Hermann Ahlwardt

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Hermann Ahlwardt (born December 21, 1846 Krien bei Anklam ; † April 16, 1914 in Leipzig ) was a member of the Reichstag and an anti-Semitic agitator . He also used the pseudonym Hermann Koniecki .

Hermann Ahlwardt in a caricature of the True Jacob 1892; “ Hepp-Hepp-Hepp ” can be read on the musical instrument Ahlwardts .
In 1891, the social democratic joke "Der Wahre Jacob" illustrated the slogan "Against Junkers and Jews" issued by Hermann Ahlwardt.

Life

Hermann Ahlwardt worked as a primary school teacher in Neuruppin and from 1869 in Berlin . In 1870/71 he took part in the Franco-German War . After the war he was first rector of a Berlin elementary school in 1881 , but later dismissed from school service for embezzling school fees. In the following years he devoted himself to anti-Semitic agitation and the uncovering of alleged corruption scandals. With lawsuits against the school authorities, Manché, Gerson von Bleichröder and the Loewe rifle factory, he caused quite a stir, even if the courts did not agree with him on the matter. Insults and slander in his writings The Desperate Struggle of the Aryan Peoples with Judaism (1890) and The Oath of a Jew (1891) earned him a four-month prison sentence.

"Jewish shotguns"

In 1892 Ahlwardt accused the rifle factory Ludwig Loewe & Co. of delivering faulty rifles 88 to the army in order to weaken Germany militarily in the sense of a Jewish-French conspiracy. When his accusations proved untenable, Ahlwardt was sentenced to five months' imprisonment for defamation, which he initially did not have to serve due to parliamentary immunity and later did not serve.

"Rector of all Germans"

In a by-election in 1892 Ahlwardt got into the Reichstag for the Brandenburg constituency of Arnswalde-Friedeberg and remained a member of the Reichstag until 1902. In 1893 he was re-elected with overwhelming majorities in Arnswalde and Neustettin . In the election campaigns, like the Hessian anti-Semite Otto Böckel , he had agitated “against Junkers and Jews”. His trials and scandal stories made Ahlwardt famous across the empire.

In the Reichstag he referred to the Jews as "predators" and " cholera bacilli ". He called for them to be treated as the British colonial administration used to do in India with the Thugs , a murderous sect, namely "exterminating" them. By claiming not to go as far as Austrian anti-Semites, who had demanded a “shot money” for the murder of Jews and who demanded that the perpetrator of a “killed” Jew be the heir, he also gave a public insight into his thoughts that went in the direction of murder and manslaughter.

Ahlwardt knew how to portray himself as a victim of a corrupt and “Jewish” judiciary. While the political establishment condemned him as an anti-Semitic traveling preacher, he won a loyal following, especially in Brandenburg and Pomerania , who honored him as the “Rector of all Germans”. Ahlwardt undertook numerous agitation trips in the 1890s, including a. to the USA , and marketed his person in songs, pictures, busts, coins and cigars. His opponents therefore accused him of “business anti-Semitism”.

Consequences of Ahlwardt's radical anti-Semitism

Ahlwardt's successes in the conservative strongholds of Brandenburg and Pomerania had an immediate impact on the course of the German Conservative Party . She gave herself an anti-Semitic program at the Tivoli party congress in 1892 in order to use the momentum of the anti-Jewish movement and not to lose even more constituencies to agitators like Böckel and Ahlwardt.

Political isolation and insignificance

The scandals surrounding Ahlwardt led even the anti-Semitic parties to distance themselves from him. His Bundschuh program , which mixed racial anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism , agrarian romanticism and middle-class ideology, was rejected by them. In 1895 he was expelled from the German Social Reform Party. Thereupon he founded the Anti-Semitic People's Party together with Otto Böckel , which however remained completely insignificant. In the Reichstag election of 1903, Ahlwardt was not re-elected and withdrew from politics. Nothing is known about his further career.

In 1914, Ahlwardt died in a traffic accident at the age of 67.

Works (selection)

  • The desperate struggle of the Aryan peoples with Judaism , 3 vols., 1890
    • Part 2: The oath of a Jew
    • 3rd part: Jewish tactics, at the same time an answer to Mr. Ludwig Jacobowski
  • The Manché and Bleichröder trials , 1892
  • The Jewish hunt and the German pack. A supplement to the Jewish shotguns , 1892
  • The great prophet. A word of warning and farewell to my anti-Semitic friends , 1892
  • The Jewish question. Lecture, 1892
  • Breeding otters , 1892
  • My arrest , 1892
  • How the Jew Does It, Lecture, 1892
  • The Trust of Germany , 1913
  • Truths about a German mine in Bohemia. Rudolfstadt ore mining union in Budweis. A modern reality novel with the usual side effects of suicide, insanity and despair , 1913
  • More light! The murder of Friedrich Schiller, Lessing and Mozart in front of the forum for modern literary and world history , 1914
  • More light! The Order of Jesus in its true form and in its relationship to Freemasonry and Judaism , 1919

Editorial activity

  • Bundschuh. Weekly paper for the German people , 1894

literature

  • (Anonymous): Ahlwardt and his Jewish rifles. Views of a German weapons officer , Berlin 1892.
  • Emil Dovifat:  Ahlwardt, Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 112 ( digitized version ).
  • Thomas Gondermann: The "Rector of All Germans". Hermann Ahlwardt and political anti-Semitism in the German Empire ; Hamburg 2000. (Master's thesis)
  • Thomas Gondermann: From political anti-Semitism to political anti-Americanism. The change in social demagogy in Hermann Ahlwardt ; in: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 17 (2008), pp. 195–216.
  • Christoph Jahr: Ahlwardt on trial. Reactions to the Antisemitic agitation of the 1890s in Germany ; in: LBIYB 48 (2003), pp. 67-85.
  • Uwe Mai: “As the Jew does it”. The enemy image of the anti-Semitic movement using the example of Hermann Ahlwardt's agitation ; in: Christoph Jahr, Uwe Mai, Kathrin Roller: Enemy Images in German History. Studies on the history of prejudice in the 19th and 20th centuries ; Berlin 1994; Pp. 55-80.
  • Christoph Jahr: Ahlwardt, Hermann , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, p. 6 ff.

Web links

notes

  1. ^ Shorthand minutes, 53rd meeting of March 6, 1895, print edition. P. 1296ff.
personal data
SURNAME Ahlwardt, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koniecki, Hermann (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, MdR and anti-Semitic agitator
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Krien
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1914
Place of death Leipzig