Reich League of the Rich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Reich Association of the Rich in Children in Germany for the Protection of the Family eV (RdK) was founded in 1922 as an interest and self-help organization for large families . It existed until the end of National Socialism.

Weimar Republic

The association was founded in 1922 and initially saw itself as a politically and denominationally independent self-help organization. He distinguished himself from welfare organizations and provided concrete help for self-help through advice . Families were accepted who had officially confirmed that they had at least four children and widows with at least three children.

The main political demands of the day were the improvement of maternity protection, the introduction of a family wage and child allowances, tax reductions, the preferential allocation of sufficient living space as well as freedom from school fees and learning materials. These demands were embedded in general ideas of a “preservation of the population” (Weimar Program, 1923), which was threatened, with connections to the Weimar eugenics and racial hygiene discourse.

A closer approach to racial hygiene positions and finally the adoption of racial hygiene as a basic concept already took place by the end of the 1920s. Under the influence of the “moderate” eugenicists Hermann Muckermann , Friedrich Burgdörfer and Alfred Grotjahn , as well as the active collaboration of the racial hygienists Rainer Fetscher , Philateles Kuhn and Emil Abderhalden , the RdK shifted its focus from 1930 to the demand for “care and maintenance of the genetically healthy large family ”.

The Jesuit Hermann Muckermann and the Social Democrat Alfred Grotjahn were members of the Society for Racial Hygiene . At an event organized by the Bavarian Regional Association of the RdK in 1930, Muckermann criticized the state's social policy. It brings about the decline in "genetically healthy" families because they invest their resources in caring for the "inferior". In this way she accelerates the "process of the hereditary healthy family eating away". Grotjahn also advocated an increased birth rate for the "hereditary health". He, too, saw a demographic threat. “All historically significant peoples, all master peoples and especially from them those who emerged in war” “perished because of a lack of offspring”. The forced sterilization "of racial hygiene indication" seemed an appropriate way to fight the - imaginary - progressive disease of the "body politic".

Against this background, the RdK had good relations not only with the Volkish Right, but also with the Center and the Bavarian People's Party.

The Siegerland district , the largest district with 45 local groups (1931), can serve as an exemplary subdivision . The RKD had been headed by a National Socialist there since 1925 and saw itself as a supporter and propagandist of National Socialist population and family policy well before the takeover of power.

National Socialism

During National Socialism , the RdK received generous support and state recognition. He was affiliated with the Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP and a member of the Reich Committee for Public Health Service. V. at the Reich Ministry of the Interior. The Reich Leader Wilhelm Stüwe described it in 1936 as the “front of healthy German families with many children” and as a “Kampfbund that wants to bring National Socialist thinking to the people.” The RdK propagated the “biological renewal of our people”, the title of a programmatic publication by the Reich Leader .

He did not advocate for marginalized lower-class families with many children, as they were considered " antisocial " at the time, but instead advocated the "unconditional, sharp separation from the hereditary, morally or otherwise burdened, i.e. inferior extended family" in favor of the "selection of the German-blooded genetically healthy, that is, full-fledged families with many children ”. Here, through the deprivation of resources in the one case and the granting of resources in the other, the "prerequisite for any solution to the problem of many children" lies. One is "a union of struggle and selection". As not being “German-blooded”, Jewish or Roma families were basically not just outside any support, they were “inferior” and dangerous to the “national body” and objects of negative “selection”.

In the later 1930s the RdK was renamed Reichsbund Deutsche Familie (RDF).

As the father of ten legitimate children, NSDAP Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel was chairman of the “Ehrenführerring” of the Reichsbund der Kinderreich.

After the end of National Socialism

With the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 10, 1945, the organization was banned by the Allied Control Council and its property was confiscated. After the end of National Socialism, the Association of Large-Child and Young Families of Germany eV (BKD) emerged from the RdK or Reichsbund Deutsche Familie , which merged in 1970 with the German Family Association, founded in Munich in 1950 . According to its own statements, the DFV is politically and religiously independent and sees itself as a lobby for families in Germany, just like the RdK when it was founded in 1922 and the BKD.

literature

  • Jill Stephenson, "Reichsbund der Kinderreich". The League of Large Families in the Population Policy of Nazi Germany, in: European History Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 351-375 (1979).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anahid S. Rickmann, "Rassenpflege im Völkischen Staat". On the relationship of racial hygiene to National Socialist politics, Bonn 2002, p. 69; see also: [1] .
  2. ↑ Rebecca Heinemann, Family Between Tradition and Emancipation. Catholic and social democratic family concepts in the Weimar Republic (series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation, vol. 11), Munich 2004, p. 266.
  3. ↑ Rebecca Heinemann, Family Between Tradition and Emancipation. Catholic and social democratic family concepts in the Weimar Republic (series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation, vol. 11), Munich 2004, p. 281.
  4. ↑ Anahid S. Rickmann, "Rassenpflege im Völkischen Staat". On the relationship of racial hygiene to National Socialist politics, Bonn 2002, p. 39; see also: [2] .
  5. ↑ Rebecca Heinemann, Family Between Tradition and Emancipation. Catholic and social democratic family concepts in the Weimar Republic (series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation, vol. 11), Munich 2004, p. 249.
  6. ^ Siegener Zeitung, June 9, 1931; Ulrich Friedrich Sacrificemann , “How wonderfully this sum that was thrown out for hereditary diseases could be used” - Aspects of discriminatory social policy under National Socialism using the example of Siegerland-Wittgenstein, in: Siegener Posts. Yearbook for Regional History, 7 (2002), pp. 105–170.
  7. ^ W [ilhelm]. Stüwe [Reichsbundesleiter], Reich Association of the Rich in Children in Germany for the Protection of the Family, in: Der National-Sozialistische Erzieher, 5 (1936), No. 46, pp. 656–657.
  8. ↑ Biographical Lexicon for the Weimar Republic , ed. by Wolfgang Benz and Hermann Graml, Munich 1988, p. 281.
  9. ^ German Family Association> Our leitmotif: History of the DFV Berlin
  10. ↑ [3]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bundesarchiv.de