German reform party

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The German Reform Party ( DRP ) was an anti-Semitic party in the German Empire . It was founded by Otto Böckel on March 20, 1890 under the name of the Anti-Semitic People's Party ( AVP ) . Like the German Social Party, the party emerged from the German Anti-Semitic Association founded in Kassel in 1886 . In 1893 it was renamed the German Reform Party and elected Oswald Zimmermann as chairman.

In contrast to the more conservative German social anti-Semites around Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg , the “reformers” pursued an anti-conservative course and advocated social reforms in favor of the lower classes under the slogan “against Junkers and Jews”. The publicist Hellmut von Gerlach described the tensions between these groups : “One was a medium-sized enterprise, the other a worker friend, one aristocrat, the other a democrat. One called for a fight against Jews and Junkers, the other went through thick and thin with the great agrarians. The faction fell apart with every vote. "

The main focus of the party was in Hesse under Otto Böckel and in Saxony under Oswald Zimmermann. It was chosen mainly in rural areas by farmers and craftsmen. As early as 1887, Böckel was elected to the Reichstag as the first independent anti-Semite . In 1890 the AVP won four mandates (Böckel, Zimmermann, Pickenbach and Werner ).

In the Reichstag election in 1893 , the anti-Semitic parties won a total of 16 of the 397 seats, 11 of which went to the DRP. In 1894 the DRP merged with the German Socialists to form the German Social Reform Party (DSRP). The decline of the Böckel movement in Hesse weakened the DRP and strengthened the German social wing. In 1895 the particularly radical anti-Semites Otto Böckel and Hermann Ahlwardt were expelled from the party due to their anti-conservative attitude, whereupon they re-founded the Anti-Semitic People's Party. However, this remained meaningless. The "reformers" under Oswald Zimmermann initially remained in the DSRP until the party split again in 1900 into German socials and "reformers". Both wings united in 1914 in the Deutschvölkische Party, whose members formed the core of the German Volkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund , which was banned in 1922 .

literature

  • Werner Bergmann : Germany. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 1: Countries and Regions. KG Saur, Munich 2008, pp. 84–102, here pp. 91–93 .
  • Dieter Fricke : Anti-Semitic Parties 1879–1894. In: ders. (Ed.): The bourgeois parties in Germany. Handbook of the history of the bourgeois parties and other bourgeois interest organizations from Vormärz to 1945. Volume 1, Leipzig 1968, pp. 36–40. (and other articles in the mentioned work)
  • Dieter Fricke: The organization of the anti-Semitic German Social Reform Party 1894-1900. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 29 (1981), pp. 427-442.
  • Thomas Gräfe: German Reform Party. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 157–160.
  • Richard S. Levy : The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1975.
  • Peter GJ Pulzer: The emergence of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria 1867-1914. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, Part 3: Germany 1867–1900 , pp. 125–164 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hans-Ulrich Wehler : The German Empire 1871-1918. German history, ed. by Joachim Leuschner, Volume 9. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, p. 112 .
  2. Hellmut von Gerlach: From right to left. Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1937, p. 112.
  3. ^ David Peal: Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation in Kurhessen. The Rise of the Böckel Movement. Dissertation, Columbia University 1985.
  4. Matthias Piefel: anti-Semitism and racial movement in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1879 to 1914. V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2004. For another local focus, see the regional study by Stefan Ph. Wolf: Für Deutschtum, Thron und Altar. The German Social Reform Party in Baden (1890–1907). Wolf-Fachverlag, Karlsruhe 1995, and Dieter Neuer: From the everyday life of two members of the Baden parliament. Georg Philipp Pfisterer and Friedrich Mampel (German Reform Party). In: Journal for the History of the Upper Rhine 150 (2002), pp. 397-440.
  5. Christoph Nonn : Activism and Indifference. Anti-Semitism in Germany 1871–1945. In: Horst Lademacher et al. (Ed.): Rejection - Duldung - Recognition. Tolerance in the Netherlands and Germany. A historical and current comparison. Waxmann, Münster 2004, pp. 639–661, here p. 643 .