Lëtzebuerger Nationalunioun

The Luxembourg National Union ( Luxembourgish Lëtzebuerger Nationalunioun transcribed after today's orthography, formerly Letzeburger Nationalunio'n ) was a Luxembourg , nationalist movement, on 10 August 1910 by several students, including Lucien King was founded.

history

The movement was strongly oriented towards political currents such as that of fascism under Benito Mussolini and French nationalism such as that extolled by Maurice Barrès . Later one orientated oneself then to the National Socialism under Adolf Hitler . The 1911 movement's statutes stipulated that only Luxembourgers could join the movement. In the beginning there were 110 activists in the movement. It also stipulated that their language would be Luxembourgish , the red lion their flag and “Lëtzebuerg de Lëtzebuerger” ( dt. Luxembourg to the Luxembourgers) their motto.

The movement was anti- democratic , it rejected parliamentary democracy and the multi-party system . The reason she kept citing was that in such a small country as the Grand Duchy this would only harm the state unnecessarily, would split the country and hand it over to foreign forces. Furthermore, she saw herself as anti-Semitic and xenophobic and, in her newspaper " D'Natio'n " ( dt. The Nation) , published in 1915, incited against the Jews living in the country . In 1920 alone there were three entire editions on the Jewish question . The 30,000 to 40,000 foreigners, who lived in the Grand Duchy around 1916, called the movement a national threat, called for a boycott of their businesses and demanded that the Luxembourg people run the economy alone among Luxembourgers. She was opposed to acquisition through naturalization , i.e. naturalization. On a geopolitical plan, they called for a "Grousslëtzebuerg" ( German: Greater Luxembourg) with the recovery of the territories of 1659 , 1815 and 1839 where their areas were separated from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg .

In 1922 the movement split, only a certain part of the members wanted to keep the current political course unchanged. By the end of the 1920s and the beginning of 1930, the movement had largely disappeared. Only in 1937, after Minister of State of the right-wing party, Joseph Bech wanted to introduce the “Maulkuerfgesetz” ( German muzzle law), a law banning the Communist Party of Luxembourg , and the country was generally economically unstable, the movement spoke up again several times.

After the Second World War

After the Second World War , the movement continued to appear with its ideology , only anti-Semitism was removed from its agenda. She regretted the reconstruction of the parties after 1945 and called for the abolition of the party state with well-known slogans . In 1945 the party raised claims on German territory on the occasion of the Morgenthau Plan . It attracted attention in 1947 after the movement penned a letter that was mailed to the foreign ministers of various states, including the United States of America , Great Britain , France and the Soviet Union . This letter called for the annexation of parts of Luxembourg territory, which was declared as German territory at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, to be reversed . However, this letter was not heard either in the countries or within the government in Luxembourg.

After this activity, movement became quiet. The founder Lucien König got into politics and became a member of the "Groupement démocratique" ( dt. Democratic group), the forerunner of today's Democratic Party . König then became a lay judge in Luxembourg and sat in the Chambre des Députés from 1951 to 1961 .

literature

• Blau, Lucien: Histoire de l'extrême-droite au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg au XXe siècle , Éditions Le Phare, Esch-sur-Alzette, 1998, ISBN 2-87964-034-2