Cartel of the creative classes

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The cartel of the creative classes was an alliance of representatives of agriculture , industry and the old middle class founded in 1913 to defend against social democracy and other social forces.

history

Concerned by the success of the SPD in the Reichstag election of 1912 , the Reichsdeutsche Mittelstandsverband (Reichsdeutsche Mittelstandsverband) wrote to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg with the aim of curbing the “rising red tide” and, together with an important industrial association, an interest group of all “independent productive classes” “Want to bring together. The cartel of the creative classes was founded in August 1913 as part of an association meeting of the Reichsdeutscher Mittelstandsverband. It was immediately ridiculed by the critics as the “cartel of the rascal hands”.

The alliance included the Reichsdeutsche Mittelstandsverband, the Federation of Farmers , the Central Association of German Industrialists and the Association of Christian Farmers' Associations . The aim was to maintain authority in all business operations. In addition, there was the demand for the protection of national labor, the safeguarding of reasonable prices, the protection of those willing to work and the fight against social democracy and its "false doctrines."

With the cartel, the initiators tried to defend the social status quo, as they did during collection policy . However, the cartel was not very effective. Only a few letters of intent were published. Otherwise the differences in interests were too great. Parts of the CDI had resisted cooperation with the agrarians. A commitment to anti-Semitism, as demanded by Theodor Fritsch as a representative of the Reichsdeutscher Mittelstandsverband, was not enforceable among the industrial representatives.

Nevertheless, the cartel underlined the will of agriculture, heavy industry and the conservative part of the commercial middle class to prevent all efforts to liberalize society and democratize the state. Ultimately, the interests of the member associations were too different for what some wished an anti-Semitic and anti-socialist power bloc would have emerged.

literature

  • Heinrich August Winkler: The long way to the west. German history from the end of the Old Reich to the fall of the Weimar Republic . Munich, 2002 ISBN 3-406-46001-1 , p. 323.
  • Werner Jochmann : Structure and function of German anti-Semitism. In: Jews in Wilhelmine Germany . Tübingen, 1998. ISBN 3-16-147074-5 , p. 471.