Socialist student body of Germany and Austria

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The Socialist Student Union of Germany and Austria (SSt) was a political student association of the interwar period ( Weimar Republic , First Republic ) closely related to the social democracy ( SPD or SDAP ).

After a few short-lived forerunners, it was founded in Leipzig in 1922 as the Association of Socialist Student (Groups) of Germany and Austria (VSSt). The individual university groups also appeared as a socialist student union , a working group of socialist students and similar names; It was not until 1929 that the name Socialist Student Union (SSt) was made binding for both the general association and the local subdivisions.

When it was founded, the association comprised around 1200 members, 800 of which were in Vienna alone. Later, the number of members of the “ Reich German ” groups rose, especially in Berlin (approx. 500), Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig, Hamburg and Cologne (each over 100). Towards the end of the Republic (1931), the SSt with around 5,500 members even surpassed the National Socialist German Student Union (4,000); however, their influence in the student body remained comparatively small. With the university groups of the Weimar coalition parties ( Reich Association of German Democratic Students , Working Group of Republican Center Students ), the SSt formed the Republican Student Cartel from 1922 as a counterweight to the mostly right-wing corporation associations and ethnic collection movements such as the German University Ring . In 1928 the republican associations even initiated the establishment of a counter-association to the right-wing dominated umbrella organization, the German Student Union , which, however, had little success.

After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, the SSt was initially dissolved in Germany; in Austria the ban took place a year later after the establishment of the corporate state there . After the end of the Second World War, the Association of Socialist Students Austria (1945) and the Socialist German Student Union (1946), two now separate successor organizations.

The SSt published several magazines, including the Socialist Academic Rundschau .

Chairperson

literature

  • Eckhard Oberdörfer: Social Democratic Students in the Weimar Republic , in: GDS Archive 6 (2002), pp. 59–83.
  • Franz Walter: Socialist academic and intellectual organizations in the Weimar Republic , Bonn 1990 ISBN 3-8012-4009-6 (on the SST: pp. 27-83)