German Eastern Brand Association

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The Deutsche Ostmarkenverein was a nationalist German organization founded in Poznan in 1894 .

Goal and membership structure

The association was initially established as an association for the promotion of Germanness in the Eastern Marches in Posen in 1894 by Ferdinand von Hansemann , manor owner, Hermann Kennemann , state economist, and Heinrich von Tiedemann , manor owner from Seeheim and Major a. D., founded and renamed Deutscher Ostmarkenverein (DOV) in 1899 . From the point of view of Poland, the swear word "HKT = HaKaTa" or "Hakatist" for an enemy of the Poles was formed from the first letters of the founders .

Before the foundation of the association, 1700 German citizens of Poznan had undertaken a “pilgrimage” to Bismarck's residence in Varzin , under whose patronage the implementation of the association's goals should be placed. Bismarck gave an hour-long speech to them. In 1900, the organization called the Ostmark to build a Bismarck monument. It was supposed to be "a symbol of the Germanness in Posen, a symbolization of the watch on the Warta , which is incumbent on us Germans , a sign that the German Aar never gives up where it once caught its fangs".

The aim of the association was to promote the Germanization or "strengthening of Germanness" in the areas of Posen and West Prussia annexed by Prussia when Poland was partitioned . The aim was to find an answer to the growing proportion of the Polish population , to which the Prussian Settlement Commission, founded in 1886, tried to react. Among other things, numerous place names in the east of the German Empire were Germanized as part of this policy. “Germans to the front!” Was the motto in a 1907 election call by the association. "Opposite you stands the most dangerous, dogged and fanatical enemy of German nature, German honor and German reputation in the world: Poland."

In 1913 the DOV had 446 local groups with 50,230 members. What is striking is the high proportion of groups whose members can be seen as “multipliers”: teachers, professors, entrepreneurs and executives. This corresponds to the membership in the ideologically related Pan-German Association , whose founding goal was: "To stimulate patriotic consciousness in the homeland and to combat all directions contrary to national development."

Article 1 of the DOV statutes read:

"The aim of the association is to strengthen and gather Germanness in the Eastern Marches of the empire, interspersed with the Polish population, and to raise and strengthen German-national sentiments as well as by increasing and economically strengthening the German population."

The aim of “strengthening the German people” came down to fighting the Poles in the province of Posen , who, as Prussians, had belonged to the German Reich since the establishment of the Empire in 1871, just like the citizens of German origin. However, the association tried in vain to react to the eastward flight of German-born Prussians, as a result of which the citizens of Polish origin increased in demographics and gained influence through the Polish party , although the Prussian legislation under the influence of the "Ostmärker" promotes the strengthening of Germanness by favoring German settlement should.

Walkenhorst stated in 2007 that the Ostmarkenverein adhered closely to the requirements of the Prussian government, was also funded by it and thus found many supporters within the civil service in the eastern provinces. This self-commitment, however, led to "the fact that the 'Hakatists' were extremely reluctant to criticize official Poland policy and were far more willing to make programmatic compromises than the Pan-Germans, for example."

The association gained ideological support for the belief in the planned “Germanization” in the settlement archeology represented by Gustaf Kossinna , which postulated evidence of Germanic settlement in further Eastern European areas before the migration . "Ostmärker" could speak of the "vast East Elbe region between the Baltic Sea and the Sudeten as far as Russian Poland", which had the "undoubted claim to the honor of being the original home and cradle of the Germans who were only similar to themselves". The Polish side responded with corresponding counter-concepts in " Polish West Research ", namely by the West researcher Józef Kostrzewski, who had studied with Kossinna.

Since 1895 there has been a women's group in the association, which in 1896 named itself German women for the Ostmarken . The aim was to support the German population in nursing, raising children and in related areas. By 1914, 30 branch associations had formed, which numbered 3415 members.

During the First World War, the association's activities came to a standstill despite some publications by the press officer Ernst Hunkel . With the revolution of 1918/19 a large part of the members was lost. From 1920 to 1927 General Ernst von Wrisberg headed the association. Joachim Nehring was deputy chairman until 1933.

After 1919, when Germany had to cede large parts of these areas to the Second Polish Republic due to the Treaty of Versailles , the association pushed for a revision of the new eastern border. In 1926 he won Albert Brackmann as an important member, who, as a researcher on the East , endeavored to strengthen and expand German influence and to withdraw the Polish and Czechoslovak national states. While maintaining its goals, it was partially transferred with other East German associations under Franz Lüdtke to the Bund Deutscher Osten in 1933 . The rest of association which is a DC circuit resisted and no anti-Semitic background, had been forcibly disbanded 1934th

See also

literature

  • Adam Galos, Felix-Heinrich Gentzen , Witold Jakóbczyk: The Hakatists. The German Ostmarkenverein (1894–1934). A contribution to the history of the Ostpolitik of German imperialism (= series of publications of the Commission of Historians of the GDR and People's Poland). VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1966; DNB 456696431 .
  • Sabine Grabowski: German and Polish Nationalism. The German Ostmarken-Verein and the Polish Straż 1894–1914 (= materials and studies on East Central Europe research, Volume 3). Herder Institute , Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-87969-270-X ; also dissertation at the University of Düsseldorf , 1997.
  • Christoph Kienemann: The colonial view to the east. Eastern Europe in the Discourse of the German Empire from 1871 , Paderborn 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-78868-9 .
  • Jens Oldenburg: The German Ostmarkenverein 1894-1934. Logos, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-8325-0026-9 (also dissertation at the FU Berlin , 2000).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also Die Hakatisten . Also on this subject is Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon from 1906 .
  2. ^ Witold Molik, "The Watch on the Warta." The Bismarck Memorial in Posen (1903-1919) , p. 108 f. In: Rudolf Jaworski, Witold Molik (ed.): Monuments in Kiel and Posen, parallels and contrasts . Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2002, pp. 107–125. ISBN 978-3-933598-41-7 . - The monument stood until 1919, when the new city fathers of the city, which had become Polish after the war, decided to demolish all German monuments.
  3. ↑ [1] , cf. Thomas Maier, The onomastic weapon in Posen. German-Polish change of place names in Posen between 1815 and 1945 - e-book at http://www.grin.com/e-book/91435/die-onomastische-waffe-in-posen .
  4. ^ National hero on wheels Karl Friedrich Gründler, in: Die Zeit, June 27, 2004
  5. ^ A. Galos et al. (1966), p. 147.
  6. ^ Sabine Grabowski: German and Polish Nationalism. The German Ostmarken-Verein and the Polish Straz 1894–1914. Marburg 1998, p. 65
  7. ^ Hasso von Zitzewitz, The German image of Poland in history. Origin, Influences, Effects , Cologne 1992, p. 191 f., 196.
  8. ↑ Peter Walkenhorst, Nation - Volk - Rasse. Radical nationalism in the German Empire 1890–1914. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007 ISBN 978-3-525-35157-4 , p. 76
  9. ↑ Hans Merbach: The Slav Wars of the German People. A national house book . Dieterich, Leipzig 1914, p. 3. See also Patrick J. Geary, European Peoples in the Early Middle Ages, on Kossinna and the function of settlement archeology . On the legend of the development of nations , Fischer, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-596-60111-8 , p. 45 f.
  10. ↑ Peter Walkenhorst (2007), p. 137 f. - The important role women from the "Altreich" and "Ostmark" (Austria) played in the National Socialist settlement policy in occupied Poland is examined by Elizabeth Harvey: The East needs you! Women and National Socialist Germanization Policy. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 3-86854-218-3 review
  11. ^ Foot against the Prussian expropriation law of 1908, a work of the Hakatists, which was directed against Prussians of Polish descent