German university ring

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The Deutsche Hochschulring ( DHR ) - also known locally as the Hochschulring Deutscher Art ( HDA ) - was an inter-corporate, ie cross -association, collection movement of “nationally” and “ völkisch ”-minded students in the Weimar Republic . In the first half of the 1920s, the DHR gained great influence in the local general student committees (AStA) and in their umbrella association, the German Student Union (DSt). He was significantly involved in numerous anti-republic and anti-Semitic actions at German universities during the 1920s (such as against Theodor Lessing in Hanover) and is considered a pioneer of National Socialist ideology in the student body. With the emergence of the NS student union , however, the DHR lost its importance.

development

The DHR emerged from a "Hochschulring-Movement" first at Prussian universities, then at universities in the rest of the Reich, which in turn had its starting point in 1919 in a Berlin "Hochschulring deutscher Kind" (HdA). The HdA, in turn, was a founding of the German Burschenschaft , the Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations (KVVDSt) and the Fichte University Community . The latter took up the enthusiasm of the Wandervogel movement for Johann Gottlieb Fichte , especially for his speeches to the German nation and the central role of the term "people" in them.

The DHR was founded on July 22nd, 1920 in Göttingen by 19 local university rings and groups. Some of these groups had already emerged as a direct reaction to the November Revolution in 1918/19 , for example the Student Union for the Promotion of the National Idea in Göttingen, the Union of Frontline Soldiers in Leipzig or the Fichte University Community in Berlin. The latter had already appeared there in June 1919. Some of its members were present when, on the day after the Weimar National Assembly adopted the Versailles Treaty, students and soldiers prevented the return of the French flags captured by German troops in the war of 1870/71 to France by taking them out of the Robbed the armory and burned it in front of the neighboring equestrian statue of Frederick the Great .

The DHR viewed itself as the “völkisch conscience” of the student body and wanted to be “a model of ethnic unity for all Germans”. In his program he committed himself to the “German nationality” and strived for the “German national community ” “from common ancestry, history and culture”. He rejected the "exaggerated parliamentarism" of the German Student Union (DSt). It was the only student association to be run according to the Führer principle , and "with the departure of the generation of students who participated in the war, the radicals completely determined the political direction" (Anselm Faust). After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922, in which Corps students were involved, HdA groups of the university ring were temporarily banned in some university locations (Breslau, Jena and in the occupied Rhineland ).

In 1923 the Munich HdA, whose chairman had “good connections to Hitler”, took an active part in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch together with the SA student company Rudolf Hess . The Deutsche Hochschul-Zeitung (DHZ) of the DHR appeared on November 10, 1923 with the swastika in the title and with an editorial by Ludendorff under the heading “The völkische movement”. After the failed coup, it published declarations of sympathy with the putschists, which were also taken over by the German fraternity and other associations. The editor of the DHZ, Paul Frank, visited Adolf Hitler in Landsberg custody on April 25, 1924, together with the Reichsführer of the German National Student Movement, Hans Lutz. On the anniversary of the putsch, a justification by Alfred Rosenberg appeared in the DHZ.

At many universities he enjoyed great popularity until the second half of the 1920s and won a large number of votes and in some cases absolute majorities in numerous AStA elections. In doing so, he benefited from the fact that he had been supported by almost all large corporation associations - which together comprised around two thirds of the organized students - since it was founded. A large part of the “patriotic and nationally minded” free student body was also involved in the local university rings. But the German fraternity played a “decisive role”. Only the Catholic associations either rejected the DHR from the start ( UV ) or withdrew from it after "wild failures of its members ... against the Catholic student associations" from 1923 ( KV , CV ).

Due to its dominant influence in the local student committees, the DHR had at times considerable weight in the German student body. He made a name for himself there primarily through his commitment to the so-called Aryan principle , which was supposed to exclude Jewish and foreign students from membership. The resulting “constitutional conflict” ultimately led to the dissolution of the student bodies in Prussia in 1927 , without the influence of the radicals being able to be contained.

In the second half of the 1920s, the DHR found itself in a persistent crisis, which was also reflected in falling election results. Local HdA groups stopped working. The DHR was now under the competitive pressure of the NSDStB, founded in 1926, "which overtook it in the 'völkisch camp'." The DHR now shifted increasingly to ideology and politics and to military training, carried out political training events and military training camps.

In 1929, the DHR took part in a student “national resistance bloc” in the referendum against the “Young Plan and War Guilt Lies”, which was supported by the DNVP , Stahlhelm , NSDAP and the German Nationalist Freedom Movement . The DHR wavered between DNVP and NSDAP. The desired formation of a "working group with the NSDStB" after the election success of the National Socialists in 1930 did not succeed after the German armed forces had succeeded in breaking into the striking connections when the German Armed Forces joined the National Socialist student organization.

The DHR was ultimately overtaken by the NS student union and dissolved voluntarily on July 15, 1933, because the German student body would continue its work "in its spirit of political soldier students" and with the National Socialist takeover of power it "has now fulfilled its political goals" looked.

literature

  • Gerhard Fließ / Jürgen John : Deutscher Hochschulring (DHR) . In: Lexicon of party history. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Edited by Dieter Fricke (inter alia), Vol. 2, Cologne 1984, pp. 116–127.
  • Ulrich Herbert : "Generation of Objectivity". The Volkish student movement in Germany in the early twenties. In: civilization and barbarism. Detlef Peukert in memory, ed. v. Frank Bajohr u. a., Hamburg 1991, pp. 115-144
  • Friedrich Schulze / Paul Ssymank : The German student body from the oldest times to the present , 4th edition Munich 1932, p. 481 ff.
  • Jürgen Schwarz: Students in the Weimar Republic. The German student body in the period from 1918 to 1923 and their position on politics , Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-428-02363-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Gerhard Fließ, Jürgen John : Deutscher Hochschulring (DHR) . In: Lexicon for the history of parties, Vol. 2, Cologne 1984, pp. 116–127.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Herbert: "Generation of Objectivity". The Volkish student movement in Germany in the early twenties. In: civilization and barbarism. Detlef Peukert in memory, ed. v. Frank Bajohr u. a., Hamburg 1991, pp. 115-144
  3. ^ All quotations from Anselm Faust: The National Socialist German Student Union. Students and National Socialism in the Weimerar Republic , vol. 1, Düsseldorf 1973, p. 127 f.
  4. ^ Michael H. Kater : Student Union and Right-Wing Radicalism in Germany 1918–1933. A socio-historical study on the educational crisis in the Weimar Republic , Hamburg 1975, p. 146.
  5. ^ Information from Michael H. Kater: Student Union and Right-Wing Radicalism in Germany 1918–1933 , p. 164.