Masurian People's Party

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Masurian People's Party (MVP) was a pro-Polish regional party founded in Masuria in 1896 .

founding

The founding of the party went back to the “Central Committee for Silesia, Kashubia and Mazury” (“Komitet Centraly dla Śląska, Kaszub i Mazur”) , which was founded in Warsaw on the initiative of Antoni Osuchowski . a. Lutheran Bishop Juliusz Bursche joined. The formal establishment took place in November 1896 in Lyck by Karol Bahrke, also from Warsaw, and Michael Kajka .

In 1907 the MVP in Ortelsburg had 30 members. Andreas Kossert estimates the total number of members to be “a few hundred at most”.

Party platform

Was the political program of the MVP characterized by social and economic demands in favor of the Masurian rural population, such as the parceling state domains and their leasing to small farmers, granting Meliorationshilfe , abolition of primogeniture , a better distribution of school loads and in representing farmers in the district assemblies and in the Chamber of Agriculture. The settlement of small industries should also be encouraged.

Andreas Kossert and Grzegorz Jasiński see the representation of the MVP as the first national-Polish movement in Masuria, which was widespread in Polish historiography after 1945, as only partially correct, rather the protection of the mother tongue against the increasing pressure to assimilate dominated.

Publications

The official organ of the Masurian People's Party was Gazeta Ludowa , published since 1896 under the leadership of Karol Bahrke . The newspaper had a circulation of 2500 copies in 1897 and was mostly distributed free of charge. The financing was provided by Polish banks from the Poznan province . The Gazeta Ludowa introduced in 1902 ceased publication. From 1906 the party published the Mazur , for which the Poznan banker Marcin Biedermann had acquired a printing works in Ortelsburg. The Mazur was also sold free of charge, the circulation increased from 500 in 1908 to 2000 before the start of the First World War.

Election results

In the Reichstag election in 1898 , Karol Bahrke achieved 229 out of 17,832 votes in the constituency of Oletzko-Lyck-Johannisburg (Olecko-Ełk-Pisz). Eugen Zenon Lewandowski, who came from Poznan, was supported by the Liberal People's Party and achieved 5874 votes in the constituency of Ortelsburg-Sensburg (Szczytno-Mrągowo). In the Reichstag election in 1903 Lewandowski achieved another 4,000 votes. In the constituency of Oletzko, Gottlieb (Bogumił) Labusz was running now, with 130 votes. In the Reichstag election in 1907, the MVP was defeated with a total of 1,451 votes to the candidates of the German Conservative Party , who were elected with 93.1% (Oletzko-Lyck-Johannisburg) and 73.1% (Ortelsburg-Sensburg). In 1912 , the MVP received 2,698 votes.

After the First World War, the MVP achieved a further 1,366 votes in the elections for the East Prussian provincial parliament in 1925 and another 298 votes in the 1928 Reichstag election .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Andreas Kossert : Masuria - East Prussia's forgotten south . Pantheon, 2006, ISBN 3-570-55006-0 , pp. 209 ff .
  2. ^ Andreas Kossert: Prussia, Germans or Poles? The Masurians in the field of tension of ethnic nationalism 1870–1956 . Ed .: German Historical Institute Warsaw . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04415-2 , p. 79 .
  3. ↑ Andreas Kossert: Wilhelmine Eastern Brand Policy as Infrastructural Penetration? Masuria and the German-Polish antagonism. In: Comparativ , Vol. 2 (2005), p. 56.
  4. ↑ Peter Thaler: Of mind and matter . Purdue University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-55753-524-5 , pp. 138 (English, google.de ).
  5. ^ The province of East Prussia - provincial state election 1925
  6. ^ Heino Kaack: History and structure of the German party system . Westdeutscher Verlag, 1971, ISBN 3-531-11059-4 , pp. 104 ( google.de ).