Franz Jesser

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Franz Jesser, ca.1925

Franz Jesser (born July 1, 1869 in Zwittau , Moravia ; † March 16, 1954 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Sudeten German publicist and German national politician in Austria-Hungary and Czechoslovakia . He was a member of the Reichsrat from 1907 to 1918 and a member of the Czechoslovak Senate from 1920 to 1933 .

Life

As the son of the businessman Franz Jesser and his wife Marie Koller, he attended elementary school in Zwittau, the lower grammar school in Mährisch Schönberg and the upper grammar school in Mährisch Trübau . From 1888 to 1892 he studied history, German literature, geography and art history at the German University of Prague , but remained without a degree. From 1892 to 1893 he did his military service as a one-year volunteer . He then served as a reserve officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army .

From 1898 Jesser was a hiking instructor in the Bund der Deutschen in Bohemia , headed its federal library and published the federal calendar. Since the beginning of his political activity he was close to the Pan-German movement of Georg Ritter von Schönerer . He also maintained close contacts with important representatives of the German Workers' Party founded in 1903 in the Bohemian countries (predecessor of the DNSAP ), v. a. with Hans Knirsch . Jesser introduced the previously rarely used term " Sudeten German " into the political discussion, which after 1918 quickly established itself as a collective term for the Germans of the Bohemian countries. After Brügel , Jesser first used this new term in an article in 1902.

In 1905 he became secretary of the German Agrarian Party in Bohemia, which he represented from 1907 to 1911 as a member of the electoral district of Bohemia 111 in the Reichsrat in Vienna ( 11th legislative period ). In 1911 he moved to the German People's Party , for which he was a member of the Reichsrat until the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 as a member of the constituency of Moravia 8 ( 12th legislative period ). In addition, from 1911 to 1918 he was curator of the Free People's Library in Zwittau , founded by Oswald Ottendorfer . From 1911 to 1919 he was the publisher of the German Social Rundschau (from 1913 under the title German-Austria. German Social Rundschau ) in Vienna. From 1913 he also gave the magazine Deutsche Arbeit with Hermann Ullmann . Monthly magazine for the intellectual life of Germans in Bohemia .

After the First World War he was a member of the Provisional National Assembly for German Austria in 1918/19 as a representative of the German National Party . During this time he was also the editor of the magazine Der Weg. Leaves for young German Austria . In the Treaty of Saint-Germain 1919/20, the predominantly German-populated areas of the Bohemian countries were assigned to the Czechoslovak Republic . Jesser was from 1920 to 1933 as a representative of the German minority and a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) senator in the Czechoslovak National Assembly in Prague. In 1928 the German University in Prague awarded him an honorary doctorate for Dr. Phil. H. c.

From 1919 to 1939 Jesser was a member of the library council, 1933–1945 honorary curator, from 1941 also head of the administrative business of the Ottendorf public library in Zwittau. After the annexation of the Sudetenland by the National Socialist German Reich as a result of the Munich Agreement in 1938, he joined the NSDAP .

After the Second World War, the Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia . Then Jesser worked for the Catholic Ackermann congregation in Munich. In the introduction to his memoirs published in 1983 by the Munich Sudeten German Archive , he was described as a “ Volkstumspolitiker ” and “one of the few political theorists of Sudeten Germanism”.

Publications

  • Organization and particularism in Austria. In: Österreichische Rundschau, 1917, p. 6.
  • Size, population and national conditions of the Schönhengstgau , 1919.
  • Catalog of the Ottendorferschen Volksbücherei in Zwittau .
  • Cultural geography of the German people .
  • National struggle and compromise in the heart of Europe. Memories of a Sudeten German politician , recorded by Arthur Herr, Nuremberg 1983.

literature

  • G. Kaben: Franz Jesser - an exemplary 'Sudeten German curriculum vitae'? Dissertation Munich (quoted in: Reports and Research 9, 2001).
  • Johann Wolfgang Brügel : Czechs and Germans, 1918–1938 . 1967.
  • Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it? Leipzig 1928.
  • Heribert Sturm (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the History of the Bohemian Lands, Volume II. Munich 1984.

Web links

Commons : Franz Jesser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zwittau (Svitavy), birth and baptismal register, page 196, 3rd line
  2. ↑ a b c d Jesser, Franz. In: Who is Who , Parliament of the Republic of Austria.
  3. ^ Johann Wolfgang Brügel: Czechs and Germans, 1918–1938. Volume 1. Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1967, p. 116.
  4. ↑ Biography of Dr. hc Franz Jesser. In: Wer ist Wer , Parliament of the Republic of Austria.
personal data
SURNAME Jesser, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudeten German publicist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwittau , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1954
Place of death Frankfurt am Main