New Occident

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Neues Abendland: Journal for Politics and History was published from March 1946 to 1958, first in Munich, after moving to Augsburg in 1948 under Johann Wilhelm Naumann in the Naumann-Verlag , from April 1951 under Gerhard Kroll in the new Abendland-Verlag , which was owned by Prince Erich von Waldburg-Zeil and his son Georg belonged, finally as a new series from 1956 until it was discontinued in 1958.

history

A predominantly Catholic Western movement stood behind the magazine, which had its regional focus in southern Germany and the Rhineland. "Occident" here meant the revival of Christianity and demarcation from the Soviet Union. The failure of the Weimar Republic was attributed to a wrong understanding of democracy “the large number”. Also corporate or professional ideas were in some cases highly valued, the dictators Francisco Franco and António Salazar were positively recognized, as a basis for the encyclical Quadragesimo anno by Pope Pius XI. referenced. The federalism in Germany should be strengthened, the remains of the once-powerful Prussianism be pushed back. After the Basic Law was passed in 1949, criticism of its lack of a Christian basis, which was expressed in the 1951 “Occidental Manifesto”, intensified. The change of editor and publisher reflected this. In 1952, the author Emil Franzel referred to Portugal as a positive model.

Several phases can be distinguished: initially for the publisher Naumann and the first editor-in-chief, the exile Walter Ferber , the reference to the Nazi resistance, federalism and Catholicism as the basis of a cultural rethinking in the foreground, the patrons like Ludwig Alpers and the professor's widow Ella Schmittmann supported, began with the new editor-in-chief Emil Franzel , who contributed many articles pseudonymously, in 1948 a strong politicization in the direction of anti-Bolshevism . He received support from Prince Waldburg zu Zeil, who took over the magazine completely in 1951 and appointed CSU co-founder Gerhard Kroll as the new editor. He replaced Franzel with the medievalist and publicist Helmut Ibach as editor-in-chief. Kroll printed his Occidental Manifesto in 1951 as the prelude to an Occidental Action , which he took over as chairman on August 25, 1951 in Munich. The aim was now to change the Basic Law in the direction of an organic state , which meant a kind of corporate state as in Austria in 1934 . But because anti-capitalist tones were also noticeable in Kroll, a break with the prince took place, who turned away from the campaign and preferred to support the elitist Occidental Academy Munich-Eichstädt from 1952 .

Frequent authors were Walter Ferber (1st editor-in-chief), Maximilian Dietrich , Johann Nepomuk Hebensperger , Ferdinand Kirnberger , Georg Laforet , Helene Schmittmann , Peter Wust (posthumously) and Friedrich Zoepfl . Also Bernhard Lakebrink , Ernst von Hippel and Albert Maier (anti-liberal thought leaders at the material Donoso Cortés ) wrote posts. Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte voted for a strong Bavaria as guardian of faith in the Federal Republic, Hans Sedlmayr against the “loss of the center” in art. Reinhold Schneider , who was initially represented many times, was sidelined after his statement in 1951 against rearmament . Franz Herre , a pupil of Franz Schnabel , turned against the positive view of the left-wing Catholic historian Friedrich Heer on the Enlightenment .

The conversion to a quarterly magazine in 1956 reacted to the decline in readership, which even this measure could not stop. After the magazine was discontinued in 1958, the Western Movement sank into complete insignificance in the early 1960s.

precursor

A forerunner in the Weimar Republic was “Abendland. German monthly magazine for European culture, politics and economy ”(Gilde-Verlag, Cologne – Berlin – Vienna (1926–1930)), published by center politicians and other Christian-social politicians. Catholic intellectuals from the Rhineland, Westphalia, Bavaria and Austria such as Konrad Beyerle , Theodor Brauer , Götz Briefs , Wilhelm Hamacher , Hugo Graf Lerchenfeld , Hermann Platz , Friedrich Schreyvogl and Chancellor Prelate Ignaz Seipel wrote here .

First issue in 1946: The concept of the Occident

The change of its historical meaning as a unified cultural conception of western and central Europe enabled and experienced only one interpretation: the Christian one. Neither the geographical nor the national composition of Europe, but an intellectual attitude gave it the essential meaning. Antiquity and Christianity, Juno and Ecclesia, humanitas and caritas shaped him; it was realized in medieval universalism.

Whoever examined the causes of the “fall of the West” after the destruction of Western unity came to the same conclusion, namely that the destruction of Western universalism has already begun in the addiction of ratio to explain things can only be seen and found in terms of faith: Faith comes before ratio, the latter leads, absolutized, to the separation of knowledge and belief. ( Johann Wilhelm Naumann , preface to the first edition )

literature

  • Helga Grebing : Conservatives against democracy. Conservative criticism of democracy in the Federal Republic after 1945 , Frankfurt a. M. 1971.
  • Dagmar Pöpping : Occident. Christian academics and the utopia of anti-modernism 1900–1945 , Berlin 2002.
  • Axel Schildt : Between the West and America. Studies on the West German landscape of ideas of the 50s . Munich 1999.
  • Rudolf Uertz : Conservative cultural criticism in the early Federal Republic of Germany. The Occidental Academy in Eichstätt (1952–56) , Eichstädt 2000. online at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Jürgen Klöckler: Abendland - Alpenland - Alemannien: France and the discussion about restructuring in Southwest Germany , Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, p. 92
  2. ↑ Johannes Großmann: The International of Conservatives. Transnational elite circles and private foreign policy in Western Europe since 1945 , Munich (Oldenbourg) 2014 (= studies on international history, vol. 35)