German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic
The German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic (DSAP) was established in 1919 after Czechoslovakia was founded .
Forerunners of the party
The forerunner of the party was the workers 'union founded in Asch , in the north-westernmost tip of Bohemia , as a section of the General German Workers ' Association, the first social democratic organization in the Austrian Empire. The Social Democratic Workers' Party deliberately appeared in Cisleithanien without the word "Austria" in its name, in order to find acceptance among non-Germans in Bohemia and Moravia.
Founding a party and acting
After the First World War and the collapse of the Austrian Empire, the Sudeten German Social Democratic MPs in the Provisional National Assembly unsuccessfully advocated a German-Austria including the predominantly German-speaking areas of the Sudetenland.
After the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the German labor movement in Czechoslovakia was constituted in Teplitz-Schönau in September 1919 as the “German Social Democratic Workers Party in the Czechoslovak Republic” (DSAP). Ludwig Czech , who worked as a lawyer in Brno , became chairman in 1920 . He succeeded the first party chairman Josef Seliger (1870–1920), who died just a few days after the second party congress (in October 1920 in Karlsbad) at the age of only 50.
From September 1, 1921, the daily newspaper Social Democrat appeared in Prague , with the subtitle Central Organ of the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic .
In the 1929 election, the Social Democrats were able to increase their share of the vote to 6.9 percent. They became the strongest German parliamentary group in the Prague House of Representatives and, with their chairman Ludwig Czech, took part in the government as a minister until 1938, i.e. during the beginning of the global economic crisis, which had an ever more dramatic effect on the industrial and craft-based Sudeten areas.
From 1929 to 1938, the chairman of the party, Ludwig Czech, was Minister for Social Welfare in the government of the first Czechoslovak Republic, later as Minister of Labor and finally as Minister of Health. The “Czechkarten”, food stamps for the unemployed who were not bound by a union, were often bitterly needed help for both Czech and Sudeten German working-class families during the economic crisis. Under Czech, the DSAP advocated an integrative course that provided for the constructive cooperation of the German minority in the young Czechoslovak Republic.
In the first Czechoslovak Republic, the DSAP was the most important German party. She tried to give the German population a place in the republic. However, it lost many Sudeten German supporters during the economic crisis. The Sudeten German Party (SdP) gained all the more popularity, and from 1937 onwards it openly connected the Sudetenland to the German Reich.
In March 1938, Wenzel Jaksch was elected as the successor to Czech as the new party chairman of the DSAP. When, after the Munich Agreement, German troops began to occupy the Sudetenland on October 1, 1938, only some of the democratic politicians were able to escape to the rest of Czechoslovakia. Immediately after the German troops marched into the Sudetenland, social democrats were persecuted, as were members of the Christian Social Party and, above all, Jews . From October to December 1938, 20,000 members of the Social Democratic Party were arrested; 2,500 Sudeten Germans were sent to the Dachau concentration camp alone . An estimated 30,000 people fled to western countries. On November 9, 1938, 40 days after the Munich Agreement, the Social Democrat , the daily newspaper of the DSAP, had to stop its publication.
The leader of the SdP, Konrad Henlein - member of the NSDAP from 1939 - became Gauleiter and Reich Governor there on April 15, 1939 when the Reichsgau Sudetenland was established .
On February 22nd, 1939, the board of the DSAP decided to suspend all activities on the territory of the Czechoslovak Republic and to continue working abroad under the name “Loyalty Community of Sudeten German Social Democrats”.
Today the Seliger congregation perceives the political and intellectual legacy of the former DSAP. It was founded on June 4, 1951 in Munich as the “community of Sudeten German Social Democrats” .
Election results
In the case of the mandates, the number of elected representatives is listed first. The number of parliamentary group members at the end of the electoral term is given in brackets. In the fourth electoral term, the change resulted from the fact that the representatives of the areas ceded to the Reich lost their seats.
| Election 1920 | Election 1925 | Election 1929 | Election 1935 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| be right | 689.201 | 411.040 | 506.750 | 299,942 |
| in % | 11.1 | 5.8 | 6.9 | 3.6 |
| Mandates House of Representatives | 31 (29 + 1 intern) | 17 (17) | 21 (21) | 11 (4) |
| Senate mandates | 16 (17) | 9 (9) | 11 (11) | 6 (2) |
people
Chairperson
- Josef Seliger (September 3, 1919 to October 18, 1920)
- Ludwig Czech (December 11, 1921 to March 28, 1938)
- Wenzel Jaksch (March 28, 1938 to November 9, 1938)
Club chairman House of Representatives
- Josef Seliger (1st electoral term (1920 to 1925) until October 18, 1920)
- Ludwig Czech (1st electoral term from October 18, 1920 to 3rd electoral term)
- Eugen de Witte (4th electoral term (1935 to 1939))
Club Chairman Senate
- Carl Heller (1st to 3rd electoral term)
- Theodor Hackenberg (4th electoral term)
literature
- Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest. Statistical-Biographical Handbook of the Parliamentarians of the German Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 1 . Copenhagen 1991, ISBN 87-983829-1-8 , pp. 252-255 .
- Martin K. Bachstein: Wenzel Jaksch and the Sudeten German Social Democracy (= publications of the Collegium Carolinum , Volume 29). Oldenbourg, Munich / Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-486-44081-0 (Dissertation University of Munich, Philosophical Faculty, 1971, 306 pages).
- Peter Glotz : The expulsion. Böhmen als Lehrstück (= Ullstein Taschenbuch , Volume 36720), Ullstein, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-548-36720-0 .
- Nancy Merriwether Wingfield: Minority Politics in a Multinational State: The German Social Democrats in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938. Boulder 1989. ISBN 0-88033-156-9 .
- Jaroslav Šebek: Německé politické strany v ČSR 1918-1938. In MAREK, Pavel a kol: Přehled politického stranictví na území českých zemí a Československa v letech 1861-1998. Rosice u Brna 2000, p. 266-278. ISBN 80-86200-25-6 .
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Entry Social Democrat in the journal database (ZDB).
