Black hand
The Black Hand ( Serbian Црна Рука, Crna ruka ), from 1911 formally association or death (Уједињење или Смрт, Ujedinjenje ili Smrt ), was a nationalist - irredentist Serbian secret society of the early 20th century, which also used terrorist means for the establishment of a Greater Serbian or South Slav national state, in which all of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be united with Serbia .
The Black Hand was a union of officers , the majority of whom were Serbs , but also a few Croatians and Bosniaks (e.g. Oskar Tartaglia). There were similar conspiratorial officer connections in Romania and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century . The Black Hand was considered a secret organization, although its existence and some of its members were publicly known.
Members of the Black Hand and its predecessor organization have included in the assassination of Serbian King Aleksandar Obrenovic and his wife Draga Mašin and the Sarajevo assassination involved that the July crisis triggered leading to the First World War led.
founding
The origins of the black hand go back to circles in the Serbian officer corps that took place on May 29th . / June 11, 1903 greg. murdered the Serbian king Aleksandar Obrenović and his wife, Draga Mašin , which ended the rule of the Obrenović dynasty in Serbia. Aleksandar had made himself unpopular primarily because of his marriage and his authoritarian governance based on repression, but also because of his foreign policy, which was based on Austria.
On March 3, 1911, officers who sympathized with the Greater Serbian nationalism in the alliance with Russia and France, directed primarily against Austria and wanted to aggressively enforce this policy, founded the secret organization "Ujedinjenje ili Smrt" (union or death) in Belgrade was also called "Black Hand". The general staff officer, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević , called Apis, was in the lead . Other founding members were Colonels Čedomilj A. Popović and Milovan Milovanović, Lieutenant Colonel Velimir S. Vemić, Majors Ilija Radivojević, Vojislav Tankosić and Milan Vasić, Vice-Consul Bogdan Radenković and journalist Ilija M. Jovanović.
internal structure
According to “Ujedinjenje ili Smrt” (unification or death), the aim of the organization was the realization of the “ folk ideal”, the unification of all Serbs in one nation state. In doing so, according to its own statement, “the revolutionary struggle precedes the cultural one” and operated:
- influencing all state and social forces in Serbia, with the role of Piedmont in the Italian Risorgimento being cited as a model.
- the formation of a revolutionary organization in all areas where Serbs live
- the fight against their enemies by all means
- the maintenance of friendly relations with pro-Serb states, popular associations and individuals as well as with other national liberation movements
A supreme central administration based in Belgrade was set up as the highest body, the number of which should be as small as possible. The decisions of the Supreme Central Administration were binding on all members of the organization; it controlled their lives and assets. The interests of the organization came first, its members had to report all information and findings pertaining to the organization that they learned on business or privately.
The Central Supreme Administration had the right to pronounce death sentences carried out by particularly trustworthy members. If someone had become a member, he could no longer leave the organization, no one was allowed to accept his resignation.
The Black Hand was a secret organization whose existence should remain unknown to the public. To ensure the secrecy of the members, they were not listed by name but by number. As a rule, the members did not know each other and communicated with them through special contacts. Only the Supreme Central Administration knew all the members. Although they did not know the organization as such, its members pledged to unconditional obedience and absolute secrecy. Dimitrijević, for example, "burned all of his documents at regular intervals," which is why there are still considerable gaps in knowledge about the organization.
oath
The following oath was formulated by Jovanović-Cupa and taken by new members in a darkened room in front of a figure with a hood:
- I, who enter the organization “Union or Death”, swear by the sun that warms me, by the earth that nourishes me, before God, by the blood of my fathers, by my honor and by my life, that I am from this From the moment until my death I will faithfully follow the statutes of this organization and always be ready to make sacrifices to all of them.
- I swear before God, by my honor and by my life, that I will follow all directions and commands without contradiction.
- I swear before God, by my honor, and by my life, that I will take all the secrets of this organization to my grave.
- May God and my comrades in this organization judge me if I knowingly break or circumvent this oath.
Involvement in assassinations
In 1910, the Black Hand planned an assassination attempt on the Austro-Hungarian administrator in Bosnia, Marijan Varešanin von Vareš . The Serbian student and assassin Bogdan Žerajić fired five rounds from a revolver at Varešanin on June 15, 1910 in Sarajevo, but Varešanin survived by an incredible coincidence. The perpetrator then shot himself with the sixth and last bullet.
Žerajić's assassination was a great incentive for Gavrilo Princip , the assassin from Sarajevo . Princip visited Žerajić's grave and swore to avenge him and to "honor" his deed with a similar act.
In 1911, Colonel Dimitrijević planned an assassination attempt on the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I in Vienna , but this was not carried out. Muhamed Mehmedbašić , who was involved in the assassination attempt in Sarajevo , was supposed to carry out an attack on the country chief of Bosnia, Feldzeugmeister Oskar Potiorek , in January 1914 , but he did not succeed.
Decline
Not all those involved in the 1903 coup shared the goals of the Black Hand. Officers around Colonel Petar Živković founded the White Hand in 1912 to counteract the Black Hand. Members of the White Hand gained influence especially after 1917; Živković served as Prime Minister of Yugoslavia from 1929 to 1932.
Although the actions of the Black Hand supported the policy of the Serbian government at the outbreak of World War I , the government recognized the dangerousness of such a secret organization. In particular, the Black Hand was aloof from a Yugoslav federation, as it has since been advocated by the Serbian government, and insisted on first safeguarding Serbia's territorial claims. In 1917 all of its members were arrested and charged with plotting the assassination of the Serbian Prince Regent, Aleksandar Karađorđević . The original of the statutes was found at Dimitrijević Apis, a member of the Supreme Central Administration, and a list with the names of the members was found at Lieutenant Colonel Velimir S. Vemić. In a show trial , Apis and two other officers were sentenced to death and shot . The other defendants were sentenced to long prison terms and later given amnesty.
literature
- Christopher Clark : The sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-421-04359-7 (Original title: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Allen Lane, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-7139-9942-6 ).
Web links
- Statutes of the Association from 1911 at WWI Document Archive (in English translation)
Individual evidence
- ^ Latinka Perović: Serbia until 1918 . In: Dunja Melčić (Ed.): The Yugoslavia War: Handbook on Prehistory, Course and Consequences . 2nd updated and expanded edition. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , p. 106 .
- ^ Clark: The Sleepwalkers , 2012, p. 38.
- ↑ Christopher Clark : The Sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2013, p.
- ↑ Christopher Clark : The Sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2013, p. 68.
- ^ Joachim Remak : Sarajevo. The Story of a Political Murder. London 1959, p. 46.