Georg von Schönerer

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Georg von Schönerer around 1890

Georg Heinrich Schönerer (born July 17, 1842 in Vienna , † August 14, 1921 at Rosenau Castle , Lower Austria ), from 1860 to 1888 and from 1917 to 1919 Georg Heinrich Ritter von Schönerer , was an Austrian squire and politician . From 1879 to the turn of the century, Schönerer was important as a leader, first of the German National and later of the Pan-German Association . He was a fierce opponent of political Catholicism , a radical anti-Semite and exerted a strong influence on the young Adolf Hitler , who saw him as one of his role models.

Life

Origin and family

Georg Schönerer was born the son of the railway entrepreneur Mathias Schönerer (1807-1881) and his wife Marie Anna Antonia Rehmanns (1819-1884), he had a sister, Alexandrine . After Mathias Schönerer was raised to hereditary knighthood by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1860 , his children were also able to use this title.

Georg von Schönerer ran agricultural studies in Tübingen from 1861 , attended the Agricultural Academy in Hohenheim from 1861–63 and the Agricultural Higher School in Hungarian-Altenburg from 1863–65 . Since 1869, Schönerer managed his father's estate in Rosenau near Zwettl , where he set up and ran a model farm. In April 1878, Schönerer married Philippine Edle von Gschmeidler (1848–1913), who, as it became known in 1887, was of Jewish origin. From this marriage son Georg and three daughters were born. Georg junior and his wife died of the Spanish flu on October 3, 1918 in Vienna , shortly before he was released from military service and took over his father's property.

Schöneer's "regular association" at that time was the Libertas Vienna fraternity and he became an honorary member of several fraternities : fraternity Germania Innsbruck (1893), fraternity Teutonia Vienna (1893) and fraternity Gothia Vienna (1919).

politics

Caricature about Schönerer and his supporters

In 1873 he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Reichsrat for the liberal German Progressive Party , resigned from this party in 1876 and had been the leader of the German National Movement (the Pan-Germans) in Austria since 1879 . 1878–83 he was also a member of the Lower Austrian state parliament .

He represented a völkisch-Germanic ideology that went hand in hand with a radical anti-Semitism , which he consistently justified "racially". In 1900 his Pan-German Movement demanded in the Viennese Parliament that a premium be offered for every “downcast” Jew. At that time, Schönerer proclaimed ethnic anti- Semitic slogans like through purity to unity - without Judah, without Rome / Germania cathedral is being built or religion is indifferent / in blood lies the mess . Schönerer was a fierce opponent of Habsburg-Austrian patriotism (“popular law breaks constitutional law”) and liberalism . He fought for the dissolution of the monarchy and the connection of its western parts to the German Empire . As an opponent of the state-supporting Catholic Church, he was a pioneer of the " Los-von-Rom-Movement ". He converted to Protestantism himself in 1900 and announced the abolition of the Christian calendar around 1887. He determined the year 113 BC as the new zero point for the calculation of time. In which the Cimbri and Teutons had defeated the Roman army in the battle of Noreia . In 1882, Schönerer played a key role in the German national " Linz Program ", which linked nationalist, social and anti-Semitic elements.

Schönerer is one of the founding members of the German School Association , founded in 1880, which wanted to support the German population in areas of Austria where they were only a minority with the building of schools and the purchase of goods. Since the school association allowed Jews to become members, Schönerer resigned his position on the supervisory board in protest in 1885 and resigned from the school association. Then Schönerer founded the anti-Semitic "School Association for Germans".

On March 8, 1888, he mourned the impending death of Wilhelm I in an inn, accompanied by a few followers . In a special edition of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt the death, which had not yet occurred, was already announced; a short time later there was another special edition, which reported that the emperor was still alive. Schönerer used this as an opportunity to attack the “Jewish newspaper”, with whose publisher Moritz Szeps he had long had a dispute. So with 28 like-minded people he penetrated the editorial office of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt , threatened and beat the editors. There was a complaint and an application for an arrest warrant against Schönerer. The public prosecutor demanded that the Reichsrat extradite Schöneer. The Reichsrat lifted Schöner's immunity. In court, the editorial staff said that Schönerer had shouted: “The day of vengeance has come!” However, he himself claimed that he only wanted to find out the actual facts. It was also alleged that Schönerer locked the door, threatened the employees with a stick, screamed and held two editors and hit them with fists. Schönerer countered the accusation that he had ventured into the nature of the press and then left the room. A large number of witnesses confirmed the journalists' version; Schönerer named 19 witnesses. The contradicting information and facts were recognized by the judge in his reasoning by not exhausting the full sentence of five years by far. On May 5, 1888, Schönerer was sentenced to four months' imprisonment and declared forfeited his mandate for five years and the title of nobility. The attack on the editorial team is now qualified as the first act of “right-wing terror”.

After this judgment he had to leave the leadership of the growing German national movement to others. A large part of his followers also went over to the Christian Social Luegers . 1897–1907, Schönerer belonged again to the Imperial Council as an outsider . Its political organs were the magazine German words founded in 1881 (since 1883 unadulterated German words ) and the newspapers Alldeutsches Tagblatt (founded in 1903) and Grazer Wochenblatt .

Schönerer once again achieved a certain leadership role within the German national camp between 1897 and 1901 due to the Badeni crisis . When the Austrian Prime Minister Kasimir von Badeni presented ordinances in parliament in 1897 that required knowledge of the German and Czech languages ​​for the future recruitment of civil servants in Bohemia and Moravia, Schönerer was able to take the lead in the protest movement against this measure. For many months the Austrian Reichsrat was unable to work due to a targeted policy of obstruction.

In 1901, 21 members of the Schönerer Group (or Pan-German Association) were elected to parliament. But within a short time there was an internal party dispute between Schönerer and his younger parliamentary group colleague Karl Hermann Wolf . The Pan-German Association disintegrated, Wolf and most of the former members of the Schönerer Group founded the German Radical Party . Schönerer did not achieve further electoral successes. In 1907 his party was reduced to three MPs, he himself failed with his candidacy, from then on he remained a political marginal figure.

Grave of Schönerer and his sister in Aumühle

He never commanded a mass movement. At the height of 1885, his monthly newspaper Unverfälsche Deutsche Zeiten did not even have a circulation of 1,700 copies. The number of members of his German national association in 1889 was just 1200 people.

In 1904 he resigned his honorary citizenship of Eger because the city council had invited Emperor Franz Josef, who had initiated the “Slavicization of German areas” for Schönerer.

In 1917 Schönerer received his title of nobility back through an amnesty from Emperor Charles I. At his request he, who honored Bismarck for his exemplary social policy ( statutory accident insurance , statutory health insurance , German social insurance ), was buried in 1922 near Bismarck's Gut Friedrichsruh in the Sachsenwald near Hamburg . Bismarck himself had rejected Schonerer's policy, however, because he was not interested in destabilizing Austria-Hungary, but wanted a strong ally. Schöneer's grave is in Aumühle . His gravestone bears the inscription "a fighter for all Germany".

Political symbolism

Schönerer developed a political symbolism, some of which can still be found in Austria today. As an ardent admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm I , he made the cornflower one of the party symbols. He also had songs like Die Wacht am Rhein sung and disdained Austrian patriotic songs. He also had flags in black-red-gold or black-white-red and decorated the portraits of Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm or Moltke with laurel wreaths on special occasions .

social commitment

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Membership certificate of the Floridsdorfer Turnverein for Schönerer in runic script. Transcription: “Through purity, to unity.” Dear Leader! The German national gymnastics club in Floridsdorf passed the resolution at its 31st general meeting to appoint you, dear sir, as an honorary member in view of your great services to the fair cause, which the club knows how to appreciate as a German national. Floridsdorf, in the ice moon [January] 2009 [1896 AD], the Turnrath [Turnrat].

The other side of the politician Schönerer is his social commitment, which he showed in his position as landlord. Especially in the early days of his political career, social issues played a certain role. In 1912, the Arbeiter-Zeitung still praised his standpoints on the social question, even if it rejected his political views.

In contrast to other landowners, Schönerer hired mostly married couples and contented himself with 2.5% interest on his goods. According to his sister, 60 people lived in Rosenauer Meierhof. He also owned numerous houses in which he housed his employees and their families. He campaigned in the Reichsrat for health insurance , old-age insurance , working time restrictions , Sunday and holiday rest and many other social achievements . Schönerer gave his employees who were unable to work because of age or illness, (retirement home) on his estate in the so-called "hospital" in the possibility Ausgedinge to remain until her death. His motto was: "I'll take care of my retired people!"

Schönerer helped out in the event of fire or livestock damage that threatened the existence of the company. In the poor house of the dual monarchy , the Lower Austrian Waldviertel , he supported or founded around 200 fire departments. Schönerer was personally committed to promoting the Raiffeisen loan funds and granted his people advances himself. Often he himself canceled the repayment of open wage advances when there was insufficient liquidity , thus enabling the tenants to work economically. Evidently, three deaf-mutes - rejected by all other landowners as unfit - found work in his gardening business, and two physically disabled hired themselves as donkey drivers for the milk cart. "They are hungry too," he used to say.

Schönerer also took a stand against the morning and afternoon classes in rural elementary schools, taking into account the long ways to school, and in the interests of agriculture he called for young people to be exempted from summer. He donated the basic capital for a soup establishment in Rosenau Castle so that the children with long walks to school in the icy winter of the Waldviertel could get soup from the landlord and thus a warm lounge. A similar soup establishment is also located in the Hamerling community of Kirchberg . He demanded of his estate managers : "Give the people what is right!"

Schönerer donated the Evangelical Church Zwettl-Niederösterreich , which was consecrated in 1904.

Influence on Hitler and National Socialism

In Austria-Hungary, the Germans (German-speaking residents) formed the minority in Schonerer's time. Three quarters of the population was made up of other peoples such as Hungarians, Czechs, Poles and Serbs and Croats. The fear of " foreign infiltration " led some German speakers to wish Austria should join the - homilingual - German Empire. Schönerer also represented this conviction, and more: Austria should only be inhabited by German-speaking people. Schönerer had his followers address him as “Führer” and greeted him with “Heil!” Shouts.

Schonerer's work was also evident in the establishment of the “New Richard Wagner Association” in order to “free German art from adulteration and Jewishness”. He uttered propaganda slogans such as "Man who has matured under cooler skies also has the duty to exterminate the parasitic races, just as one has to exterminate threatening poisonous snakes and wild predators" or slogans such as "Whether Jud, whether Christian is the same - that lies in the race Mess".

Schönerer demanded the removal of Jews from civil service, schools, universities, associations and newspapers. In 1888, the year he was serving his sentence, he submitted an "Anti-Semitic Petition":

"In the quarter we live in [...] a national transformation is gradually beginning to take place, in that not only Slavic but also Jewish infiltration is rampant, and even positions with an authoritative character have been repeatedly filled with Jews, which is most striking except for the circles of the gendarmerie extended into the Waldviertel [...] The German character of our part of the country could be threatened by Slavism, by Judaism the danger is even greater, because this oriental people is trying to denationalise our native people. "

- Friedrich Polleroß : The memory hurts too

At the secondary school in Linz, secondary school students at the time of Hitler, including himself, were enthusiastic about the theses of Schönerer, they greeted each other with “Heil!” Shouts and pinned cornflowers to their lapels.

On October 10, 1920, Hitler gave a meeting speech by the NSDAP in the Waldviertel , in the Gmünd cinema , against the Treaty of Versailles , against the so-called interest bondage and against the Weimar Republic . In the National Council election in 1930 , the NSDAP already achieved 10% in the Waldviertel. After the municipal council elections held at the end of 1932, National Socialist mayors ruled in Stein, Zwettl, Gmünd and Krems.

During the Nazi regime, some streets and squares were named after Schönerer. For example, Munich's Habsburgerplatz was called Schönererplatz until 1945. In 1942, the National Socialist Rudolf Lochner wrote about the nationally and socially minded role model:

“To deal with Schönerer means to pursue greater German history. Schönerer, one of the most passionate Germans who ever lived, is the greatest German political educator after Bismarck and before Adolf Hitler. "

- Rudolf Lochner : Georg von Schönerer, an educator on Greater Germany

The National Socialist writer Otto Henke also emphasized the reference:

"The ancestral home of the Führer was made by Georg Ritter von Schönerer the spiritual home of the bitter struggle against Judaism."

- Wolfgang Zdral : The Hitlers. The Führer’s unknown family.

After the Second World War , Schöneer's influence on Hitler was not forgotten. By Hannah Arendt Schönerer was called "spiritual father" of Hitler.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Franz Friedrich Masaidek : A protective and defensive writing from a German national. Kubasta & Voigt, Vienna 1887.
  • Twelve speeches by the Reich Councilor Georg Ritter von Schönerer . Ferdinand Berger, Horn 1886.
  • Five speeches by the Reich Councilor Georg Ritter von Schönerer . Ferdinand Berger, Horn 1891 ( archive.org [accessed October 24, 2019]).

literature

Web links

Commons : Georg von Schönerer  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in aeiou .
  2. ↑ The political and social decline of the former knight von Zwettl in the dissertation Matthäus Much, "Schliemann Niederösterreichs" and German national anti-Semite. by Frank Olaf Luckscheiter, 2012, p. 138, accessed on April 4, 2018.
  3. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3205773375 , p. 104.
  4. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 5: R – S. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , pp. 306-308.
  5. ^ R. Opitz: Fascism and Neofascism . Verlag Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-89144-209-2 , p. 33.
  6. ^ Karlheinz Weißmann: Black flags, rune signs. The development of the political symbolism of the German right between 1890 and 1945 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-0937-1 , p. 41.
  7. ↑ Herwig Eduard Pichl: Georg Schönerer and the development of Pan-Germanism in the Ostmark . Vienna 1913, Volume 2, p. 377.
  8. ^ Andrew G. Whiteside: Georg Ritter von Schönerer. Pan-Germany and its prophet . Styria, Graz / Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-222-11363-7 , pp. 120ff.
  9. ↑ 1888. Chronicle in LeMO , dated May 5, 1888.
  10. ↑ Michael Wladika: Hitler's generation of fathers. The origins of National Socialism in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3205773375 , p. 210.
  11. ↑ Erich Zöllner: History of Austria . Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1984, p. 427.
  12. ^ Peter GJ Pulzer: The emergence of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria from 1867 to 1914. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-36954-9 , p. 187.
  13. ^ Ernst Hoor: Austria 1918–1938. State without nation, republic without republicans. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1966, p. 36.
  14. ^ Eduard Pichl: Georg Schönerer . Oldenburg / Berlin 1938, Volume 1, p. 307.
  15. ^ Austrian National Library: ANNO, Arbeiter Zeitung, 1912-07-18, page 3. Accessed on May 12, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Austrian National Library: ANNO, Kremser Feuerwehr-Zeitung, 1890-05-01, page 3. Retrieved on May 13, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Austrian National Library: ANNO, Fire Brigade Signals, 1889-05-20, page 3. Retrieved on May 13, 2018 .
  18. ^ Austrian National Library: ANNO, Der Bote aus dem Waldviertel, 1894-05-01, page 3. Accessed on May 13, 2018 .
  19. ^ Austrian National Library: ANNO, Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung für Österreich, 1904-04-15, page 6. Retrieved on May 12, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Zdral: “The Hitlers. The unknown family of the Führer. ”Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, p. 64ff.
  21. ^ Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's Vienna . Munich 2002, p. 48.
  22. ↑ Friedrich Polleroß: The memory hurts too. Jewish life and anti-Semitism in the Waldviertel . Waidhofen 1996, p. 83.
  23. ↑ Friedrich Polleroß: The memory hurts too. Jewish life and anti-Semitism in the Waldviertel . Waidhofen 1996, p. 96.
  24. ↑ Map archive : Grieben, city map of Munich 1940 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landkartenarchiv.de
  25. ↑ Rudolf Lochner: Georg von Schönerer, an educator for Greater Germany . Bonn 1942, p. 3ff.
  26. ↑ Wolfgang Zdral: The Hitlers. The Führer’s unknown family. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, p. 64ff.
  27. ^ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism , New York 1973, p. 241.
personal data
SURNAME Schönerer, Georg von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönerer, Georg Heinrich Ritter von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian squire and politician, member of the state parliament
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1921
Place of death at Rosenau Castle , Lower Austria