German Community (Germany)

The German Community (short name: DG ) was a right-wing extremist national - neutralist political party in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1965 .

Program

According to its statutes, the party advocated a free and strong democracy of its own. However, it made use of strong nationalist resentment and denied the Federal Republic its status as a state, with reference to its provisional character; Initially, the party aimed at the restoration of the German Empire , including the German eastern territories , whereby it offered the Soviet Union in particular strict neutrality while renouncing any remilitarization. The term “Nation Europe ” was rejected. The DG described itself as the "German freedom movement" and declared itself to be associated with the peoples of the world who were fighting for their freedom. The DG saw itself as a carrier of a "German socialism ". The organ of the party was the German Community with a circulation of around 7,500 copies.

history

prehistory

On 22./23. On January 1st, 1949, the German Union (DU) was founded in Braunschweig . The DU, which, without being a party, wanted to “mediate 'undoctrinally' across all borders of parties and ideologies”, saw itself as a supposedly non-partisan gathering movement of “all active, building-up democrats” to “prepare a democratic revolution” and as a “community of action the front generation ". The DU program was drawn up jointly by August Haußleiter and Gerhard Krüger . Together with Ferdinand Fried from “Tatkreis”, Haußleiter published the DU weekly magazine Die deutsche Demokratie (DW).

The spectrum of DU members ranged from the cousin of the Hitler assassin Hans-Christoph von Stauffenberg ( one of the three DU chairmen alongside Haußleiter and Rudolf Hess 's cousin Otto Hess ) to Social Democrats and Major General Remer , who had ended the attempted coup in 1944. The British secret service classified the DU as a “right-wing, nationalist organization” to which many journalists belonged and which was primarily a collection pool of former Hitler Youth members. The group around Haußleiter differed from the national conservative and neo-fascist groups within the DU not only in terms of their program; according to Stöss, he literally announced the fight to them. An incipient “armament propaganda” by the DU and a “concept of Europe directed against 'world Bolshevism'” were incompatible with Haussleiter.

From a foundation on September 18, 1949 in Frankfurt, initially intended as a platform for a social reform movement, at which Haußleiter and von Stauffenberg were present alongside representatives of displaced and injured groups, the German party finally emerged on Haußleiter's initiative Community (DG), whose policy he determined as a spokesman.

Political development

The DG was founded on December 4, 1949, and registered as a party on December 17, 1949. The seat of the party was Munich . Walter Becher , Renate Malluche , August Haußleiter and Paul Wilhelm were among the founders .

In the state elections in Württemberg-Baden in 1950 , an electoral alliance of DG and the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) achieved 14.7 percent of the vote and 16 seats.

For the state elections in Bavaria in 1950 , the DG also entered into an electoral alliance with the BHE and achieved 12.3%. Of the 26 mandates obtained in this way, the DG occupied 6. Until 1954, the DG was represented in the Bavarian state parliament with members. Strongholds existed in Franconia . In Rothenburg ob der Tauber , the DG achieved 13.0% in the local elections in 1952. In the 1960 elections, the DG even increased there to 19.6%. The reason for this was that the local DG city council had "made itself very popular with the population through factual and citizen-oriented local politics"; “His level of awareness seems to have been quite high due to the district assemblies he organized, at which he is said to have abstained from any demagoguery and to have linked grassroots work with general political concerns.” As a result, according to Stöss, “at this time there were first signs of the implementation of the Democracy concept of the party visible in practice. ”In Amberg , Josef Filbig , who had been mayor of the city for the NSDAP from 1933 to 1945, was re-elected as DG candidate with 64% of the votes in 1952 and had it until 1958.

In autumn 1951, the American High Commissioner's quarterly report on Germany reported that the DG was very similar to the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party (SRP). In view of the foreseeable ban on the SRP, Haußleiter initiated a meeting on October 4, 1952 with Karl-Heinz Priester as chairman of the German Social Movement (DSB) and SRP representative, as well as with Werner Boll from the German Reich Party (DRP), to discuss an SRP To create a catch basin. At the Augsburg DG party congress on 15./16. November 1952, Haussleiter adapted the DG's propaganda to the neo-fascist voter potential to be won.

In order to be able to take part in the local elections in NRW, the SRP leadership around Fritz Dorls favored the idea of running there as a DG. Dorls' attorney Rudolf Aschenauer , who in August 1952 was traded as the "successor" of the SRP chairman Dorls in an SRP successor organization, joined the DG as a member. Haussleiter agreed to this maneuver as well as the intention to gather the now former members of the SRP in a state association of the DG to be founded there in Lower Saxony. Aschenauer, a member of the Naumann circle , revealed the plans of the SRP leadership when he and Haußleiter presented themselves to the press at the beginning of October 1952 and both asked the previous SRP members to elect the DG.

As part of the prohibition of the neo-Nazi SRP by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1952, the DG district associations in Darmstadt, Kassel, Wiesbaden in Hesse , which were then dominated by former members of the SRP , the electoral lists of the DG in North Rhine-Westphalia and two district associations in Rhineland-Palatinate and the state association Lower Saxony banned as SRP successor organizations. In 1956, the regional association of Berlin (West) was still banned . The party drew the consequence from this that it would no longer work with other national parties.

On the one hand, Haußleiter gave the German community a specific appearance with its own flag (Geusen flag: red and white divided oak leaf on a black background) and its own party song ( Only freedom belongs to our life from Hans Baumann ) together with his speeches, which are always increasing in volume and gestures a special identity that at party congresses or other public appearances, in connection with marching music and the obligatory Deutschlandlied at the end of the event, was reminiscent of national parties of the twenties; on the other hand, he tried to give the party a modern national orientation ("new nationalism"). Based on a right-wing extremist view of the economic, political and cultural Americanization of West Germany, the DG adopted a "decidedly neutralist and anti-imperialist program" as early as 1954. a. demanded: "Condemnation of any form of national foreign rule, such as the oppression of national minorities, racial discrimination, colonialism, imperialism and the occupation regime ..." or "Revision of the border demarcation of 1945 in a peaceful way with definitive renunciation of any" land grab "over the natural historical and geographical settlement area of our people. "

Since 1961 “the new nationalism of the DG / AUD” moved away from “genuinely right-wing extremist and nationalist demands”. Haussleiter's tireless speaking activity was able to expand the membership base again, especially at the beginning of the 1960s, so that both the party newspaper he published was able to steadily increase its circulation (between 7,000 and 10,000 copies per week) and the state election results of the German community were at their lowest Improved level. At the same time the “new nationalism” was mixed with pacifist elements.

In 1963 the party had 2,500 members. At a party congress on September 28, 1963, the DG refused to cooperate with other parties and expressed confidence that it would be able to enter the Bundestag in the 1965 Bundestag election . However, the DG did not take part in this election. When a broader national-neutralist electoral alliance began to form in 1965 as a result of Hermann Schwann's efforts , Haußleiter and his DG participated as an alliance partner in the Association of Independent Germans (AUD) founded for the Bundestag election .

elections

Bundestag elections

• Bundestag election 1957 : 17,490 votes; 0.1%

The DG competed in 5 out of 10 federal states.

• Bundestag election 1961 : 27,308 votes; 0.1%

The DG competed in 7 out of 10 federal states.

State elections

• Baden-Württemberg

1952 : 89,459 votes; 3.3% (in Württemberg-Baden as DG-BHE, in Württemberg-Hohenzollern as DG, not started in Baden)

1956 : 11,747 votes; 0.4%

1960 : 5,326 votes; 0.2%

1964 : 10,322 votes; 0.3%

• Bavaria

1950 : 1,136,148 votes; 12.3%

The DG started together with the BHE under the name of the German Community Block of Displaced Persons and Disenfranchised (BHE-DG). Of the 26 seats achieved in this way, the DG occupied 6.

1954 : 54,522 votes; 0.6% (together with the German Farmers' Association as the Bavarian right-wing bloc )

1958 : 31,919 votes; 0.3%

1962 : 30,663 votes; 0.3%

• Hamburg

1957 : 485 votes; 0.0%

1961 : 784 votes; 0.1%

• Hesse

1958 : 1,093 votes; 0.0%

1962 : 1,433 votes; 0.1%

• Lower Saxony

1959 : 2,775 votes; 0.1%

1963 : 2,190 votes; 0.1%

• North Rhine-Westphalia

1958 : 220 votes; 0.0%

1962 : 4,917 votes; 0.1%

• Rhineland-Palatinate

1959 : 2,453 votes; 0.1%

1963 : 4,062 votes; 0.2%

• Schleswig-Holstein

1962 : 1,043 votes; 0.1%

• Württemberg-Baden

1950 : 212,431 votes; 14.7%

The DG started together with the BHE (DG-BHE), the electoral alliance achieved 16 seats.

The DG did not take part in the other federal states.

Source / literature

• Kurt Hirsch : Right from the Union. 1989, ISBN 3-926901-22-5 .
• Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. The German Community, action group of independent Germans in the party system of the Federal Republic. Opladen 1980, ISBN 3-531-11512-X , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-322-86400-0

Individual evidence

1. ^ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus ... 1980, S. 147.
2. ↑ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus ... 1980, p. 147 - "... only a defensive army in the sense of a border guard was planned."
3. ↑ cit. after: Stefanie Waske: Destroy after reading. The secret intelligence service of the CDU / CSU in the Cold War. P. 25.
4. ↑ Thomas Schlemmer: Awakening, Crisis and Renewal: The Christian Social Union 1945 to 1955. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998, p. 288.
5. ^ Henning Hansen: The Socialist Reich Party (SRP): Rise and Failure of a Right-Wing Extreme Party. Droste-Verlag, 2007, p. 40.
6. ^ Paul Sering (pseudonym for Richard Löwenthal): Three ways of German foreign policy. In: The month. Year 1, issue 8/9, 1948/49, p. 26.
7. ^ Siegward Lönnendonker: Free University of Berlin: founding a political university. Duncker & Humblot, 1988, p. 195.
8. ↑ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus… 1980, p. 73, annotation. 83
9. ↑ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus ... 1980, p. 74.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus ... 1980, p. 75.
11. ↑ State elections Württemberg-Baden 1950. In: wahl.tagesschau.de. Retrieved September 2, 2018 . 
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus ... 1980, p. 158.
13. ↑ Hans Erich Volkmann: Sources on domestic politics of the Adenauer era, 1949–1963: Constitution and consolidation of the Federal Republic. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, p. 118.
14. ↑ Oliver Sowinski: The German Reich Party 1950-1965: Organization and ideology of a right-wing radical party. Peter Lang Verlag, 1998, p. 130.
15. ↑ Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. 1980, p. 92.
16. ↑ When the ban comes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1952 ( online ).
17. ↑ Beate Baldow: Episode or Danger? - The Naumann affair. Dissertation, FU Berlin, November 2012, p. 176 ( PDF ; 2.17 MB).
18. ↑ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus… 1980, p. 95 f
19. ↑ Richard Stöss: Vom Nationalismus… 1980, p. 164 ff, especially p. 169 f.
20. ↑ Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. 1980, p. 235.
21. ↑ cit. after: Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. 1980, pp. 146, 147.
22. ↑ program quoted after: Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. 1980, p. 147.
23. ↑ Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. 1980, p. 206.
24. ↑ Historisches Lexikon Bayern on the Internet; Keyword: German community (see web links ) or z. B .: Deutsche Gemeinschaft (Zt.) No. 42/1963, p. 2 (The new nationalism) : "Crusaders of all kinds have been crying out for nuclear weapons since 1954 and the nationalists have become concrete pacifists."