German National Socialist Workers' Party (Austria)

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The German National Socialist Workers' Party ( DNSAP ) was a radical nationalist , anti-capitalist , anti-communist and anti-Semitic party in German Austria and the First Republic .

It was created in May 1918 by renaming from the German Workers' Party (DAP), which was active in Austria-Hungary both in the Austrian heartland and among the German minority in the Bohemian , Moravian and Silesian countries. As a result of the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1919, it split into an Austrian, a Czechoslovak and a Polish branch. These regarded themselves as “sister parties”, but were organizationally independent. In mid-1923 the party had 34,000 members.

From 1920 there was also a cooperation with the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic. The Austrian DNSAP soon disappeared into insignificance and split into several splinter groups, with the relationship to the German NSDAP and its leader Adolf Hitler in particular being contentious.

history

founding

The DAP, founded in 1903, was rooted primarily among German-speaking workers in Bohemia and Moravia and was connected to the national trade union movement. As early as 1913 she had adopted a radically völkisch and anti-Semitic, but also anti-capitalist, anti-communist and welfare state program and discussed the part of the name 'National Socialist'. During the First World War it had become even more radical. The renewed programmatic orientation towards "National Socialism" should also be expressed in the party name. At a party rally in Vienna on May 4 and 5, 1918, it was therefore decided to rename it to the German National Socialist Workers' Party .

For this purpose, a new program, mainly written by the Moravian engineer Rudolf Jung , was announced, which called for the energetic protection of German abroad and the legal introduction of the German state language as new demands. The old DAP's antagonism towards the Czech workers and foreign workers in general, as well as financial capital, Jews and Marxism, continued. For the first time, however, democratic pluralism was also rejected.

After the collapse of the Danube Monarchy in October / November 1918, the DNSAP did not join Austria as a federal state to the German Empire and was expressly forbidden by the Treaty of Saint-Germain .

When the Sudeten German territories were separated from the Austrian state, the DNSAP felt compelled to conclude electoral alliances with the German nationals in Austria , even though it had rejected such attempts at unification and “common lists” in November 1918. At the same time the "Reichsparteileitung" was moved to the office of the Viennese lawyer Walter Riehl on Stephansplatz in Vienna . There, at a party leadership meeting on December 29, 1918, Hans Knirsch was confirmed as First Reich Party Chairman, Walter Riehl was elected second and Ferdinand Burschofsky was elected Third. In addition, a women's organization, the "National Socialist Women's Association", was founded, headed by Riehl's wife Elly. Women were relatively heavily involved in the DNSAP, at least in comparison to the later NSDAP in Germany. The party's leading programmer, Rudolf Jung, had been expelled from the now Czechoslovakian Bohemia and moved to Salzburg.

Elections and Cooperations

In the elections for the Constituent National Assembly on February 16, 1919, the DNSAP received only 23,431 votes and could not have a representative. In Salzburg alone, the party performed relatively well. In the state election of April 6, 1919 , a result was even achieved in Salzburg that made it possible to send two members to the Salzburg state parliament . The creation of an "intergovernmental chancellery" to coordinate the work of the National Socialists in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany was initially postponed. On December 8, 1919, a "State Party Congress" of the DNSAP took place in Austria. There the most important principle was decided to “combine the entire German settlement area in Europe to form the social German empire”. Riehl was unanimously elected chairman for Austria.

From 1920 the swastika was added to the party symbol, which had previously only consisted of hammer and oak leaves, and contact was made with the sister party DAP in Munich, which soon thereafter renamed itself the NSDAP . In August 1920, the Austrian and Czechoslovak DNSAPs and the German NSDAP held an "intergovernmental conference" in Salzburg. Subsequently, Riehl headed an "intergovernmental law firm" in Vienna and temporarily called himself "Leader of the National Socialist Movement Greater Germany". Between 1920 and 1922 Adolf Hitler also came to Austria again and again for party events and gave speeches at conferences and lectures. The Austrian DNSAP initially endeavored to act within the framework of the parliamentary system and to cooperate with other parties and to reach compromises. For example, for the state elections in Salzburg in 1922, it concluded an anti-Semitic alliance with the Christian Social and Freedom Farmer's Association under the name Christian National Electoral Community , which also won the election, which gave the DNSAP a mandate as agreed.

Crisis and divisions

In contrast to Hitler, who at the time relied on extra-parliamentary struggle and revolutionary tactics, the functionaries of the Austrian DNSAP felt somewhat committed to democratic rules of the game. At the transnational party convention of the German, Austrian and Sudeten German National Socialists in August 1923 in Salzburg, the dispute over the direction escalated. While Riehl sought an electoral alliance with the Greater German People's Party (GDVP) in the upcoming National Council election in October 1923 , and thus a continuation of the parliamentary path, Hitler planned a violent seizure of power based on the model of Mussolini's march on Rome . Since the delegates could not come to a decision on this issue, they set up a "Führer Committee" headed by Hitler and Hermann Esser as another representative from the German Reich, Riehl and Karl Schulz for Austria and Rudolf Jung for the Germans in Czechoslovakia belonged to. In addition to the Riehl and Schulz wings, the third direction was the predominantly young, fanatical Hitler supporters who wanted to transfer the fascist structures and revolutionary “Munich methods” of the NSDAP to Austria. The Schulz and Hitler tendencies prevailed, advocating abstention in the 1923 National Council election.

Riehl resigned from the party leadership at the end of 1923 after rejecting the failed Hitler putsch in Munich. His successor was the telegraph officer Karl Schulz, who had fled from Moravia and belonged to the union-affiliated “left” wing of the party. During Hitler's imprisonment and the illegality of the NSDAP, the Austrian National Socialists supported the German sister party by delivering money and printed matter to Munich. In 1924 the party split for the first time: Riehl was excluded because of “behavior that was harmful to the party” and founded the “German Social Association” with his supporters, which was to remain completely meaningless. The remaining rump party was called "Schulzgruppe" after its chairman. From then on, both groups feuded.

Finally, on May 4, 1926, there was another split. The Viennese high school teacher Richard Suchewirth founded the National Socialist German Workers' Association , from which the Austrian NSDAP emerged shortly afterwards, which was entirely geared towards the German NSDAP . It bore the additional designation "Hitler Movement" and henceforth tied the radical Greater German sympathizers to itself. The two splinter groups of the DNSAP lost more and more of their importance. The Schulz group appeared in the National Council election in 1927 as part of the bourgeois unified list , in the National Council election in 1930 as part of the Schoberblock . In 1930 even Walter Riehl joined the Austrian NSDAP, but no longer made a political statement. The Schulz group disbanded in 1935.

See also

literature

  • Bernd Beutl: Caesuras and structures of National Socialism in the First Republic. In Wolfgang Duchkowitsch (Ed.): The Austrian Nazi Press 1918–1933. Inventory and documentation. Literas, Vienna 2001, pp. 20–47.
  • Gerhard Jagschitz : The National Socialist Party. In Emmerich Tálos, Herbert Dachs a. a. (Ed.): Handbook of the Austrian political system: First Republic 1918–1933. Manz, Vienna 1995, pp. 231–244.
  • Michael Wladika : Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2005, ISBN 3-205-77337-3 . (In particular chapter "3. The DNSAP", pp. 577–621.)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics. Political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 (=  series of publications by the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr. Wilfried Haslauer Library, Salzburg . Volume 12 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 , p. 665 .
  2. ↑ Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics. Political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 (=  series of publications by the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr. Wilfried Haslauer Library, Salzburg . Volume 12 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 , p. 775 .
  3. ^ Andrew G. Whiteside: National Socialism in Austria before 1918. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. 9 (1961), p. 349 ( Online (PDF; 1.3 MB)).
  4. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3205773373 , p. 582.
  5. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3205773373 , pp. 584-587.
  6. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3205773373 , p. 593.
  7. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3205773373 , pp. 593–597.
  8. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3205773373 , p. 617.
  9. ↑ Uta Jungcurt: Pan-German extremism in the Weimar Republic. Thinking and acting of an influential minority. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, p. 150.
  10. ^ A b Gerhard Jagschitz: The National Socialist Party. 1995, pp. 233-234.
  11. ↑ Richard Voithofer: " That's why you are freshly joining Germany ...". The Grossdeutsche Volkspartei in Salzburg 1920–1936. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2000, pp. 188–198.
  12. ↑ Bernd Beutl: Caesuras and structures of National Socialism in the First Republic. 2001, p. 27.
  13. ↑ a b 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. 71 f .
  14. ^ Stefan Karner : Styria in the Third Reich, 1938–1945. Leykam Verlag, Graz / Vienna 1986, p. 478.
  15. ↑ Bernd Beutl: Caesuras and structures of National Socialism in the First Republic. 2001, p. 28.
  16. ↑ aieou: http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.n/n122448.htm National Socialism