Korneuburg Oath
The Korneuburg Oath or Korneuburg Vow is a declaration read out by the Heimwehr Federal Leader Richard Steidle on May 18, 1930 in Korneuburg , with which parts of the Austrian Heimwehr ( Austrian Homeland Security ) demanded a reorganization of the state, which already refers to Austrofascism .
History and content
The Korneuburg Oath was read out on the occasion of a general assembly of the Heimatschutzverband Niederösterreich , the Lower Austrian regional organization of the Austrian Home Guard movement. The main purpose of this meeting was to force Ing.Julius Raab , who was also the regional leader of the Lower Austrian Home Guard and a prominent member of the Christian Social Party , to decide whether to submit himself entirely to the Home Guard or to his party. In this way, a dispute about the direction that had been simmering for a long time within the Heimatschutzverband Niederösterreich should be settled.
Long before the meeting, Steidle had commissioned Spann's student Walter Heinrich to draft a design. At that time Heinrich was Secretary General of the federal leadership of the Heimwehr and, like Hans Riehl , another Spann student and head of the propaganda unit of the federal leadership of the Heimwehr, tried to influence the Heimwehr in the spirit of Spann's universalism. During a commotion among the delegates present, Steidle made himself heard by a horn signal, gave a short speech, then pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and read the sentences that were soon referred to as the Korneuburg Vow or Korneuburg Oath . In it, the fight against democratic parliamentarism and the party state was declared :
“We want to renew Austria from the ground up!
We want the people's state of homeland security.
We demand from every comrade the undaunted faith in the fatherland, the restless zeal of cooperation and the passionate love for the homeland.
We want to reach for power in the state and reorganize the state and the economy for the benefit of the entire people.
We have to forget our own advantage, have to subordinate all ties and demands of the parties to our struggle goal, because we want to serve the community of the German people!
We reject western democratic parliamentarism and the party state!
We want to replace it with self-government of the estates and a strong government, which is not made up of party representatives, but of the leaders of the great estates and the most capable and proven men of our popular movement.
We fight against the decomposition of our people through the Marxist class struggle and liberal-capitalist economic structuring.
We want to realize the self-administration of the economy on a professional basis. We will overcome the class struggle, establish social dignity and justice. We want to raise the prosperity of our people through a solid and non-profit economy.
The state is the embodiment of the people as a whole, its power and leadership ensures that the classes remain in line with the needs of the national community.
Every comrade feels and confesses that he is the bearer of the new German state sentiment, that he is ready to use good and blood, he knows three powers: faith in God, his own hard will and the word of his leaders. "
In view of the stormy applause of those present, Raab swore the oath on the spot in front of Steidle. The other delegates followed his example, including some other members of the Christian Social Party and those of the Greater German People's Party .
Evaluation and consequences
The Korneuburg Oath was also interpreted as a reaction - quasi "in the slipstream" of Mussolini's Italian fascism - by parts of the Heimwehr movement and the bourgeois camp sympathizing with it to the intensification of political differences between the social democratic and Christian social camps in Austria . These opposites found their visible expression after the Schattendorfer judgment in the so-called " July Revolt " of 1927.
Even the deliberately defensive formulation of the Linz program of social democracy , which spoke of the need to defend the republic against possible attempts at a fascist or monarchist counter-revolution, if necessary with violence, did not fail to have an effect on the anti-democratic rights that the - politically completely loyal, but aimed at the transition to a socialist social order in the forms of democracy - cannibalized propagandistically as a call for the " dictatorship of the proletariat ".
However, the Korneuburg Oath did not strengthen the Heimwehr movement overall . He met mostly with skepticism and rejection from the federal government, the parties, the press and even within the Heimwehr movement. Steidle's position within the Heimwehr movement was weakened and in September 1930 he had to resign as federal leader of the Heimwehr.
In the period that followed, the increasing polarization of the political camps culminated in the February battles of 1934, in Austrofascism and ultimately in the loss of Austria's sovereignty in March 1938.
When Julius Raab gained political importance in the Second Republic and finally became Federal Chancellor, political opponents recalled that Raab, then a member of the National Council, had sworn the Korneuburg Oath in 1930.
literature
- Walter Wiltschegg: The Home Guard. An irresistible popular movement? Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-7028-0221-5 ( studies and sources on contemporary Austrian history 7).
Individual evidence
- ^ Helmut Wohnout : Government dictatorship or state parliament? Legislation in authoritarian Austria . Böhlau, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-205-05547-0 , pp. 24-31.
- ↑ Martin Prieschl: The home guard . In: Troop service . 2010, accessed December 6, 2018 .