Swabian-German cultural association

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The Schwäbisch-Deutsche Kulturbund was an association to maintain German culture and to represent the German minority in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . It existed from 1920 to 1941, but was temporarily subject to state bans. In 1939 the innovators, who were influenced by the National Socialists, took over the leadership and dissolved the organization in 1941 on the instructions of the Reich German Nazi leadership before the Wehrmacht invaded Yugoslavia .

Establishment, bans and re-establishment

Personalities of the Kulturbund, conservatives

At the time of the peace negotiations in Trianon , a small group of Danube Swabian academics took the initiative to found a German cultural association in the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . It was founded on June 20, 1920 in Novi Sad . Founding members were the main initiators Johann Keks , Georg Grassl , Stefan Kraft and Peter Heinrich. The German economic and cultural association in Timișoara , which was founded in November 1919 in the Romanian Banat , and the Serbian cultural association Prosveta, which had been founded in Sarajevo in 1902 and took care of the literacy of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, served as a model .

With the provincial government of Vojvodina and the state government in Belgrade , the board successfully negotiated a statute approved for the entire national territory, the main goals of which are the “maintenance of German customs and traditions”, the “distribution of books, music and films”, the “promotion artistic performances ", the" training of German teachers and clergy "as well as the" promotion of social welfare and economic institutions "included. The Kulturbund began to advise and educate the farmers, soon also to organize the common procurement of goods.

Parade of the Swabian-German Cultural Association on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of Bački Gračac (German Filipowa ), 1938
Parade of the Schwaebisch-Deutschen Kulturbund, Filipowa 1938 (1) .jpg
"State loyal" ...
Parade of the Schwaebisch-German Kulturbund, Filipowa 1938 (2) .jpg
... and "people loyal".

The motto of the federal government was “State loyal and folk loyal!”, Supplemented by the slogan: “Mother tongue, homeland, faith in the father!” The alleged loyalty to the state referred to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , since the leadership of the Kulturbund was striving for a politically moderate appearance, to confrontation with to avoid the little minority-friendly Yugoslav government at the time. In the first four years of its activity, the association had about 55,000 members from 128 villages in the western Banat, Batschka and Syrmia, which made up about 10 percent of the German minority.

The Catholic Church suspected Lutheran tendencies behind the activities of the Confederation , which it viewed with skepticism. The newly formed apostolic administrations Batschka and Banat , led by the Croatian Franciscan Father Rafael Rodić, also contributed to this . While the roughly 400,000 German Catholics were divided into nine dioceses, the Protestant and Reformed churches in the new kingdom came together and, with their 100,000 members, were subject to a single church organization. The Kulturbund and comparable Jewish institutions of the time hardly noticed each other.

The work of the Kulturbund was also viewed with suspicion by the Belgrade government. In 1924 the Croatian Peasant Party changed course and gave up its previous parliamentary boycott. As a result of these and other political changes, the agreements between the government in Belgrade and the “Party of Germans” were removed from the ground. Under federal functionary Stefan Kraft, the “Party of Germans” had sent eight members to the Serbian parliament, which, in the view of the government, meant that the federal government had exceeded its statutory scope, which led to the federal organization being banned on April 11, 1924. From the point of view of the Belgrade Education Minister Svetovar Pribicević , the ban was also a “retaliatory measure for the unfavorable treatment of the Carinthian Slovenes by the Austrian government”. The assets, archives and libraries as well as other property of the Kulturbund were confiscated by the Yugoslav state and were lost in the following years.

At the regional level, however, the authorities showed little interest in enforcing the cultural alliance ban, so that the local groups were able to continue their work to a limited extent. In 1927 the coalition of the “Croatian Peasant Party” broke up with the Serbian “radicals”, after which the Kulturbund was officially re-approved with a revised statute and its work could continue relatively undisturbed. After the royal coup d'état and the beginning of the royal dictatorship from 1929 under Alexander I as head of state of Yugoslavia, all political, national and ethnic parties and associations were banned, including the Kulturbund again. On August 28, 1930, the Kulturbund presented its school program to the Ministry of Education. In 1931 the federal status as a legal person was restored. The conservative leaders around Stefan Kraft continued to work with the government in Belgrade in the following years in order to continue their ideas of a Danube-Swabian-German policy. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany, their nationality policy faced powerful competition.

Assumption by the National Socialists

Personalities of the Kulturbund, innovators

The strengthening of the “ renewal movement ” in Romania influenced the “ ethnic ” consciousness of the German minority in Yugoslavia . Since 1933, a group called the “Renewers” ​​appeared as advocates of a clear orientation towards National Socialism in terms of content and aesthetics . Its leader was the doctor Jakob Awender from Pančevo . The “renewers” ​​initially made massive accusations against the leadership of the existing conservative representation of the German minority, the Swabian-German Cultural Association, because of corruption and the accumulation of offices, and accused their representatives of “obsession and inability to act”.

In their press organ, the “Pantschowaer Post”, later “Volksruf”, innovators like Gustav Halwax , Hans Thurn , Adam Krämer and Josef Trischler continued their campaign against the minority organizations and their previous work under their spokesman Jakob Awender. Under the impression of the “political and economic successes” of National Socialist Germany, they won numerous followers, especially among the younger generation. Their goal was to create an "ethnic group" that should feel like an "outpost of the empire", and to which the "already assimilated Germans" should also be won back. The organizational structure of the innovators was based on the National Socialist world of forms ( leader principle , uniformed structure, national symbols, marches, own festivals) and propagated the "cultural community with the mother people". Although the policy of the innovators met with a lot of resistance, and in some cases infiltrated local groups were excluded from the association, they continued to pursue their political goals and aimed primarily at the hitherto less covered German-speaking sections of the population and settler groups, especially those of the Slovenian Germans and Croatian Germans . In the Slavonian or Croatian area, which is not organizationally covered by the Kulturbund, a supporter of the renewal group, Branimir Altgayer , founded the “Culture and Welfare Association of Germans in Slavonia”, which brought numerous local groups into being. Above all, they tried to awaken a German consciousness among the largely croatized scattered Germanism, with which they were often successful.

The initiative of the renewal movement and its violent propaganda against the previous minority leadership, namely against Stefan Kraft , motivated the Kulturbund, despite the tiring and grueling disputes with local and regional authorities, to lend more emphasis to its activities than before via the Banat and Batschka to extend beyond. The goal of maintaining the trust that has now been established between the minority politicians of the old generation and the responsible government circles around Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović was not given up. With this in mind, too, the politicians of the Kulturbund felt compelled to fight the more radical ideas of the “innovators”, especially when they came into closer contact with the fascist “Zbor” movement of Dimitrije Ljotić , which was in opposition to the government .

Since the division of the Germans into two camps, a closed policy of the minority was no longer possible, so that the “Deutsche Tageblatt” lamented how much the Yugoslav Germans lost their political weight for any other group due to the “intra-peoples disputes” . The Reich German authorities held back in the conflict between the previous leaders of the Yugoslav Germans and the "innovators" out of consideration for the policy towards the Stojadinović government, as it took a different position on economic and political issues from the previous Yugoslav foreign policy and began to defend itself to detach from the bloc under French influence and to bring Germany closer, which was not undisputed domestically. In order not to burden Stojadinović's position even more by officially promoting the renewal movement, which was obviously inclined towards National Socialism, the German Reich initially supported the minority organization recognized in Yugoslavia. However, the more the National Socialist ideology spread in the “Germans abroad”, the more their leaders were in a losing position. The ongoing dispute weakened the already difficult position of the minority, while the "renewal movement" gained ground under the effects of developments in the German Reich. From the beginning of 1938, a balance between the two groups was initiated, which came about in 1939. An arbitration tribunal made up of representatives of the German minorities in Estonia, Latvia, Romania and Czechoslovakia decided that the renewers should withdraw their accusations against the chairman Kraft, whereas Kraft was urged to resign from his office.

The radical exponents of the “renewal movement” did not succeed in getting to the fore. Rather, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) decided with Josef Janko after months of negotiations for a relatively moderate and consensual representative of the “renewal movement” as chairman of the Kulturbund; not ultimately in order not to endanger the friendly relations between the Yugoslav government and the German Reich. With Janko, a number of like-minded younger men moved into the leading positions of German cultural and economic organizations. However, this did not bridge the gap that had opened up in the long disputes. It aroused new bitterness that with the advance of the “innovators” the older generation was being forced out of minority and cooperative work. The penetration of National Socialist ideology into the Kulturbund, the adoption of the forms of Reich German organizations - especially in the youth movement - and the propagation of a uniform ethnic German costume aroused resistance from the older generation, not least from the churches. The split brought about by the renewal movement in the ethnic group continued to have an effect even after the conflict had been settled, although those who came into leadership positions were still comparatively moderate representatives of this direction who tried to protect the interests of all Germans. At the same time, the mistrust of broad circles of the German population remained lively because the radical representatives of the “renewal movement” tried to gain the influence they had been denied in the minority organizations by other means and were supported by individual institutions in the Reich.

In the remaining years up to the German attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, the vast majority of the German minority was organized in the Kulturbund. This was particularly true of Vojvodina: at the end of 1940, the new federal government boasted that 98 percent of Yugoslav Germans had become members of the Kulturbund and that it had now de facto organized the entire German ethnic group. and the pressure that had been exerted on those who were not nationally enthusiastic. The new leadership proved successful in organizing broad strata, and the Kulturbund increasingly adopted the characteristics of the NS mass organizations and their structures. The foreign policy successes of the German Reich and the new national pride of the Vojvodina Germans were decisive factors.

In Slovenia, the German-speaking ethnic group of the Gottscheers lived in the south of Lower Carniola , which had been organized as part of the Swabian-German Cultural Association since 1931. After the previous leadership of the Swabian-German Cultural Association was dismissed by the “renewers” ​​in May 1939, a three-person committee consisting of Josef Schober , Wilhelm Lampeter and Martin Sturm took over the leadership of the minority there. With the establishment of the “Gottscheer Team”, which was organized in so-called “storms” at the community level, it was possible to set up a National Socialist organization reaching into every village and to prepare for the imminent evacuation of the Gottscheers.

On March 28, 1941, Janko finally stopped all activities of the Swabian-German Cultural Association and its affiliated departments on the instructions of the German government. Successor organizations were the

After the defeat of Yugoslavia in 1941 , the VoMi appointed Josef Janko as the “ ethnic group leader of the Germans in Serbia and the Banat ” and Branimir Altgayer as the “ethnic group leader of the Germans in Croatia ”. Jakob Lichtenberger , the former “youth warden” of the Kulturbund, organized a vigilante group for Altgayer, the “team”, from the core of which he formed the SS-based German team (ES) at the end of May 1941 , and which he commanded from 1941 to 1943 .

The new organization of the Kulturbund was as follows:

  1. for finance and cash (Tengler);
  2. for organizational and personal matters (Josef Beer);
  3. for propaganda and printing (Heinrich Reister);
  4. for culture (Adam Maurus), divided into:
    1. for training (speaker: Franz Dottermann);
    2. for libraries (Adam Kramer);
    3. for the theater (Merkle);
    4. for music (Peter Freund);
  5. Legal Department (Adam Rometsch);
  6. for statistics and graphics (Johann Wüscht);
  7. for social welfare (Anton Lehmann);
  8. National Health (Gottfried Kutschera);
  9. for sport and sport (Michael Reiser);
  10. Women's department (Johann Ott);
  11. Youth department (Jakob Lichtenberger, for the girls Lissi Lehmann);
  12. for village tasks (Fritz Metzger and from January 1941 Karl Moser);
  13. for the craft (Peter Bubenheim); this department also had an agency for the placement and supervision of apprentices (speaker: Hans Hefciel).

In the Yugoslav criminal trials after the end of the war, defendants of the German ethnic group were accused of collaboration with the enemy and membership in the Waffen-SS, as well as membership in the Swabian-German cultural association or its successor organization, the German ethnic group leadership. The term for Kulturbund members was Kulturbundovac (Slovene Kulturbundovec ), plural Kulturbundovci .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ After the “Croatian Peasant Party” changed course in 1924 and abandoned its parliamentary boycott, it supported a government made up of the Serbian Democrats, the “Slovenian People's Party” and the “Yugoslav Muslim Organization” until 1925. Between 1925 and 1927 they formed a coalition government with the Serbian "radicals". (cf. Holm Sundhaussen : Experiment Yugoslavia: from the founding of the state to the collapse of the state. BI-Taschenbuchverlag, Zurich 1993. ISBN 3-411-10241-1 , p. 51f.)
  2. ↑ This exaggerated number was the result of a deception, as the family members of a member of the Kulturbund were automatically counted as members (cf. Zoran Janjetović: Die Donauschwaben in Vojvodina and National Socialism. ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Elisabeth Fendl, Werner Mezger , Michael Prosser-Schell, Hans-Werner Retterat: Yearbook for German and Eastern European Folklore. Waxmann Verlag, 2010. ISBN 3-8309-7501-5 , p. 52
  2. ^ Immo Eberl , Konrad G. Gündisch: The Donauschwaben. Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1987. Chapter 17: The minority problem in Southeast Europe since 1918
  3. ^ A b Zoran Janjetović : The Danube Swabians in Vojvodina and National Socialism. In: Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth : The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. IKS Verlag, Munich 2006.
  4. ↑ a b Geza Charles Paikert: The Danube Swabians. German Populations in Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia and Hitler′s impact on their Patterns. The Hague 1967, p. 269.
  5. ^ Contributions to folk and local history. AG Danube Swabian Teachers in the Südostdeutschen Kulturwerk e. V., ISBN 3-926276-21-5 , p. 20
  6. ^ Valentin Oberkersch : The Germans in Syrmia, Slavonia, Croatia and Bosnia. Working group for Donauschwäbische Heimat- und Volksforschung, Munich 1989. ISBN 3-926276-07-X , p. 340
  7. ↑ Carl Bethke : (Not) a common language? Aspects of German-Jewish Relationship History in Slavonia, 1900–1945. LIT Verlag Münster, 2013. ISBN 3-643-11754-X , p. 183
  8. ↑ a b c d Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division "Prinz Eugen": the Banat Swabians and the National Socialists war crimes. Campus Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , p. 132
  9. ↑ Michael Schwartz , Michael Buddrus , Martin Holler, Alexander Post: Functionaries with a past: The founding board of the Federal Association of Expellees and the “Third Reich”. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013. ISBN 3-486-71626-3 . P. 193
  10. ^ Markus Hische: The role of the German ethnic group in the economic relations between the Third Reich and the Independent State of Croatia 1941–45. GRIN Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-640-05786-4
  11. ↑ Hans Rasimus: As a stranger in the fatherland. Munich 1989. p. 161
  12. ^ A b c Stefan Wolff: German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging. Berghahn Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57181-504-X , p. 148
  13. ^ Immo Eberl, Konrad G. Gündisch: The Donauschwaben. Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1987. p. 176
  14. ^ Immo Eberl, Konrad G. Gündisch: The Donauschwaben. Ministry of the Interior Baden-Württemberg, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1987. Chapter 7: 7. Constitution and politics in Southeast Europe
  15. ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS-Division "Prinz Eugen": the Banat Swabians and the National Socialists war crimes. Campus Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , p. 136
  16. ^ Oskar Feldtänzer : The Danube Swabians in the interwar period and their relationship to National Socialism. Felix Ermacora Institute, Research Center for the Peoples of the Danube Monarchy, 2003, p. 55
  17. ^ Stefan Wolff: German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging. Berghahn Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57181-504-X , p. 150
  18. ^ Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth : Culture and History of Southeast Europe (IKGS). Scientific series, Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe at LMU Munich , Munich 2008. ISBN 3-9809851-1-3 , p. 188
  19. ^ Johann Böhm : The German ethnic group in Yugoslavia 1918-1941: domestic and foreign policy as symptoms of the relationship between the German minority and the Yugoslav government. Peter Lang 2009, ISBN 3-63159-557-3 , p. 322
  20. ↑ a b c d e f Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Nationality policy in Yugoslavia: the German minority 1918–1978. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980, ISBN 3-525-01322-1 , p. 35 ff.
  21. ↑ Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics ?: the "Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften" from 1931–1945. Nomos, January 1, 1999. p. 294
  22. ↑ Josef Beer : The suffering of the Germans in communist Yugoslavia: local reports on the crimes against the Germans by the Tito regime in the period from 1944 to 1948 , Volume 1. Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, 1992. P. 391
  23. ^ Jozo Tomasevich: War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941-1945. Stanford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8047-7924-4 , p. 202. In English.
  24. ^ Josef Janko : The way and the end of the German ethnic group in Yugoslavia. Graz, Stuttgart 1982. In: Zoran Janjetović : The Danube Swabians in Vojvodina and National Socialism. In: Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth : The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. IKS Verlag, Munich 2006.
  25. ↑ Josip Mirnić: Nemci u u Bačkoj Drugom svetskom ratu. Novi Sad 1974, p. 58. In: Zoran Janjetović: The Danube Swabians in Vojvodina and National Socialism. In: Mariana Hausleitner, Harald Roth: The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. IKS Verlag, Munich 2006.
  26. ↑ a b Erich Petschauer: The Gottscheer Century Book. Wilhelm Braumüller Verlag 1980. pp. 103, 104. ( PDF; 1.7 MB ( Memento of November 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )).
  27. ↑ Hans Herrschaft: The Banat: a German settlement area in south-eastern Europe. Verlag Grenz und Abroad, 1942. p. 12. (Quote: Your [the Germans in the Gottschee] current ethnic group leader is Josef Schober )
  28. ↑ Mislav Miholek: German troops of Ustasha Army.
  29. ^ Carl Bethke: “No common language?” LIT Verlag Münster, 2013, ISBN 3-643-11754-X , p. 265.
  30. ↑ Nemačka obaveštajna služba u staroj Jugoslaviji II. Belgrade 1955, p. 131.
  31. ↑ Europa ethnica. Volume 60, Issue 3–4. Federal Union of European Nationalities. W. Braumüller, 2003. p. 110.
  32. ^ Slava Ogrizović: Ljudi i događaji, koji se ne zaboravljaju. NIP, Novinarsko izdavačko poduzeće, 1953. p. 67
  33. ↑ Jožica Veble-Hodnikova: Preživela sem taborišě smrti. Volume 2. Založba Borec, 1975 p. 10
  34. ↑ Marjan Žnidarič: Do pekla in nazaj: nacistična okupacija in narodnoosvobodilni boj v Mariboru, 1941–1945. Muzej Narodne Osvoboditve, 1997. ISBN 9-61905-020-7 , pp. 57, 60f.