Reform Association

Since the middle of the 19th century, men in German-speaking countries have united under the name Reformverein to change existing political or social structures. The motivations for founding the association were very different.

Peter Conradin von Planta founded the first liberal reform association in Chur ( Graubünden ) in 1842 , which quickly spread across the entire canton with the aim of eliminating outdated conditions and replacing them with new institutions.

In Frankfurt am Main , conservatives, “ Greater German” liberals and democrats founded the Greater German Reform Association in 1862 . The founding of the association was a reaction to the "anti-parliamentary course" of the Prussian government to implement army reform. The Prussian government and King Wilhelm I wanted to carry out an army reform, for which the parliament, however, did not approve the budget. Thus, the original "army conflict" escalated into a Prussian constitutional conflict . The aim of the reform association was to reform the German Confederation under the leadership of Austria .

In Frankfurt am Main, conservatives, Greater German liberals and democrats followed under Johannes Ronge in October 1863 with the founding of the Religious Reform Association, which is closely related to Old Catholicism .

1879 came by Alexander Pinkert in Dresden for the establishment of the first anti-Semitic set German Reform Association .

In 1882 the anti-Semitic Austrian Reform Association was founded in Austria under Ernst Schneider and Karl von Zerboni , of which Robert Pattai became president . In the same year Georg von Schönerer left the Reform Association with other German Nationalists and founded the German National Association ( Viktor Adler's application for membership was rejected with reference to an Aryan paragraph introduced by Schönerer ). With the support of the Austrian Reform Association succeeded Karl Lueger 1884, the entry into the Vienna city council in the Imperial Council election in 1885 and the entry into the Imperial Council .

In 1892 the also anti-Semitic Kassel Reform Association began to exert its influence under the long-standing leadership of the Reichstag member and editor Ludwig Werner .

literature

German Bundestag, Department for Public Relations: Questions to German History. 1991, ISBN 3-924521-73-5 , p. 179
Werner Backes: The history of the free-spirited democratic party Graubünden. In: Series of publications of the FDP Graubünden. Volume IV, 2003
Peter Pulzer: Austrian Reform Association , in: Handbook of Antisemitism: Anti-Semitism in Past and Present. Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements , 2012, pp. 459 f.

Web links

Prussian Chronicle of the German State

Individual evidence

↑ Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics. Political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 (= series of publications by the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr. Wilfried Haslauer Library, Salzburg . Volume 12 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 , p. 244 f .

[1] Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics. Political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 (= series of publications by the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr. Wilfried Haslauer Library, Salzburg . Volume 12 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 , p. 244 f .