Covenant of the upright
The Bund der Aufrechte was a nationalist monarchist association founded on November 9, 1918 in Berlin by the writer Ernst Pfeiffer . In 1922 it was banned as an anti-republic organization under the law for the protection of the republic .
Background and history
On November 9, 1918 thanked Wilhelm II. From. In response to these events, the writer Ernst Pfeiffer founded the Bund der Upright in Berlin on the same evening, the purpose of which was to restore the monarchy. The publication organ of the Bund der Aufrechte was the newspaper “ Der Aufrechte ”, founded by Ernst Pfeiffer, twice a month . Pfeiffer's political background was the movement around the anti-Semitic court preacher Adolf Stoecker .
development
By the autumn of 1919, the membership of the Federation grew to over 1,000. About 140 representatives from Prussia took part in the first general meeting. Advertising measures were decided and the first meetings held, which were increasingly popular. The first chairman was Hans Joachim von Brockhusen , Paul von Hindenburg's son-in-law .
In the course of time, the following have emerged as speakers in the Union of the Upright: the Reichstag deputies Kuno Graf von Westarp , Reinhard Mumm , Friedrich Everling (all DNVP ), the Protestant workers secretary Paul Rüffer , Axel von Freytagh-Loringhoven and Ilse Neumann ; furthermore the German philology professor Gustav Roethe , the generals von Stein and Ludwig von Friedeburg and from the group of the evangelical clergy senior consistorial councilor Paul Conrad , Otto Dibelius and pastor Walter Richter-Reichhelm as well as the court and cathedral preachers Bruno Doehring and Johannes Vogel .
In 1922 the Union of the Upright gathered 3,000 visitors for a big Prussian celebration in Friedrichshain in Berlin.
During this time the federation had more than 60 local groups with about 25,000 members. A workers' youth group with 800 members was successfully founded in Bremen .
The assassination of Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau by members of the right-wing extremist organization Consul on June 24, 1922 provided sufficient reason to ban nationalist and anti-republic associations such as the Bund der Aufrechte. Due to the law for the protection of the republic , which was passed on June 26th , the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Carl Severing, dissolved the federal government with all state associations, district and local groups. Saxony and Thuringia followed suit. Only in Baden and Bavaria , where the state governments had not issued a ban, the federal government remained in place and continued to work.
The federal government's attempts to distance itself from the Rathenau murder were unsuccessful. Therefore, the Berlin local councils and the main board of the federal government unanimously adopted the resolution on June 30th:
“It is incompatible with the Christian sentiment, on whose activity our covenant is primarily based, that it should have members who approve of political crimes or even just excuse them. As self-evident as this is, the federal government considers it appropriate, given the current intellectual constitution, to declare this publicly. "
Two complaints against the ban were rejected. The Confederation of the Upright had to cease its activities. No. 26 of the magazine Der Aufrechte , which had appeared before the Rathenau assassination, was also confiscated by the Berlin police chief as a result of the new regulation for the protection of the republic . At the same time, the publication of the magazine was also banned for a period of four weeks. Then it reappeared and the members of the Federation constituted themselves as their “reading group”. Under this name, the federal government continued to work undisturbed.
Immediately after the Prussian strike, Chancellor Papen lifted the ban in July 1932. In February 1933 the Bund elected Karl von Eine to be its “1. Federal Leader ".
With the final ban on all monarchist organizations by the National Socialists in 1934, the Union of the Upright was dissolved.
Prominent members
The Union of the Upright included the emperor's sons Oskar and Eitel Friedrich , the former Prussian war minister Karl von Eine, the Reichstag member of the German National People's Party Otto Schmidt-Hanover and the former Berlin police chief Traugott von Jagow .
Post-history
After 1945 the "upright" Heinrich von Massenbach († 1962) gathered some still living members around him and finally founded a new association with these and newly arrived people. Successor organization is characterized today in the Federal Republic, the Association for the Promotion of the monarchical idea Tradition und Leben e. V.
Individual evidence
- ^ Walter Richter-Reichhelm (1873 – after 1950), a military chaplain and confidante of Wilhelm II , was chief pastor of the Guard Corps and garrison pastor of Berlin until 1918 , then chief pastor of the Luisengemeinde in Berlin; Life data of Richter-Reichhelm with Manfred Gailus : Protestantism and National Socialism. Studies on the National Socialist penetration of the Protestant social milieu in Berlin . Böhlau 2001, ISBN 9783412072018 , footnote 103, p. 402.
- ↑ Dieter Fricke (Ed.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) , Vol. 1: Pan-German Association - German League for Human Rights , VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1983, pp. 196–201, here: p. 198
swell
- The upright one. Magazine (until 1934)
- The Upright: Popular leaves for history, tradition and life. Magazine; after the ban of the Bund der Aufrechte in 1934 by the Nazi regime with this cover name (“Volkstümliche Blätter ...”) banned in 1938
literature
- Hans-Otto Meissner : When the crowns fell. 1st edition, Giessen 1956.
- Arne Hofmann : “We are the old Germany, Germany as it was…” The “League of the Upright” and monarchism in the Weimar Republic., Frankfurt a. M. 1998.
- Carsten Reuss: The League of the Upright. Essence, effect, contradictions. A contribution to the history of the monarchical movement in Germany. Münster 1993 (Master's thesis).