Germans, interpreted in an anti-Semitic way, they were not afraid to count on Jewish support in the form of “German-conscious Jews” if the wing around Schönerer was to be rendered harmless. Therefore, the Wolf Party was more successful than the group around Schönerer in the Sudeten German areas. They took up the traditions of the German national movement again .
In 1904 the pan-German unification was de facto dead and in 1907 Georg von Schönerer announced his “pan-German future program”, with which he wanted to run for the Reichstag elections and which represented the most radical form of pan-German politics. (This was taken and expanded as the basis of the National Socialist program of the DNSAP ).
In 1919, the Pan-German Association for German Austria was founded in Vienna , which was a subsidiary of the Imperial German Association. The provincial leadership of Vienna was officially subordinate to Georg von Schönerer and the Pan-Germans competed in elections with this association from 1922 as the “Pan-German Party of Austria” without success. Ultimately, the party was absorbed into Austria's DNSAP .
history
The Austrian Pan-Germans broke away from the German-liberal and German-Catholic camps in the course of the 1880s and formed an active irredentist minority under Schönerer and Karl Hermann Wolf . Although the number of Pan-Germans in the Reichsrat was small, they had a strong influence on the academic youth and the public service, especially the judiciary. The movement felt itself to be one of the legal successors of the German National Movement.
In the Reichsrat elections in 1901 , the Austrian Pan-Germans were able to increase the number of their seats in the Reichsrat from six to 21. This was the greatest electoral success in its history. The Pan-German MPs strove to establish the German language as the official language in Cisleithanien , promoted the Los-von-Rom movement , a personal union with Hungary and a protective and defensive alliance with the German Reich to be established by a state treaty. But the chairmen Schönerer and Wolf soon got into conflict for personal reasons. Wolf's group split off in 1902 as the Frei-Alldeutsche (later the German Radical Party ) with 12 members.
The radical, anti-Semitic wing of Austrian pan-Germanism, which found its voters primarily in the Sudeten German border areas, did not have any direct political success. However, his ideology succeeded in infiltrating most of the German parties, especially the Christian Socialists .
"The tendency to take the wind out of the sails of Pan-Germanism by partially accepting its demands - an undertaking that was successful in many respects - appeared in the long term to be much more dangerous for the state structure of the monarchy than the program of undisguised national radicalism and imperialism."
Although the association was officially dissolved in July 1904, there were still eight Pan-German members in the Vienna Reichsrat in 1905, all of whom had been elected in 1901 in the Sudetenland. However, these MPs were now non-attached.
In the first general and equal elections for men in 1907, the pan-German and radical German-national parties in Vienna only received 2.8% of the vote. Only three pan-German candidates made it to the Reichsrat. In the upcoming election of 1911 , the Schönerians won four seats in parliament. At the same time there were much larger but more moderate German national parties. The German national parties had merged in 1910 in the German National Association, which disintegrated again in 1917.
For the Austrian Pan-Germans, internal reforms to secure and strengthen the supremacy of the Germans were their most important war goal during the First World War . The ideas of Pan-German unification were in part later adopted by the National Socialists in the Austrian Republic and Czechoslovakia.
Political and ideological positions
The Pan-German movement was Greater German , anti-Semitic, anti-socialist or anti-Bolshevik and anti - democratic . With the adoption of the anti-Semitic components, the separation began from the liberals and the moderate German nationalists, who continued to support the Christian Church , while Schönerer began to turn his movement away from Judeo-Christianity and towards Wotan .
Propaganda material that the Pan-Germans supplied to instill chauvinism was, for example, the demand for more elbow room in the east and south-east,
“In order to secure the living conditions for the entire Germanic race, which it needs to fully develop its strength, even if such inferior peoples like Czechs , Slovenes and Slovaks should lose their useless existence for civilization. Only the great civilized peoples can be granted the right to nationality. "
At the beginning of the 1890s Pan-German theorists developed plans to divide the monarchy into small, directly or indirectly dependent, state structures to be Germanized. The fact that the Pan-German endeavors in the Habsburg Monarchy were ultimately unsuccessful was due not least to the interest of the allied Germany in keeping the state under German-Austrian- Magyar leadership in the German wake , but not to contribute to further national disintegration and ultimately to the dissolution of the monarchy, which could ultimately only serve Russian interests. The preservation of the Danube Monarchy was clearly in the power-political interest of the German Reich.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-187157-8 , p. 30.
- ↑ Joachim Petzold: The demagoguery of Hitler fascism: the political function of Nazi ideology on the way to a fascist dictatorship , Röderberg-Verlag 1983, ISBN 978-3876827605 , p. 48 ff.
- ↑ Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbook of Antisemitism. Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-028357-0 , p. 257.
- ^ Robert A. Kann : The German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy 1871-1918 . In: Robert A. Kann, Friedrich E. Prinz: Germany and Austria. A bilateral history book . Vienna / Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7141-6551-7 , pp. 143–160, here: p. 158.
- ^ Peter GJ Pulzer: The emergence of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria from 1867 to 1914. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-36954-9 , pp. 187 and 231.
- ↑ Robert A. Kann: Germany and the nationality problem of the Habsburg Monarchy from an Austrian perspective. In: Robert A. Kann, Friedrich E. Prinz: Germany and Austria. A bilateral history book. Vienna / Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7141-6551-7 , pp. 412-423, here pp. 418f.
- ↑ Lothar Höbelt : Cornflower and Imperial Eagle. The German freedom parties of Old Austria 1882–1918 . Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-7028-0320-3 , p. 197.
- ↑ Birgitt Morgenbrod: Viennese upper middle class in the First World War. The history of the Austrian Political Society (1916–1918). Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-205-98256-8 , p. 22.
- ^ Richard W. Kapp: Divided Loyalities. The German Reich and Austria-Hungary in Austro-German Discussions of War Aims, 1914-1916 . In: Central European History 17 (1984), pp. 120-139, here: p. 124.
- ↑ Gy. Tokody: The plans of the Pan-German Association for the transformation of Austria-Hungary. In: Acta Historica (1963), pp. 39-67, here: p. 65.
- ↑ Alldeutsche Blätter No. 4 (1894); quoted from Alfred Kruck: History of the Pan-German Association. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1954, p. 44.
- ↑ Gy. Tokody: The plans of the Pan-German Association for the transformation of Austria-Hungary . In: Acta Historica. (1963) pp. 39-67, here: pp. 39-41.
- ^ Robert A. Kann: The German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy 1871-1918. In: Robert A. Kann, Friedrich E. Prinz: Germany and Austria. A bilateral history book. Vienna / Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7141-6551-7 , pp. 143–160, here: pp. 146 and 157.