Old Social Democratic Party of Germany

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The Old Socialist Party of Saxony , often also known as the Old Social Democratic Party of Saxony (ASPS), was a “right-wing social democratic” party founded during the crisis of the Weimar Republic . It was later called the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany (ASPD) .

Prehistory - the "Saxony dispute"

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In the Saxon SPD , a strong left, Marxist wing developed from 1921 to 1923 , which criticized the coalition and tolerance policies of the party as a whole and drew on two sources. On the one hand, after the merger of the SPD and USPD with politicians like Hermann Fleißner or Richard Lipinski, strong regional organizations of the USPD (with the traditional organ of the SPD left before 1914, the Leipziger Volkszeitung ) returned to the SPD. On the other hand, left opposition tendencies developed among the members who remained in the SPD, among them politicians like Erich Zeigner and above all Max Seydewitz .

On March 21, 1923, the parliamentary groups of the SPD and KPD elected Erich Zeigner (SPD) as prime minister in the Saxon state parliament. He headed a minority government to which communist ministers did not belong and consciously and publicly opposed the policies of the Reich executive committee of the SPD. The latter was keen to differentiate itself from the KPD and to work with the bourgeois parties. On October 10, 1923, the KPD entered the government of Erich Zeigner with two ministers. On October 20, 1923, Reichswehr troops moved into Saxony on the instructions of the Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler . On October 21, the KPD tried to get a majority at the Chemnitz works council conference to call a general strike (nationwide) . In the opinion that this had been achieved, the Hamburg courier of the KPD triggered the Hamburg uprising . On the 29th of the month, Reich President Friedrich Ebert (SPD) initiated the Reich execution against Saxony, the government was declared dissolved and the former Prime Minister Rudolf Heinze was initially appointed as Reich Commissioner. After protests by the SPD, however, after Zeigner's resignation on October 30, Alfred Fellisch was elected Prime Minister one day later and with the votes of bourgeois parties . He formed a purely social democratic cabinet that could not rely on a reliable majority in the state parliament ( minority government ).

On December 1, 1923, an extraordinary party congress of the Saxon SPD took place. Because of the adherence of the SPD parliamentary group and the party executive to the grand coalition in the Reich, distrust was expressed in both organs with 89 against 20 votes. The party congress condemned the violent removal of the Zeigner government as a breach of the constitution. At the same time he pleaded for the social democratic minority government to seek cooperation with the KPD. The state organization of the party and the state parliamentary faction are bound by this decision and it makes any coalition formation dependent on the approval of a party congress. After the DDP had withdrawn its confidence in the Saxon government, negotiations with the communists took place, but failed in mid-December because of their demands for new elections.

On January 4, 1924, the previous Finance Minister Max Heldt (SPD) was elected Prime Minister of the Free State of Saxony . He ruled the country in coalitions with the DDP , DVP and from 1927 also with the Economic Party , DNVP and People's Rights Party . The step of the parliamentary group into a coalition with the bourgeois parties was supported by the party executive in Berlin. However, this approach met with opposition in parts of the social democratic parliamentary group. 15 MPs declared that this contradicted the decisions of the party congress.

For the first time on January 6, 1924, the state party congress of the Saxon SPD called on Max Heldt with 77 to 16 votes to dissolve the existing coalitions and to start coalition negotiations with the KPD. Max Heldt and the majority of the SPD parliamentary group refused to accept this. In the following time the SPD was burdened at the Reich level by the so-called "Saxony dispute" and this was a topic of the Reich party rallies of 1924 and 1925. At the party congress of 1924 it was decided that coalition agreements were a matter for the parliamentary groups. He refused a coalition with the KPD for the foreseeable future, and the Reich Party reserved the right to suspend resolutions of the state parties if necessary until an Nazi Party Congress had decided on them.

founding

The conflict only came to an end at the Saxon state party convention of the SPD on March 25, 1926, when Max Heldt and the majority of the SPD parliamentary group (23 members, including Max Müller , Wilhelm Buck , Karl Bethke and Eva Büttner ) were excluded from the party were. On April 15, the SPD parliamentary group split up. 23 MPs, including Max Heldt, made up the "old social democratic faction". 18 MPs remained in the SPD parliamentary group.

On June 6, 1926, Max Heldt founded the Old Socialist Party of Saxony, often called the Old Social Democratic Party of Saxony (ASPS). At the founding meeting, Wilhelm Buck, the former Prime Minister of the Free State, spoke about the ways and goals of the new party. According to this, the founding of the party was an act of self-defense and did not mean the split of the party as a whole, since the new organization wanted to be limited to Saxony and should only exist until the conflicts with the parent party were resolved. In the statutes, the organization committed itself to the principles of the SPD and the Heidelberg program . In doing so, she first emphasized the positive attitude towards the state and constructive cooperation with bourgeois parties. Initially, the party had considerable influence in some of Saxony's trade unions, such as that of the textile workers, and was recognized as a republican party by the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold . Wilhelm Buck was elected chairman. However, the ASPS later made all-German claims and renamed itself the ASPD.

With this, Heldt was Prime Minister of the Free State of Saxony until June 26, 1929. The ASPD closed temporarily outside Saxony persons from the national revolutionary and nationalist spectrum as one of the Hofgeismarer circle of young socialists originating group around Ernst Niekisch (which from 1926 to 1928 the people's state , headed the newspaper of the party) and Benedict Obermayr and the account of the August Winnig, who was excluded from the SPD and ADGB , supported the Kapp Putsch in 1920 . At the same time, Reichsbanner and SAJ passed resolutions on incompatibility with the ASPD; in the 1928 Reichstag election campaign , the Reichsbanner took violent action against ASPD events in Berlin. Overall, the nationalist party was clearly to the right of the SPD. Niekisch gave the programmatic keynote address at the party's first congress in July 1927; the party congress accepted his theses, according to which the ASPD was a national and proletarian party that affirmed the state and called for the education of workers to be “able to defend themselves” with the aim of “fighting for German freedom”. The party also recruited members of nationalist military associations such as the Stahlhelm , whose chairman joined the ASPD in the Free State of Braunschweig , and the Young German Order . The ASPD did not succeed in establishing itself as a political force at the Reich level, especially since the majority of the members outside Saxony around Niekisch left the party in the summer of 1928. On July 1, 1932, the party decided to return to the SPD, some prominent members such as Richard Schapke and Eugen Mossakowsky joined the NSDAP .

Election results

Parliament

  • 1928 - 0.21% (0 seats, of the 65,775 votes 34,827 came from Saxony)

Saxon State Parliament

  • 1926 - 4.15% (4 mandates)
  • 1929 - 1.46% (2 mandates)
  • 1930 - 0.74% (0 mandates)

literature

  • Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Wagner (ed.): Of power and powerlessness. Saxon Prime Minister in the Age of Extremes 1919–1952. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2006, ISBN 3-934544-75-4 .
  • Benjamin Lapp: A 'National' Socialism: The Old Socialist Party of Saxony, 1926–32 . In: Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 30, No. 2, 1995, pp. 291-309, doi : 10.1177 / 002200949503000205 .
  • Christopher Hausmann: The "Old Social Democratic Party" 1926–1932. A failed experiment between the party political fronts. In: Helga Grebing , Hans Mommsen , Karsten Rudolph (eds.): Democracy and emancipation between Saale and Elbe. Contributions to the history of the social democratic labor movement until 1933 (= publications of the Institute for Research into the European Labor Movement. Series A: Representations. Vol. 4). Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-032-6 , pp. 273-294.
  • Willy Buschak : The socialist and communist labor movement in the Weimar Republic. In: Thomas Meyer , Susanne Miller , Joachim Rohlfes (Hrsg.): History of the German workers' movement. Study and work book. Presentation - Chronologies - Documents. Volume 2: (A15-A39). (= Federal Agency for Political Education. Series of publications. Vol. 207, Part 2). Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 1984, ISBN 3-923423-11-X , pp. 499–541, here pp. 506 f.
  • Franz Osterroth, Dieter Schuster: Chronicle of the German social democracy. Volume 2: From the beginning of the Weimar Republic to the end of the Second World War (= International Library. Volume 84). 3rd, unchanged edition. Dietz, Berlin et al. 1980, ISBN 3-8012-1084-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf : National Bolshevism in Germany. 1918-1933 (= Ullstein 2996). Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1972, ISBN 3-548-02996-5 , p. 369 and p. 534.