Franz-Josef Sunday

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Franz-Josef Sontag (often shortened to Franz Sontag , pseudonym Junius Alter ) (born April 23, 1883 in Warsleben , † December 1, 1961 in Bergisch-Neukirchen ) was a German journalist and political writer. In the German Empire and the Weimar Republic he was one of the most influential monarchist- oriented publicists. After the Second World War he helped found various national conservative parties.

Journalistic and political activity

Sontag grew up in Stendal , where he attended the humanistic grammar school. From 1903 to 1914 he worked for the Neue Preußische Zeitung and Die Post . Politically, Sontag was initially at home with the Free Conservatives , but soon converted to the German Conservative Party . He was permanently employed in the offices of both parties. In the summer of 1914 he took over the management of the Pan-German papers as the successor to Ernst Graf zu Reventlows . Until 1917 he was Heinrich Claß's private secretary and managing director of the Pan-German Association . During the First World War , Sontag was part of the opposition of Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , whose efforts to achieve a mutual peace agreement with the war opponents seemed too weak for several parties. From 1917 to 1918 Sontag was editor-in-chief of the Deutsche Zeitung . The sheet acquired by the Pan-German Association developed after the November Revolution under Sontag's successor Reinhold Wulle to become the organ of the Pan-German-Völkisch wing of the DNVP .

Since 1919 Sontag published the magazine Die Tradition , aimed at a more discerning audience , which offered a forum alongside old and young conservative as well as Pan-German and ethnic voices. In 1920 he took part in the Kapp Putsch . After its failure, Sontag temporarily played an important role in networking and reforming the radical right in 1920/21. He maintained close contacts with leading pan-German and conservative politicians and also acted as Erich Ludendorff's confidante in Berlin after he had moved to Munich . Within the DNVP, Sontag pleaded for close cooperation with the völkisch groups remaining outside the party, since after the Kapp Putsch he had come to the conviction that any attempt against the republic without a mass base outside of the bourgeois milieus of conservative and national liberal character would be doomed to failure was. The NSDAP came into Sunday's field of vision early on. On June 9, 1921, Adolf Hitler visited Sontag in his Berlin office. The next day, Sontag informed DNVP politician Kuno Graf von Westarp about this visit :

“Yesterday a Herr Hitler from Munich reported to me, the leader of the national-social workers' movement there. The man is inspired by an ardent nationalism, is a worker, an intelligent head, apparently of sparkling eloquence, a skilful tactician and harmless in his social program. I got him today Dr. Steiniger , who was of the opinion that one must try to exploit this force in terms of agitation in northern Germany. "

Sontag moved to Munich for a few months in 1921/22 and was then “enthusiastic about the political conditions there”. After his return he campaigned in Berlin for the re-establishment of a - as he wrote to Ludendorff on July 17, 1922 - "Freedom Party with a pronounced ethnic and social character". The German National Freedom Party , founded in December 1922, traditionally supported Sontag with journalism.

Since 1922, Sontag corresponded particularly intensively with Prince Oskar of Prussia , whom he tried several times as the leader of the "national camp" to bring into conversation. From 1925 Sontag worked for the Alfred Hugenbergs press group. In 1926 he joined the Stahlhelm and in 1927 became editor-in-chief of the weekly association body of the same name.

In 1930 Sontag published the book Nationalists , which was published several times up to 1932 , in which he presented “Germany's national leadership in the post-war period” in 13 portraits, including Hitler , alongside Claß, Ludendorff, Seldte and Hugenberg. He described the latter as a "great and genuine personality, (...) undoubtedly one of the greatest that we have in the political life of Germany." Sontag saw the "intrinsic importance and great task" of the NSDAP in an "ever broader crowd for to mobilize the national thought ":

"Only the future can of course show whether it will be granted to him [Hitler] to prepare the Cannae for Marxism that he has in mind, and through whose realms the only way to Germany's future will lead."

A few months after the handover of power to the NSDAP, Sontag expressed his appreciation of the party's “achievements”. In the following years, like many prominent conservative authors, he was only active as a journalist to a limited extent. From 1936 he lived in Bergisch-Neukirchen, where his wife, who was considered a "half-Jewish" according to the Nuremberg Laws , owned a glass factory. In the 1930s Sontag traveled to Doorn several times to meet with Wilhelm II and his sons .

In 1945 Sontag was appointed mayor of Bergisch-Neukirchen by British officers (resignation in September 1946). He initially joined the German Reconstruction Party and, after its merger with the German Conservative Party in the summer of 1946, was brief chairman of the DKP-DRP . After this had disintegrated, he joined the German party in 1950 and worked there until 1953 in the North Rhine-Westphalian state executive. Until the mid-50s, Sontag was also active in the Stahlhelm, which was re-established in 1951.

Sunday's estate, which also contains the manuscript of his unpublished memoirs, is in the Federal Archives .

Publications (selection)

  • The German Empire on the way to a historical episode. A study of Bethmann Hollweg's policy in sketches and outlines , 2nd edition Munich 1919.
  • Nationalists. Germany's national leadership in the post-war period , 2nd edition Leipzig 1930.
  • Never again war?! A look into Germany's future , Leipzig 1931.
  • (as ed.) An army leader experienced the world war. Personal notes of Colonel General von Eine , Leipzig 1938.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ See Striesow, Jan, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Völkisch-Radikalische 1918–1922, Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 261.
  2. ↑ See Thoss, Bruno, Der Ludendorff-Kreis 1919–1923. Munich as the center of the Central European counter-revolution between revolution and Hitler's putsch, Munich 1978, p. 241.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Retallack, James, Two representatives of Prussian conservatism as reflected in their correspondence: Die Heydebrand-Westarp-Korrespondenz, in: Jones, Larry Eugene, Pyta, Wolfram (eds.), “I am the last Prussian”. The political life of the conservative politician Kuno Graf von Westarp (1864–1945), Cologne 2006, pp. 33–60, p. 58.
  4. ^ Striesow, German National People's Party, p. 325.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Thoss, Ludendorff-Kreis, p. 242.
  6. ^ See Striesow, Deutschnationale Volkspartei, p. 416.
  7. ↑ See Hering, Rainer, Konstruierte Nation. The Pan-German Association 1890 to 1939, Hamburg 2003, p. 185.
  8. ^ Alter, Junius, Nationalisten. Germany's national leadership in the post-war period, 2nd edition Leipzig 1930, p. 139.
  9. ↑ Alter, Nationalisten, p. 138.
  10. ^ Alter, Nationalisten, p. 139.
  11. ↑ See Hering, Konstruierte Nation, p. 437.
personal data
SURNAME Sunday, Franz-Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Junius age
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conservative journalist and political writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsleben
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1961
Place of death Bergisch Neukirchen