German Workers' Party (Austria-Hungary)
The German Workers 'Party (DAP) was a German national party in Austria-Hungary founded in 1903 , from which the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) in 1918 and, after the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, the Czechoslovak DNSAP , the Austrian DNSAP and a small splinter party in Polish Silesia emerged. A DAP was also founded in Bavaria in 1919 , but under the influence of A. Hitler it was renamed the NSDAP in 1920 .
history
prehistory
The German-speaking areas of Bohemia were heavily industrialized compared to the rest of Cisleithania . In the 1880s there was an increased influx of Czech-speaking workers from the central Bohemian regions who were willing to work for lower wages. In response to this wage pressure, on the one hand workers emigrated to the neighboring, highly industrialized Saxon areas, and on the other hand workers' protection associations were founded to ban Czech workers from working in German settlement areas. In 1893, the journeyman craftsman Franz Stein founded the Association of German Workers Germania , which was the nucleus for the spread of Georg von Schoenerer's all- German movement in the German-Bohemian workforce. In 1898, the typesetter Ferdinand Burschofsky and the bookbinder journeyman Ludwig Vogel founded the Association of German Aid and Workers 'Associations in Austria (also called the Mährisch-Trübauer Association ), which was to serve as the umbrella organization for the various German journeymen and workers' associations.
The social and national tensions also led to splits in social democracy . As early as 1893, the Czech Social Democrats decided to set up their own national organization . In 1897, an assembly of Czech national workers denied the internationalist- oriented social democracy the right to act as representatives of Czech workers and declared that they wanted to bring together “the entire Czech workforce into a huge, healthy whole”. In April 1898 the Czech National Social Party was officially founded.
Thanks to the Bund deutscher Arbeiter Germania , many workers were able to be won over in the 1901 Reichsrat election to elect the Pan-German Association, which achieved 21 seats, its best result in history. But shortly afterwards there was a crisis between the party founder and a group around Karl Hermann Wolf , who therefore split off as Freialldeutsche . The crisis also spread to the workers: while Stein stuck to Schönerer's direction, the Mährisch-Trübauer Association - supported by Wolf - pleaded for the formation of its own national workers' party. After the decision to found a party was made, the Mährisch-Trübauer Verband was dissolved in 1903.
Party history
On November 14, 1903, Ferdinand Burschofsky founded the first local group of the German Workers' Party in Aussig, Bohemia on the Elbe . Other founding members of the party were Hans Knirsch and Wilhelm Prediger.
The German Workers' Party was from the beginning, in contrast to the Czech national movement , like other groups in the kuk -Monarchie more self-determination and independence from the government in Vienna demanded. The representatives of the party saw their tasks increasingly in a combative and intolerant "national struggle".
At the first Nazi party rally in Trautenau on August 15, 1904, the Trautenauer program , written by Alois Ciller, was elevated to the official party program, which repeated many demands from the German national Linz program of 1882 . But it also contained democratic and social reform demands, such as the introduction of general and free suffrage, freedom of speech and press, extensive political self-administration, etc. It was sharply directed against reactionary , feudal , clerical and capitalist endeavors. In addition to safeguarding the interests of German-Austrians , especially in Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia, the aim was to improve the situation of the workers in society and to free them from economic, political and cultural oppression. The solution of the social and economic problems was seen in a combination of social and national demands in the sense of a national socialism .
As early as 1906, the party succeeded in entering the Moravian state parliament . In the Reichsrat election in 1907 , the party formed a coalition with the Freialldeutsche Wolfs. After the party's poor performance - it received only 3,500 votes in Bohemia - many of Wolf's functionaries felt that they were only being used for his goals and the party subsequently separated from him completely. In 1908 the young lawyer Walter Riehl , who was previously active in the social democracy, joined the DAP. The former Schoenerian Rudolf Jung also joined the party. In the period that followed, the two became important propagandists for “national socialism” and the “ national community ” it created. In the 1911 Reichsrat election , the proportion of votes was increased to 26,000 and the party moved into the Reichsrat with three representatives for the first time (Hans Knirsch, Adam Fahrner and Ferdinand Seidl ).
At the Iglauer Reichsparteitag in 1913, the delegates adopted a new party program, largely written by Rudolf Jung (the Iglauer Program ), in which they defined themselves as a “liberal, völkisch party”. It was clearly more aggressive in its nationalist and anti-Marxist thrust at the expense of the radical democratic and social demands of the first program. Still in the process of playing Semitism only a minor role, but he won over the next five years become increasingly important.
Wilhelm Prediger became the first chairman of the party. His successors were Otto Kroy and Ferdinand Ertl . After Ertl's voluntary resignation, Hans Knirsch was elected Reich Chairman of the party in 1912.
In 1918 Walter Riehl became deputy chairman and managing director of DAP.
On May 4 and 5, 1918, a few months before the end of the war, the last Reich Party Congress took place in Vienna, during which it was proposed that the name of the party be changed to the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP). In August 1918 this proposal was accepted and implemented at a party conference. At this conference, a new program, again mainly written by Rudolf Jung, was decided, in which the consolidation of the entire German settlement area in Europe into a democratic, social German Reich was demanded. Transportation, mineral resources, hydropower, insurance and advertising should be nationalized or socialized. The rule of the “Jewish banks over economic life” was to be eliminated and “national people's banks” were to take their place.
With the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, the DNSAP was also divided into three organizations: the Czechoslovak DNSAP, the Austrian DNSAP and a small Polish splinter group.
literature
- Ferdinand Burschofsky: Contributions to the history of the German national workers' movement in Austria . 2 vol. Hohenstadt 1913–1914.
- Alois Ciller: Forerunner of National Socialism . Verlag Ertl. Vienna 1932.
- Walter Ferber : The prehistory of the NSDAP in Austria. A contribution to the revision of history . Verlag Merk. Constance 1954.
- Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics: political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, pp. 656–665, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dirk Hänisch: The Austrian NSDAP voters: An empirical analysis of their political origin and their social profile (= Helmut Konrad [Hrsg.]: Böhlaus Zeitgeschichtliche Bibliothek . Volume 35 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1998, ISBN 3-205-98714-4 , p. 68 .
- ^ Gerhard Jagschitz : The putsch. The National Socialists in Austria in 1934 . Publishing house Styria. Graz Vienna Cologne 1976. ISBN 3-222-10884-6 .
- ^ Francis L. Carsten : Fascism in Austria. From Schönerer to Hitler . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7705-1408-4 , p. 31.
- ^ Austrian Academy of Sciences: Struggle of symbols - on the history of the NSDAP .
- ^ A b Francis L. Carsten: Fascism in Austria. From Schönerer to Hitler . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7705-1408-4 , p. 33 f.