German-Baltic Progressive Party

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The German-Baltic Progressive Party ( DbFP ) was a party of the German minority in Latvia between 1918 and 1934.

history

The DbFP was founded on November 7, 1918. The chairmen were Eduard von Rosenberg (* 1878) from November 7, 1918 to December 1919 , Wilhelm Schreiner (* 1864) from February 29, 1920 to 1923 and Bernhard Fröhlich from 1923 to 1934.

The party represented bourgeois liberal positions in the center. As the only party of the Baltic Germans, it advocated participation in the Latvian People's Council in 1918 . As early as November 28, 1918, the DbFP party executive declared that it recognized “the rights of the Latvian nation to form its own national state”. This differentiated the DbFP from the other Baltic German parties emerging in the young state of Latvia, which at the end of 1918 were still striving for a state encompassing the former Baltic Sea Governments under German Baltic leadership and which - because they had this (then already illusory) maximum goal before them - claimed that "the" To represent Germans in Livonia and Courland. The DbFP, on the other hand, did not see itself as a representative of a “German diaspora”, but as a party of the German part of the citizens in the new state of Latvia. This is emphasized by the first party program adopted in Jelgava in December 1918 , the “Guidelines of the German-Baltic Progressive Party”. From 1920 the DbFP appeared in elections to the Saeima as part of the committee of the German Baltic parties . With Peter Kluge, it provided a member of parliament.

After a coup d'état on May 15, 1934 , the parties, including the German-Baltic Progressive Party, were banned by Kārlis Ulmanis and the Saeima dissolved.

Principles of the party

The party stands:

"Always on the ground of the inviolability and preservation of our German national and cultural goods".

She acknowledges:

"Equal rights for all nationalities and denominations represented in the country".

She confesses:

"In relation to the political and social organization of our homeland towards a progressive attitude, which sharply demarcates us from reactionary and strictly conservative as well as from extreme social democratic endeavors. We defend the principles of a liberal state legal system based on a state representation which the representatives of all strata of the local population are to be consulted while the interests of the minorities are justly safeguarded. We advocate extensive expansion of social welfare in town and country ".

literature

  • Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest - Statistical-Biographical Handbook of the Parliamentarians of the German Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945, Volume 1, 2nd edition . Copenhagen 1991, ISBN 87-983829-3-4 , pp. 136 .
  • Eduard Baron Rosenberg: For Germanism and Progress in Latvia , Riga 1928.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Leo Dribins: The German Balts and the idea of nationallettischen State (1918-1934) . In: Nordost-Archiv , vol. 5 (1996), part volume 2, pp. 275–299, here p. 283.
  2. ↑ John Hiden: Defender of minorities. Paul Schiemann, 1876–1944 . Hurst & Co., London 2004, ISBN 1-85065-751-3 ; therein Chapter 3: Joining Latvia , pp. 40–62, here especially pp. 40–42.
  3. ↑ Georg von Rauch : History of the Baltic States . dtv, Munich, 2nd edition 1977, ISBN 3-423-04297-4 , p. 134.
  4. ↑ Libausche Zeitung , year 1918, No. 264 of November 11, 1918.