Warrior club

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Stick nail from the Wohlde Warrior Association from 1908

A warrior association (as a technical term e.g. soldiers , veterans , comrades, reservists or combinations of these terms; as an organizational term also comradeship or union) is an association organized in the legal form of a club . It is dedicated to the care of war graves , the care of war survivors and war victims , the establishment and maintenance of war memorials and memorials as well as the care of reservists.

Basics

Warrior associations promote comradeship (e.g. between former soldiers, war participants and soldiers of the Bundeswehr ), the preservation of customs and the preservation of the memory of the fallen and missing soldiers.

The promotion of customs includes, among other things:

The association is committed to the reconciliation of peoples and the preservation of peace. The respective association purpose of a warrior association can be found in the respective association statutes .

history

Germany

War memorial for fallen of the army Ehrenbreitstein

War clubs were occasionally founded after the coalition wars. Since 1842, numerous so-called military funeral societies have been formed, especially in Prussia , after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV had given their establishment a legal basis and granted them special rights.

The battles of the March Revolution from 1848 , especially the Three Years' War in Schleswig-Holstein , gave further cause for the formation of warrior associations. However, it was only after the wars of 1864 , 1866, and 1870/71 that such efforts gained particular momentum in all parts of the German Empire. In the spring of 1873 the German Warrior League was formed , which was followed by the Reich Warrior Association in 1884 .

War clubs were originally founded for social reasons. At first they were largely neutral and politically independent. With the increased organization of the labor movement , the associations were increasingly built to combat social democracy . Since the 1880s, the government tried to expel all social democrats and trade union members from the clubs. After the Social Democrats were increasingly excluded, representatives of the party called on their members to voluntarily leave or not join the war clubs. The war clubs became an important instrument for combating social democracy in the German Reich. In particular for the 1907 Reichstag elections , the so-called "Hottentot elections", they were an important part of the Bülow Bloc's campaign strategy .

Disputes among the numerous warrior associations led to the splitting up and occasionally also to the demise of individual associations. At the beginning of the 20th century, all of the state warrior associations of the German Empire were represented in the Kyffhäuserbund of German state warrior associations founded in September 1900 , which united 27 state associations with 22,000 clubs. In October 1913, the Kyffhäuserbund had 2,837,944 members. For decades, research only assumed that membership consisted primarily of parts of the middle and lower classes, which, however, was partially refuted.

With the " Gleichschaltung" that began in 1934, all war clubs and similar organizations, with the exception of the NSKOV, were forcibly incorporated into the NS-Reichskriegerbund. With the Control Council Act No. 2 (dissolution and liquidation of the Nazi organizations) of October 10, 1945, among other things, the NS-Reichskriegerbund was “abolished and declared illegal”. All club life in this area came to a standstill. From the beginning of the 1950s, soldiers' associations became possible again. At first, associations of participants in the Second World War were very active, present in public and had nationwide umbrella organizations, but today the focus of local associations is on internal and regional club life.

Austria

In Austria , following the reorganization of the kk Landwehr that had begun in 1893 , the "veterans' associations" were given a general organization and the right to carry weapons. One counted on the activity of the old warriors in a possibly necessary national defense.

See also

proof

  1. ↑ Tenfelde, Ritter: Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich , p. 738
  2. ^ Roet de Rouet, Henning: Frankfurt am Main as a Prussian garrison from 1866 to 1914. Frankfurt am Main 2016. P. 289.

literature

  • Thomas Rohkrämer: The militarism of the "little people": the war clubs in the German Empire 1871-1914. Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3486558595 .
  • Henning Roet de Rouet: Frankfurt am Main as a Prussian garrison from 1866 to 1914. Frankfurt am Main 2016.
  • Jörg Nimmergut : A brief outline of the history of the German war club from 1835 to 1943. War clubs - an attractive area to collect . In: Orders and Medals. The magazine for friends of phaleristics, publisher: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde , Issue 81, 14th year, Hof / Saale 2012. ISSN 1438-3772.

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