German Workers and Employees Party

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The German Workers 'and Employees' Party (DAAP, since mid-November 1918 with the addition of the Großdeutsche Volkspartei ) was an active right-wing German party from 1918 to 1920 . As such, it was little more than an influential “ völkisch sect”, but at the same time it was the first historical attempt by the German right to build an externally independent “national workers' party”. The program of the DAAP sat with the clearly formulated by the founders aim outside the middle class support for the line of of radicalized conservatives and Pan-German founded the German Fatherland Party to mobilize (DVLP), "in deliberately manipulative way to an aggregate of anti-capitalist ", nationalist , racist and anti-Semitic figures of thought. In this regard, the party anticipated conceptual basics of Nazi ideology . In January 1919 the NSDAP predecessor DAP emerged from the Free Workers Committee for a Good Peace , which was affiliated with the DAAP and led by Anton Drexler and Munich Pan-Germans and Fatherland Party members . The DAAP was financed and controlled by the head office of the DVLP, after its closure by the office of Kapp's confidante Georg Wilhelm Schiele .

development

The DVLP had not succeeded in the desired organizational break into the labor movement . Some of the already existing " yellow " workers 'associations and committees (see Bund Deutscher Werkvereine , Kartellverband deutscher Werkvereine and main committee of national workers' and professional associations in Germany ) that already existed, but outside this milieu, the monotonously nationalistic and " economically peaceful “DVLP propaganda largely. In addition, many supposedly “national” workers, who in the strongholds of the “yellow” labor movement - for example at Siemens in Berlin or BASF in Ludwigshafen - were often only forced to join these associations, were considered unreliable “blood oranges” - yellow outside, inside red".

On November 8, 1917, Wilhelm Gellert , an employee of the Kalisyndikats and DVLP and NLP member, wrote to Wolfgang Kapp in which he - based on the assumption that something “new” had to be created in order to “turn the labor movement into one to steer a certain direction (...) ”- proposed to found a German workers' party. According to Gellert, this organization could certainly pursue the same goals as the Fatherland Party. He underlined, however, that the party must act “completely independently” and, above all, without any visible connection to civil organizations, otherwise the company would result in a “stillbirth” from the outset. Gellert was convinced that the socialist parties had only gained such influence because they had made the workers' interest in material betterment their own. Consequently, it must be possible to set up a “national” workers party that does exactly this at least declaratively, but at the same time completely renounces revolutionary and internationalist “phrases”. In one designed by Gellert and the letter to Kapp founding statement attached to such a party, the emphasis was placed on the evidence that the "waiver policy" of the Reichstag majority (cf.. Interfraktioneller Committee ) future every generous social policies make impossible, but every worker's why a I am interested in securing a German "Siegfrieden". Anti-Semitic figures of thought already played a role in this document, but were not in the foreground.

Kapp conferred with Schiele and Conrad von Wangenheim and invited Gellert to a meeting in his Berlin apartment on December 9, 1917. Schiele then provided Gellert with address and contact information and brought him in connection in particular with Wilhelm Wahl , a prominent figure in the network of "yellow" workers' associations affiliated to the DVLP. In the following weeks Gellert revised the draft program together with staff from the DVLP headquarters. The "latently existing anti-capitalist slogans were reinforced and charged anti-Semitic". The successively increasing weighting of anti-Semitism in this document is evidently related to the discussion about the political potential of the “ Jewish question ”, which has been more and more emphatic in leading conservative and Pan-German-ethnic circles since the spring of 1918 . In mid-April 1918, Heinrich Claß in the executive committee of the Pan-German Association expressly described it as "our task (...) to lead this movement forward in terms of national politics". In this context, it should be emphasized that the nationalist workers' committees - including Drexler's in Munich - initially did not develop any anti-Semitic agitation.

At the beginning of March 1918, the DAAP's call for founding was published. Gellert was named as chairman, Wilhelm Marohn, a toolmaker from Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg , as deputy chairman. Of the total of thirteen signatories, six were white-collar workers, two “yellow” officials, two self-employed, two blue-collar workers and a military disabled person. The call to found the DAAP appeared in most of the papers associated with the Fatherland Party and was also printed by the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , the semi-official mouthpiece of the Reich government . The employer , the organ of the CDI , pointed to the establishment of the DAAP and praised the "state-preserving [e] and business-friendly [e]" organization.

The call to be founded was followed by a program of demands comprising seventeen points, which the DAAP identifies as a "preliminary form of a fascist party" and which had the following wording:

“For the German victory! For compensation, land for settlement and security! For sufficient compensation for war invalids and war widows and orphans! Free air, light and space for our growing people! For the connection of the entire Baltic Germans in the east and the Low German Flemings in the west to the German Empire ! For the union of all Germanic peoples ! Against the brutal Anglo-American big capitalism! Against the peace of poverty! Away with this outdated Reichstag ! For a strong monarchy and strong armor! Against the democratic prolongers of the war, who seek to thwart any separate peace and also strive internally for war of all against all! For a free right to vote according to the principle: Free path for the able and hardworking! But: Against the political rape of the non-socialist workers by the Erzberger - Scheidemann - Dittmann block! Against the rule of the Jewish-democratic moneybag! For the protection of the German workforce against the wage pressure of needless foreigners! Against the socialist food system that brought us close to starvation, raised usury and smuggling! For free trade and the elimination of war societies! "

After the founding of the party, Kapp successfully advocated a leave of absence for Gellert and was also able to get Gellert released from military service. By the summer of 1918 at the latest, Gellert had been an employee of the DVLP's head office. During these months, the DAAP developed extensive agitation for a German “victory peace” and against the “Judged Reichstag”. So far, there are no reliable findings about the organizational scope, the working methods and the number of members of the DAAP. Apparently she used the nationalist workers' committees, which she supplied with propaganda materials - the election "lead committee" in Bremen or Drexler's foundation in Munich - as a kind of substructure. A complete amalgamation failed not least because several influential "economically peaceful" functionaries were uncomfortable with a "national" but nevertheless explicitly declared "workers' party". It has been proven that the DAAP tried to win individual members. The party even had the opportunity to circulate promotional materials among the front line troops. On the forms of the membership declarations, the interested party was expressly requested to provide information as to whether he was a “ German tribe ”.

At the beginning of August 1918, Schiele asked the Krupp director Alfred Hugenberg to provide financial support to the DAAP “in secret”. Schiele referred in particular to Gellert's intention to run for a necessary replacement in October in the Berlin 1 Reichstag constituency . In this election Gellert received - despite official support from the German Conservative Party - only 180 votes (3.8%). Dirk Stegmann points out that the DAAP temporarily suspended its anti-parliamentary and anti-Semitic agitation in October 1918 - parallel to the brief efforts of the DVLP leadership to organize "national defense" together with the parties of the Reichstag majority.

Unlike its parent party, the DAAP was not dissolved after the November Revolution, but "awoke to new activity". In February 1919 she had sufficient financial means to launch a regular newsletter and to maintain continuous leaflet propaganda. The anti-Semitic thrust was again strongly emphasized. The party chairman Gellert initially kept his position in Schiele's office. There he resigned - presumably in connection with the promotion of the preparations for a coup d'état by the Kapp district (see Kapp-Putsch ) - and took over the leadership of the DNVP parliamentary group office in the National Assembly and in the Reichstag . In this phase the sponsors (and probably Gellert himself) lost interest in the party. In 1920, the DAAP was just a disregarded, informal appendage of the DNVP, which in the first years of its existence tried with some success to tie nationalist workers directly to the party. On August 1, 1920, the DAAP became part of the Deutsches Ring , an amalgamation of smaller nationalistic and ethnic organizations.

After its dissolution, the DAAP fell into oblivion, was completely ignored historiographically and was only "rediscovered" in 1971 and 1972 in essays by Werner Jochmann and Dirk Stegmann. In his study, Stegmann particularly emphasizes the “remote control by conservative power elites” and interprets the DAAP essentially as one of the first attempts “by manipulating counter-movements (...) to preserve the old power structures and the political and social conflicts in the sense of the conservative ones To solve forces. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 411.
  2. ↑ See Heinz Hagenlücke: German Fatherland Party. National rights at the end of the Empire . Düsseldorf 1997, p. 349 and Stegmann: Repression und Manipulation , p. 396 f. and passim.
  3. ↑ Heinz Hagen gap: German Fatherland Party. National rights at the end of the Empire . Düsseldorf 1997, p. 344
  4. ↑ Quoted from Kurt Gossweiler : German workers and employees party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, p. 544.
  5. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archive for Social History , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351-432, here p. 392 and Kurt Gossweiler : German workers and employees party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, here p. 544.
  6. ↑ See Kurt Gossweiler : German Workers and Employees Party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, here p. 544.
  7. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 392.
  8. ↑ Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 394.
  9. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 397.
  10. ↑ Quoted from Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Jg. 12 (1972), pp. 351-432, here p. 397. See also Joachim Petzold : Die Demagogie des Hitlerfaschismus. The political function of Nazi ideology on the way to a fascist dictatorship , Berlin 1982, p. 59f.
  11. ↑ See Stegmann: Repression and Manipulation . P. 395.
  12. ↑ See Kurt Gossweiler : German Workers and Employees Party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, here p. 545.
  13. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 401.
  14. ↑ Quoted from Kurt Gossweiler : German workers and employees party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, here p. 545.
  15. ↑ Gossweiler: DAAP , p. 546. See also Hagenlücke: Vaterlandspartei , p. 349.
  16. ↑ The DAAP advocated plural voting rights .
  17. ↑ Quoted from Gossweiler: DAAP , p. 546.
  18. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 400.
  19. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archive for Social History , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351-432, here pp. 399f.
  20. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351-432, here pp. 398f.
  21. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 398.
  22. ↑ Heinz Hagen gap: German Fatherland Party. National rights at the end of the Empire . Düsseldorf 1997, p. 348.
  23. ↑ See Carl-Wilhelm Reibel: Handbook of the Reichstag elections 1890-1918. Alliances, results, candidates (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 15). Half volume 1, Droste, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-7700-5284-4 , p. 120. According to Heinz Hagenlücke: German Fatherland Party. National rights at the end of the Empire . Düsseldorf 1997, p. 348 there were 171 votes.
  24. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 401.
  25. ^ Kurt Gossweiler : German workers and employees party . In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 1, Leipzig 1983, pp. 544-547, here p. 545.
  26. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 410.
  27. ↑ See Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 411.
  28. ↑ See Werner Jochmann: The spread of anti-Semitism . In: Werner E. Mosse (Ed.): German Judaism in War and Revolution 1916–1923 . Tübingen 1971, pp. 409-510.
  29. ↑ Dirk Stegmann: Between Repression and Manipulation: Conservative Power Elites and Workers 'and Employees' Movement 1910–1918. A contribution to the history of the DAP / NSDAP . In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte , Vol. 12 (1972), pp. 351–432, here p. 352.