Franconian Federation

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The Fränkische Bund eV is an organization founded in 1990 that is committed to the Franconian region . According to the current statutes, the association is committed to strengthening Franconian awareness in an EU region of Franconia, which includes the Franconian areas in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia.

The association appears mainly in Bavaria , but also wants to represent Franconian concerns in the corresponding regions of Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia . He sees himself as politically independent. The Franconian Confederation has been working closely with the roughly comparable association Henneberg-Itzgrund-Franken eV in the Free State of Thuringia since 2013. On October 26, 2019, this association decided to dissolve it and recommended that its members join the regional groups Werra-Henneberg and Itzgrund-Henneberg of the Franconian Confederation. The Franconian Federation has opened an office in Thuringia in Frankenblick, district of Sonneberg.

The Franconian Confederation is sometimes confused in the public perception with the Frankenbund , a scientific association for the research and communication of Franconian history and culture.

History, organization

The club was initially founded as the Franconian Landsmannschaft . As leading members of the political environment of the Republicans were (Waldemar Hirschfeldt, Michael Haller and more recently in the context of the Deutsches Kolleg active Uwe Meenen ), these and other members were expelled from the association.

In 1991 the name was changed to Fränkischer Bund . Politically independent members took over the leadership positions. Peter Purrucker became the new chairman. From 1999 to 2015 the federal government had five board members with equal rights. From 2011 to 2013 and from 2015 to 2016 the board also included the former SPD member of the state parliament, Wolfgang Hoderlein .

Membership in anti-constitutional parties, associations or organizations meanwhile leads to immediate exclusion from the federal government. The Franconian Confederation is also a member of the Alliance against Right-Wing Extremism in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region .

activities

Former "Franken-Lädla" of the Franconian Federation in the old town of Nuremberg

Frankentag and Franconian Day

From 1990 onwards, the association held a franc day every year and, according to its own statement, placed it in the tradition of the revolution of 1848/1849 (for criticism see below). After the Bavarian State Parliament decided an official day of the Franks in 2005 after several attempts by the Franconian Federation and other advocates , the original event no longer took place in 2006.

Popular initiative for the restructuring of the federal territory

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Franconian Federation carried out a collection of signatures in order to bring about a referendum to reorganize the federal territory in accordance with Article 29 of the Basic Law . The formation of a federal state of Franconia from parts of Bavaria, Thuringia and Baden-Württemberg was proposed . The association collected 8,016 signatures, 7,184 of which were recognized as valid by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The association had thus collected the signatures required to initiate the procedure. However, the Federal Ministry of the Interior rejected the request for a vote. A complaint by the association before the Federal Constitutional Court was unsuccessful. The justification for the decision was that the “delimitation” of the “reorganization area” from the surrounding area required by Art. 29 GG was not present. Commuters would commute to a considerable extent from the “Bavarian Lower Main” region to Hesse (in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main conurbation ). A visit to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 1999 was also unsuccessful. In 2012, the Franconian Federation changed its statutes in this regard. A federal state of Franconia should therefore only be created if there is a general reorganization of the federal territory or something similar.

Petition for the return of cultural assets to Franconia

In 1998, the Franconian Confederation submitted a petition to the Bavarian State Parliament for the “return of cultural goods to their Franconian places of origin” , which, however, was also unsuccessful. The Bavarian State Government u. a. on the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund, which was set up in the form of a law in 1923 by the Bavarian State Parliament as a foundation under public law and regulates the property dispute with the former royal house and the management of its cultural assets and collections, unless these are considered genuine property of the House of Bavaria. The Franconian Confederation contested the legality of the property rights of the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund and stated: "Public-law foundations can also be repealed or amended by law or ordinance, even a law that ensures the undiminished preservation of the foundation's assets, but that in part the foundation is not entitled to, but is to be regarded as looted property and must be returned to the original owners " .

We in Franconia

Wir in Franken is the association magazine of the Franconian Federation, which is also distributed to non-members.

Franconian medal

Franconian medal. Award given by the Franconian Confederation

The Franconian Confederation has been awarding the Franconian Medal since 2008 to people who have made a name for themselves in various areas. In 2015, this was awarded for the first time to a Franconian outside the Free State of Bavaria with the recognition of the Sonneberg District Administrator Christine Zitzmann (independent).

These previous winners were:

  • 2008 Wolfgang Hoderlein Former member of the state parliament and state chairman of the SPD in Bavaria. "Wolfgang Hoderlein made a lasting contribution to the interests of Franconia across party lines."
  • 2009 Christine Stahl At that time member of the state parliament for Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen in the Free State of Bavaria and vice-president of the state parliament "The passionate Franconian clearly recognized and analyzed the necessary course for a healthy regional development."
  • 2010 Herbert Bauer Founder of the regional initiative "Echt-Franken", which markets regional Franconian dairy products in a design with the red and white Franconian rake.
  • 2011 Wolfgang Heyder Manager of Brose Baskets Bamberg "With the successful basketball team he managed to create a high profile for the Franconian region throughout Germany."
  • 2015 Christine Zitzmann Former district administrator (until 2018) of the Sonneberg district in the Free State of Thuringia. "It stands for the fact that Franconia does not end at the borders of the Free State of Bavaria. It has recognized the historical-cultural character of the district of Sonneberg as a Franconian region and has always publicly affirmed it."
  • 2018 Helmut Haberkamm Franconian writer, initiator of the Franconian dialect festival "Edzerdla"

Cultural region of Franconia

Since 2015, the cooperation with the Henneberg-Itzgrund Franken association has resulted in activities on the topic and project 'Franconian cultural region'. Here the Franconian Bund u. a. since 2019 to distribute a logo. Another project is a website for the parish fair in Franconia. For the first transnational Day of Franconia in 2019, the association organized a first Franconian church consecration meeting. With these projects, the Franconian Confederation has set itself the task of increasing awareness of the transnational region of Franconia and of offering itself as a networking service provider for the region's cultural workers in the future.

Positions

The association justifies its demand for Franconian autonomy, among other things, with a thesis based on the work of Leopold Kohr that the state of Bavaria (with more inhabitants than the federally structured Austria) is too large a centralized state beyond the "optimal size".

Criticism and controversy

The activities of the Franconian Federation are not without controversy in the region, as in Bavaria. In the publications of the Franconian Confederation, critics criticize a tendency to simplify complex issues in a catchphrase and a sometimes pseudo-historical way of reasoning. The appeal to Leopold Kohr is also sometimes criticized.

The association was also criticized for an article published on its homepage in which the Bavarian state government was accused of deliberately damaging its image by emphasizing Nuremberg's role in the Third Reich, while similar remembrance work was not undertaken in Munich for image reasons. In this context, the association also denied the fact that the NSDAP was more popular in the Protestant regions of Franconia.

In an anthology on the history of Franconia , Hartmut Heller from the Frankenbund explains that the term Franconian Day reminds us of Julius Streicher 's events of the same name during the Nazi era on the Hesselberg , whereas a tradition of older Franconian days with the exception of Franconian Day in 1849 in Nuremberg at the end of the Revolution of 1848/1849 would not exist. This was not a rally with a Franconian-regional or even separatist reference, but a demonstration for the recognition of the all-German Paulskirche constitution by the Kingdom of Bavaria.

In the form of a research hypothesis, the Erlangen historian Werner K. Blessing generally questioned the historical references to the Frankentag and a "historically grown franc" as a territorial state reference before 1806 - as postulated by the Franconian Confederation. The Franconian Confederation criticizes the fact that the (Upper) Bavarian or Old Bavarian side deliberately and deliberately downplayed the meaning or the existence of a common Franconian identity with very questionable individual examples or tried to negate them.

The Franconian Federation itself complains of negative reporting by a Nuremberg journalist, whom the association accuses of being adaptive, and publicly spoke out against his award with the Franconian cube .

recognition

On the occasion of its 15th anniversary, the work of the association was recognized by members of all parties represented in the Bavarian state parliament and by the former mayor of Nuremberg, Peter Schönlein .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "We want to make the state", Tempo , March 1992.
  2. ↑ BVerfG, decision of June 24, 1997, Az .: 2 BvP 1/94
  3. ↑ http://www.fraenkischer-bund.de/franken-aktiv/frankenmedaille/ List of the people honored with the Franconian Medal
  4. ↑ http://www.kulturregion-franken.eu website for the cultural region of Franconia
  5. ↑ http://www.fraenkische-kirchweih.de/ Web project Fränkische Kirchweih
  6. ↑ https://www.fraenkische-kirchweih.de/habenfraenkisches-kirchweihtreffen/7-7-2019-neustadt-bei-coburg/ Summary of the 1st Franconian Kirchweihtreffen
  7. ↑ Dieter Weiß, Werner K. Blessing (Ed.): Franconia. Imagination and Reality in History (Franconia. Supplements to the “Yearbook for Franconian Regional Research”; Vol. 1). Degener, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 2003, ISBN 3-7686-9290-6 .
  8. ↑ Issue 3 + 4/2005 of the association newspaper "Wir in Franken"