Carpathian German Party

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The Carpathian German Party (KdP) was a political party in the First Czechoslovak Republic that was active among the Carpathian German minority in Slovakia and the Carpathian Ukraine . It was initially a bourgeois-centrist party, but since the beginning of the cooperation with the Sudeten German Party (SdP) in 1933 , it has developed under National Socialism .

history

Carpathian German national community

The KdP was founded in 1927 as the Karpatendeutsche Volksgemeinschaft (KDV), founded by men like Roland Steinacker (professor of theology from Bratislava ), the Sudeten German industrialist Karl Manouschek, Samuel Frühwirt, the Protestant pastor Carl Eugen Schmidt and the engineer Franz Karmasin . The KDV had its main focus in Bratislava and the surrounding area and gathered around it the German bourgeoisie and sympathizers of various political parties (such as the Federation of Farmers , the German National Party and the German Democratic Progressive Party). She also organized Sudeten Germans who lived in Slovakia.

Party formation

The KdP was founded in July 1928 as a political party in Nálepkovo / Wagendrüssel with a view to the elections. It was headed by Roland Steinacker until 1933.

The party had a Christian and anti-Marxist attitude and positioned itself loyally to the Czechoslovak state. A central concern of the founders of the KdP was to keep the Germans in Slovakia away from the parties dominated by the Hungarians. The new party hoped that the Spiš German Party would break politically . With regard to identity, the KdP took the standpoint of a “Carpathian German” identity in contrast to the “ Zipser German ” identity, which was traditionally associated with the Hungarian monarchy.

Election 1929

The KdP contested the parliamentary elections in 1929 as part of the German electoral coalition in alliance with the Federation of Farmers and the German Working and Economic Community. While the alliance won 16 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and nine seats in the Senate, no KdP candidates were elected. The alliance received 16,922 votes in the areas of the Carpathian Germans (Slovakia and Subcarpathian).

1933-1934

Desider Alexy became chairman of the KdP in 1933. With the National Socialist seizure of power in Germany, the KdP gradually moved closer to the Sudeten German Home Front (which later developed into the Sudeten German Party). In 1934, the KdP founded the weekly German Voices as a party organ.

Election 1935

In the parliamentary elections of 1935, the KdP ran together with the Sudeten German Party. The agreement between the two parties was reached on March 28, 1935. A KdP candidate was elected, Siegmund Keil won a Senate seat in the 11th electoral district of Nové Zámky. In addition, Karmasin was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a candidate from the 10th constituency of Jihlava. In the Czechoslovak National Assembly, the SdP and KdP formed joint parliamentary groups in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. In total, the KdP had received around 30,000 votes (compared to a total of around 150,000 Carpathian Germans). In fact, the KdP did not become as dominant in the Carpathian German community as the SdP in the Sudetenland.

Association with the SdP

In November 1935 the KdP merged with the SdP according to the Führer principle . The official name of the SdP became the Sudeten German and Carpathian German party . The KdP organization was redesigned after that of the SdP. Karmasin was named by SdP leader Konrad Henlein as a representative for the Carpathian region. The symbol of the KdP is based on that of the SdP, an elongated red sign with the letters KdP .

As the alliance with the Sudeten German Party was cemented, the KdP began to increase its influence among a younger generation of Germans in Slovakia. Many of the new supporters of the KdP had returned from German-speaking technical schools in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia or the German University in Prague. The KdP was able to build up a relatively strong presence in central Slovakia and play a role in the younger generation in Zips. The older generation of Zipser Germans and Communist sympathizers, however, remained skeptical of Karmasin and his party.

Alliance with Hungarian parties

Henlein visited Bratislava on April 27, 1936. During his visit, he appealed to the leaders of the Hungarian parties in Slovakia to form an alliance. Such an alliance, which was realized in the local elections of 1937, resulted in the United Hungarian Party severing its ties with the Spis German Party, which led to the defeat of that party in the 1937 elections.

Ban on party

The KdP and the SdP were banned by the Czechoslovak government during the Sudeten crisis in September 1938. On October 8, 1938, the German Party was founded as the successor organization to the KdP. Karmasin later became State Secretary for German Affairs, Sturmbannführer of the Waffen SS and, in March 1940, ethnic group leader of the Germans in Slovakia.

literature

Mads Ole Balling : From Reval to Bucharest - Statistical-Biographical Handbook of the Parliamentarians of the German Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945 , Volume 1, Copenhagen 1991, ISBN 978-87-983829-3-5 , pp. 277-278.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Krejcí, P. Machonin: Czechoslovakia, 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change . Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1998, ISBN 978-0-230-37721-9 , p. 16.
  2. ^ A b Giuseppe Motta: Less than Nations: Central-Eastern European Minorities after WWI, Volumes 1 and 2 . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4438-5859-5 , p. 218.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest: Introduction, systematics, sources and methods, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia . Documentation Verlag, 1991, ISBN 978-87-983829-3-5 , pp. 277-280, 397, 449.
  4. ^ Dusan Kovac: The Carpathian German Identity in the Field of Power of Central European Politics 1918-1845 . In: Marija Wakounig (Ed.): Nation, Nationalities and Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Festschrift for Arnold Suppan on his 65th birthday , Wolfgang Mueller, Michael Portmann, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 9783643502414 , pp. 249–62.
  5. ^ A b Karl Bosl: The first Czechoslovak Republic as a multinational party state: lectures d. Meetings d. Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee from 24.-27. November 1977 u. from 20.-23. April 1978 . Oldenbourg, 1979, ISBN 978-3-486-49181-4 , pp. 213-214.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia 1960, pp. 138-140.
  7. ^ Egbert K. Jahn: The Germans in Slovakia in the years 1918–1929: Contribution to the nationality problem . Oldenbourg, 1971, ISBN 978-3-486-43321-0 , p. 122.
  8. ^ A b Paul Brosz: The last century of the Carpathian Germans in Slovakia . Working Group of Carpathian Germans from Slovakia, 1992, pp. 72–73.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Marija Wakounig, Wolfgang Mueller, Michael Portmann: Nation, nationalities and nationalism in Eastern Europe: Festschrift for Arnold Suppan for his 65th birthday . LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50241-4 , pp. 257, 262.
  10. ^ A b c Jörg Meier: Contributions to the cultural history of the Germans in Slovakia . Weidler, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89693-462-8 , p. 45.
  11. ↑ a b Roland Schönfeld: Slovakia: from the Middle Ages to the present . F. Pustet, 2000, ISBN 978-3-7917-1723-4 , p. 136.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Österreichische Osthefte , 1–2. Edition, Volume 33, Österreichisches Ost- und Südosteuropa-Institut, 1991, pp. 278-279.
  13. ↑ Manuel Statistique de la Republique Tchecoslovaque . IV. 1932. Prague. Annuaire Statistique de la Republique Tchecoslovaque. Pp. 401-402.
  14. ^ German Foreign Policy . Institute for International Relations, 1963, p. 77.
  15. ↑ nation and state; German magazine for the European minority problem , Volume 16 1942, p. 149.
  16. ^ Ernst Hochberger, Anton Scherer, Friedrich Spiegel-Schmidt: The Germans between Carpathians and Carniola . Langen Müller, 1994, ISBN 978-3-7844-2478-1 , p. 36.
  17. ↑ Josef Spetko: Slovakia: Home of the Nations . Amalthea, 1991, ISBN 978-3-85002-306-1 , p. 91.
  18. ^ Ján Tibenský: Slovensko: Kultúra . Obzor, 1980, p. 597.
  19. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg: Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933–1939: The Road to World War II . Enigma Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-936274-84-0 , p. 177.
  20. ↑ Great Soviet Eccyclopedia 1980, p. 205.
  21. ↑ Raymond Edward Murphy, Francis Bowden Stevens, Howard Trivers, Joseph Morgan Roland: National socialism: basic principles, their application by the Nazi party's foreign organization, and the use of Germans abroad for Nazi aims . US Govt. Print. Off., 1943, p. 480.
  22. ↑ John Randolph Angolia, David Littlejohn, CM Dodkins: Edged weaponry of the Third Reich . RJ Bender, 1974, p. 84.
  23. ↑ Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest: Introduction, systematics, sources and methods, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia . Documentation Verlag, 1991, ISBN 978-87-983829-3-5 , pp. 283-284.
  24. ↑ Jefferson Adams: Karmasin, Franz (1901-1970) . In: Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence . Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 9780810863200 , p. 223.
  25. ↑ Tobias Weger: “Volkstumskampf” without end? Sudeten German Organizations, 1945–1955. Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57104-0 , p. 605.