Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

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Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, c. 1910
Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg (born August 21, 1848 in Weißwasser, Tuchel district , West Prussia , † November 17, 1911 in Berlin ) was a German officer , party founder, member of the Reichstag and anti-Semitic publicist in the German Empire .

Life

Liebermann von Sonnenberg came from a Prussian family of officers and joined the Prussian army in 1866, like his father before him . As prime lieutenant he took part in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71, suffered severe war injuries and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. Liebermann knew how to use his image as a war hero for his political career.

“Berlin Movement” and anti-Semite petition

" Berlin Movement ": Middle Otto Glagau ; clockwise Adolf König , Bernhard Förster , Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Theodor Fritsch , Paul Förster and Otto Böckel , ca.1880

During the Empire, Liebermann was politically active in the nationalist movement and also took part in the “ International Anti-Jewish Congresses ”. Together with the agitators of the “ Berlin Movement ” Paul and Bernhard Förster and Ernst Henrici , he initiated an “ anti-Semite petition ” which accused the Jews of economic, social and racial infiltration of the German national body. The four demands of the petition were rather moderate compared to the general agitation of the "Berlin Movement":

1. Restriction of the immigration of Eastern Jews from Austria-Hungary and Russia.
2. Exclusion of Jews from all positions in government, especially from judges.
3. Prohibition of employing Jewish teachers in elementary schools and strict restrictions on their employment in all other schools.
4. Resumption of official statistics on the Jewish population.

The petition was signed by around 250,000 citizens and made Liebermann popular throughout Germany. He handed the petition over to the Chancellery in 1881, but Chancellor Otto von Bismarck ignored it.

In the same year Liebermann founded the German People's Association and the anti-Semitic Deutsche Volkszeitung together with Bernhard Förster , of which he was editor-in-chief from 1885 to 1887.

In 1884 he left the Prussian army and devoted himself entirely to work as a writer and political publicist. In 1894 he took over Theodor Fritsch's Antisemitische Correspondenz , which he converted into a party newspaper as the German Social Gazette. In their contributions, the Jews were made responsible for the economic crises and social contradictions of German industrialization . Race-theoretical approaches played an increasing role in the publications. Sonnenberg's anti-Semitism can be seen as the middle position between Adolf Stoecker's Christian-social hostility to Jews and the anti-conservative wing of the movement around Otto Böckel and Oswald Zimmermann .

Party politician

In 1889, Sonnenberg achieved the unification of various anti-Semitic groups to form the Anti-Semitic German Social Party . For this he moved into the German Reichstag in 1890 , of which he remained a member until 1911. In the Hessian constituency Fritzlar - Homberg - Ziegenhain , he was always re-elected with a large majority. In 1894 he united his party with the German Reform Party founded by Otto Böckel to form the German Social Reform Party (DSRP). Their program envisaged the revocation of the legal equality of the Jews living in Germany and also spoke of a " final solution to the Jewish question " and the "annihilation of the Jewish people". The DSRP also represented demands for social reforms in favor of the middle class and agriculture . In 1900 the party split again after violent wing battles. Liebermann was unable to push through the amalgamation of the Reichstag parliamentary group and the party leadership, which would have given him unrestricted control over the party. With that he became chairman of the German Social Party again. Regardless of the party political squabbles, Liebermann was seen by the public as a charismatic speaker and a leading figure in anti-Semitism.

After poor election results in 1898 and 1903, Liebermann led his party into closer ties with the German Conservative Party and the farmers' union . In 1903, Liebermann founded the Economic Association as a group of German socials, Christian socials, the farmers 'union and the Bavarian farmers' union. The parliamentary group advocated special duties on English goods. They were supposed to protect the competitiveness of German companies that were threatened by a wave of bankruptcies. Liebermann and his party's clientele blamed “ Manchester liberalism ” in league with the Jews as alleged wire-pullers. Agriculture should be protected against falling prices on the globalized agricultural market with high protective tariffs.

Overall, however, Liebermann's anti-Semitism increasingly took a back seat to the propagation of a German colonial and world power policy. From 1905 he supported the construction of the navy in the Wilhelmine Empire, propagated a war against England and warned against English parliamentarism , which he understood as the “decomposition” of patriotism and Germany's military strength. In 1908, as part of the Daily Telegraph affair, he publicly attacked the British Colonial Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain and accused him of undermining the German monarchy . Liebermann's remarks contributed significantly to a negative image of Germany in the English public.

In the summer of 1911 in Munich , Sonnenberg published his memoir From the Happiness of My Life. Memories from the great German war of 1870/71 .

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg died on November 17, 1911 at the age of 63 in Berlin. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof . The tomb has not been preserved.

Works

  • Rhine trip. A cycle of lyric poems. 1878.
  • Poems. 1879.
  • The Jewish question and the synagogue fire in Neustettin. 1883.
  • The Jewish question and the synagogue fire in Neustettin. Speech (according to the shorthand), given on October 25, 1883 in the great people's assembly on the Berliner Bock. 1883.
  • The damage to the German national spirit by the Jewish nation. Lecture. 1892.
  • The peasant stranglers. A story with 12 pictures from life. 1894.
  • From the happy times of my life. Memories from the great German war of 1870/71. 1911.
As editor
  • Contributions to the history of the anti-Semitic movement from 1880-1885 consisting of speeches, brochures, poems. 1885.

literature

  • Elke Kimmel: Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Max Hugo , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/2, 2009, p. 482f.
  • Richard S. Levy : The Downfall of the antisemitic parties in Imperial Germany. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven et al. a. 1975. (= Yale historical publications; Miscellany; 106) ISBN 0-300-01803-7 .
  • Thomas Weidemann: Political anti-Semitism in the German Empire. The Reichstag member Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg and the north Hessian constituency Fritzlar-Homberg-Ziegenhain. In: Displaced Neighbors. Contributions to the history of the Jews in the district of Ziegenhain , ed. v. Hartwig Bambey. Verl. Stadtgesch. Working group u. a., Schwalmstadt-Treysa 1993, pp. 113-184, ISBN 3-924296-07-3 .
  • Thomas Weidemann: Hessentag 100 years ago. In: Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine. dated May 31, 2008.
  • Thomas Weidemann: 1908 - large "Hessian folk festival" in Treysa. In: Schwälmer Jahrbuch 2009. S. 165ff. Edited by Schwälmer Heimatbund 2008.
  • Ferdinand Werner: Liebermann v. Sonnenberg. In: German ascent. Images from the past and present of the right-wing parties. ed. v. Hans von Arnim u. Georg von Below. Schneider, Berlin a. a. 1925. pp. 315-321.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Max Hugo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, politician and MdR
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Weißwasser (West Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1911
Place of death Berlin