Collection for action

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The Sammlung zur Tat / European People's Movement (short name: SzT / EVB, mostly referred to as the Sammlung zur Tat (SzT), further party name European People's Movement in Germany (EVD)) was a nationalist and neutralist small German party that ran in the 1949 federal election without mandates to achieve.

history

The SzT was founded on March 13, 1949 by Karl Steinfeld, a former member of the SPD , in Villingen and a little later licensed as a party by the French occupation authorities . Steinfeld had previously tried with his working group of free voters for a rallying movement for the upcoming federal election. Steinfeld's political ideas are described as "very diffuse"; he advocated a synthesis of capitalism and communism and was a neutralist. Steinfeld succeeded in "addressing left-wing nationalist and conservative-revolutionary circles". These included the chairman of the Christian Socialist League , chaplain Joseph Cornelius Rossaint , the founder of the neutralist freedom association, Theodor Kögler and Hellmuth Draeger, a Berlin lawyer. Steinfeld had been in contact with a Cologne group of former members of the Black Front around Otto Strasser since 1948 , who had fallen out with Strasser in 1947 and rejected Strasser's ideas as anachronistic, authoritarian and undemocratic.

At a German conference in early June 1949, the SzT passed ten theses, which were the party's only binding programmatic position. The theses included the unity , neutrality and sovereignty of Germany, a community of all European peoples, a " nationally owned economy managed by the operating communities themselves" and equal rights for women. The previous “party state” was rejected as “undemocratic”.

For the 1949 federal election, the party was admitted to the federal states of Baden (under the name European People's Movement of Germany ) and Württemberg-Hohenzollern (as a collection for action ). Nationwide, the party achieved 26,162 or 0.1% of the vote; in Baden it was 3.6% and in Württemberg-Hohenzollern 1.5%. During the election campaign, there were internal party differences between a south German group around Steinfeld and Draeger and a north German group around Rossiant and Koegler. The latter advocated casting invalid votes. The southern German group did not see itself as being adequately supported in the election campaign and, for its part, was looking for allies in the movement of displaced persons and those injured by air, especially for the Württemberg-Baden emergency community around Franz Ott .

After the election, internal party tensions intensified and led to an unsuccessful motion to expel Steinfeld, accused of arbitrary merger negotiations with other parties and of collaboration with the French occupation authorities. In June 1950, the southern German group renamed itself the German Peace Party / Collection for Action ; Steinfeld was elected party chairman. Steinfeld last appeared in 1951 at a German Congress initiated by members of the German Reich Party .

Between August and December 1949, the northern German SzT group founded regional associations in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Berlin. The party work was largely limited to the irregular publication of the newsletter Die Sammlung . Contacts with neutralist and national Bolshevik groups, as well as discussions in 1956 with Otto Strasser, who had returned to Germany, remained fruitless. In the federal election in 1957 , the SzT called for the election of the SPD. Two members of the Cologne group of former members of the Black Front, Peter Thoma and Karl Naske, founded the Oppo publishing house in Cologne in 1961 , which published the social revolutionary and anti-militarist newspaper Opposition und Ziel . After Strasser's death, Naske published the Strasser Archive from 1975, which was followed by the journal Nationalpolitische Sicht ( National Political Sight) from 1986 to 1991 .

reception

The historian Wolfgang Benz described the SzT as "confused-neutralistic"; the political scientist Richard Stöss called it “strongly anti-democratic” and assigned it to a “new nationalism” which, in contrast to the “old nationalism” represented by the Economic Development Association (WAV), tried to take into account the changed conditions of the post-war period.

literature

  • Richard Stöss: German Social Union. In: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980. (Volume 1: AUD to EFP ) Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, ISBN 3-531-11570-7 , pp. 1243-1278.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stöss, German Social Union , p. 1260.
  2. ↑ Stöss, German Social Union , p. 1259f.
  3. ↑ On the theses see Stöss, Deutsch-Soziale-Union , p. 1261. Quotations ibid.
  4. ↑ Stöss, German Social Union , p. 1262.
  5. ^ Stöss, German Social Union , pp. 1262f.
  6. ↑ On the north German group from 1949 see Stöss, Deutsch-Soziale-Union , pp. 1263f.
  7. ↑ For information on the opposition and goal, see entry in the database of German-speaking anarchism (DadA), (accessed on May 2, 2011)
  8. ↑ See entries on the Strasser Archive and National Political View in the catalog of the German National Library.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Benz: Order Democracy. The founding history of the Federal Republic and the emergence of the GDR 1945–1949. Metropol, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-42-8 , p. 440.
  10. ↑ Richard Stöss: The extreme right in the Federal Republic. Development, causes, countermeasures. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1989, ISBN 3-531-12124-3 , p. 82.
  11. ^ Stöss , rechte , p. 83.