National Social Association

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The National Social Association ( NSV ) was a political party in the German Empire . It was founded in 1896 by Friedrich Naumann and combined nationalist , social reform and liberal goals. After the Reichstag election of 1903 , it dissolved.

history

Politically, the Protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann was initially a supporter of the Christian-social movement around the court preacher Adolf Stoecker , although he never belonged to his conservative-anti-Semitic Christian-social party . After Stoecker's defection, Naumann founded the National Social Association in 1896 , also influenced by Max Weber's political theories . One of the main goals of the new party was to bring the workers closer to the existing state through political and social reforms. This included the demand for a democratization of the political system and for a “social empire”. A kind of moderate imperialism also played an important role . The social division along the class lines should be overcome in order to create the conditions for a further "economic and political development of the German nation's external power" . The slogan “From Bassermann to Bebel ” issued by Naumann became famous . This meant that for a fundamental political reform in the sense of a democratization of the constitutional system it was necessary to bring about an alliance of all progressive forces from the social democrats to the left-wing liberals to the national liberals . This demand was discussed a lot, but without being even rudimentarily realized at the Reich level. Within the National Social Association, the left wing around Pastor Paul Göhre advocated cooperation with the social democratic revisionists around Eduard Bernstein . This was not really successful and joined the SPD in 1898.

On this ideological basis, a number of local groups of the association emerged. But Naumann did not succeed in gaining a real mass base. The association found supporters especially among highly educated young people. In addition to Naumann, the lawyer Rudolph Sohm , the New Testament scholar Caspar René Gregory , the journalist Hellmut von Gerlach and the land reformer Adolf Damaschke played a role in the National Social Association.

A stronghold of the party became the county of Bentheim with the Emsland town of Lingen (Ems) , where, in addition to the middle class, mainly workers belonged to the party. To this end, Hellmut von Gerlach and his Adlatus Georg Schümer created workers' associations with a large number of members in Schüttorf , Nordhorn , Gildehaus and Lingen. The only workers' representatives at the National Socialist party congresses came from their ranks. The struggle of the National Social Association in the region was directed primarily against the free-conservative district administrator and the national-liberal textile manufacturers. In 1898, in the election for the Prussian House of Representatives , they prevented Hellmut von Gerlach from representing the constituency of Lingen-Bentheim with the support of the center through a sensational vote for the center man August Degen . So far, they had fought the center candidate as well as his ally with all means - including illegal ones. The National Socialists also felt the pressure of the manufacturers here, but they defended themselves with the help of the "Schüttorfer Zeitung" they had bought.

In the Reichstag election of 1898 , the association remained without a mandate. Started with high hopes at the next 1903 , only Hellmut von Gerlach was able to get a seat in the Hessian constituency of Frankenberg with the support of the Center Party . The defeat of 1903 led to the dissolution of the association. The majority of the members, as well as the Reichstag member von Gerlach, then joined the economically liberal Liberal Association . Only in the Grand Duchy of Baden did the National Socialists continue to exist as an independent organization until the left-wing liberal parties were united to form the Progressive People's Party in 1910.

Originally, Naumann's party was founded under the name "National Socialist Association". The NSV is usually assigned to the liberal spectrum and in no way viewed as a forerunner of the later National Socialism . For Götz Aly, on the other hand, Naumann was not a mastermind of Hitler's anti-Semitism, but his “national socialism” with its “nationalistic power and people's welfare policy” distorted liberalism “beyond recognition” and mixed “social, national and imperial thoughts into a single stream of thought” that could ultimately mix with the ideology of the NSDAP.

literature

  • Martin Wenck: The history of the National Socials from 1895 to 1903. Book publisher "Hilfe", Berlin 1905 ( digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fstream%2Fdiegeschichtede00wencgoog%23page%2Fn5%2Fmode%2F2up~GB%3D~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D ).
  • Dieter Düding : The National Social Association 1896-1903. The failed attempt at a party-political synthesis of nationalism, socialism and liberalism (= studies on the history of the nineteenth century , 6). Oldenbourg, Munich et al. 1972, ISBN 3-486-43801-8 (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 1970).
  • Dieter Fricke : National Social Association (NsV) 1896–1903 . In: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) . Volume 3: General Association of German Employees' Unions - Reich and Free Conservative Party . Pahl-Rugenstein, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7609-0878-0 , (= history of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations ), pp. 441–453.
  • Helmut Lensing: The elections to the Reichstag and the Prussian House of Representatives in Emsland and the Grafschaft Bentheim from 1867 to 1918. Party system and political disputes in the constituency of Ludwig Windthorst during the German Empire . Verlag der Emslandische Landschaft for the districts of Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim, Sögel 1999, ISBN 3-925034-30-7 , (= Emsland, Bentheim 15), (also: Münster (Westphalia), Univ., Diss., 1997).
  • Thomas Nipperdey : German History 1866-1918 . Volume 2: Power state before democracy . Special edition. 31st to 55th thousand. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44038-X , p. 531 f.
  • Walter Tormin : History of the German parties since 1848 (= past and present ). 2nd revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1967, p. 113 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerd Fesser : Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919). In: Bernd Heidenreich (Ed.): Political Theories of the 19th Century. Conservatism, liberalism, socialism. 2nd Edition. Akademie, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-050-03682-6 , pp. 399-411, here p. 402.
  2. ^ Friedrich Naumann: National Social Catechism. Explanation of the basic lines of the National Social Association. Bousset & Kundt, Berlin 1897, p. 1 ( PDF; 2.7 kB ).
  3. ↑ Ernst Piper : Spin-offs and mergers. The changeful development of the liberal parties in Germany until 1933 . In: The Parliament . November 4, 2013, accessed February 5, 2019.
  4. ↑ Klaus von Beyme : History of political theories in Germany 1300–2000. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 3-531-16806-1 , p. 393 ff.
  5. ↑ Götz Aly : Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Equality, envy and racial hatred. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 3-10-000426-4 , p. 136 ff.