German League for Human Rights

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The German League for Human Rights (DLfM) was a German human rights organization . It was founded in 1914, was banned in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945 and was politically active again from 1949 to 2019.

story

beginnings

The German League for Human Rights was founded on November 16, 1914 as the Bund Neues Vaterland . In the years that followed came contact and friendship with the French League for Human Rights , founded in 1898 . Based on the French model, the Bund Neues Vaterland changed its name to the "German League for Human Rights" in early 1922 and founded the " Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme " (FIDH) together with the French and like-minded people from some other European countries. based in Paris .

Leading members of the Deutsche Liga between the two world wars included Kurt R. Grossmann , Carl von Ossietzky , Albert Einstein , Kurt Tucholsky and Berthold Jacob , among others . In addition to their commitment to the rights of the individual citizen, Ossietzky and Einstein also advocated justice in international relations. To do this, they called for international legislation and international courts that all states would have to respect. These thoughts were gradually picked up by more and more people. This ultimately led to the founding of the world organizations of the “ World Federalists ” and the “ World Citizen Movement ” in 1948.

Third Reich

The League put up vigorous resistance to the rising National Socialists . In 1933 the National Socialist administration forced the league to dissolve. The club's own archive was destroyed. Some of the leading personalities fled abroad, some were imprisoned in concentration camps . An international campaign led to Ossietzky being awarded the 1936 Nobel Peace Prize retrospectively for 1935. Ossietzky died in the police hospital in 1938 as a result of the mistreatment he had suffered.

The work of the international association FIDH had to be suspended during the occupation of France by the German " Third Reich ", but could be continued after the end of the war.

In 1941, when the Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) was unable to work due to the war, a new international umbrella organization for the human rights movement, the International League for Human Rights (ILHR), was founded in New York.

In 1948, two members of the FIDH contributed to the formulation of the United Nations ' "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" .

After 1945

Members of the German League for Human Rights, which was dissolved by the National Socialists, shared the conviction that all Germans were guilty of the Second World War . They were in favor of educating the German population that human rights had been massively violated under the Nazi regime . In 1949, the members received official approval to continue their association activities. The seat was initially in Berlin . Various regional associations were founded in the 1950s, for example in Bavaria in 1955 and in Hamburg in 1957 . The International League for Human Rights (ILMR), founded in Berlin in 1959, is not identical to the DLfM.

In 1959, the then Deputy General Secretary Wolfram von Hanstein was exposed as a GDR spy and in 1960 he was sentenced to six years in prison for treason. On behalf of the MfS , von Hanstein had spied on the DLfM and other NGOs . This affair caused considerable unrest in the DLfM and damaged the club's reputation. The classification as communist infiltrated, as happened in some press organs, was unfounded. Rather, the Bavarian presidium member Friedrich Haugg used his influence to win members and sympathizers of the SPD as members of the DLfM. From 1960, the Bavarian State Association gained significant influence. In 1961 the DLfM moved its headquarters from Berlin to Munich. In the following years there were political disputes between the DLfM and the ILMR.

The political issues and areas of work dealt with by the DLfM primarily include conflicts with authorities and powerful institutions, including the state-enforced separation of children from their parents. After online research (July 2020), the DLfM (Munich) no longer exists.

literature

  • 50 years German League for Human Rights. 1921-1971. Published by the German League for Human Rights, Munich undated [1971].
  • Dieter Fricke : League of New Fatherland (BNV) 1914–1922 . In: Dieter Fricke et al. (Hg.): Encyclopedia of party history. The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . 4 vols., Cologne 1983–1986, here: vol. 1, ISBN 3-7609-0782-2 .
  • Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt : The struggle of the German League for Human Rights, formerly Bund Neues Vaterland, for world peace 1914-1927 . Berlin 1927.
  • Daniel Stahl: Resolutions of German international lawyers . In: Working group on human rights in the 20th century (ed.): Sources on the history of human rights . May 2015 ( geschichte-menschenrechte.de [accessed January 20, 2022]).

web links

itemizations

  1. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Resolutions of German international lawyers. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group on Human Rights in the 20th Century, May 2015, retrieved 11 January 2017 .