Volksbund for Freedom and Fatherland
The Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland was a German cross-party and cross-camp organization founded during the First World War in 1917, which, in contrast to the extremist Fatherland Party, advocated moderate war aims and a parliamentarization of domestic politics.
prehistory
The actual founding was preceded by various resolutions by politically moderate university teachers against the Fatherland Party. Since it became clear that resolutions against the nationalist agitation of the Fatherland Party were insufficient, Ernst Troeltsch in particular took the initiative to found the Volksbund. The idea for this came from Adolf Grabowsky and Friedrich Meinecke .
Members
When it was founded on December 4, 1917, Johannes Giesberts spoke of the Center Party and the Christian trade unions , the historian Friedrich Meinecke and the social democrat Gustav Bauer .
The free trade unions joined the organization with their members. This gave the Volksbund a mass base that was stronger than that of the Fatherland Party. The bourgeois social reformer Ernst Francke became chairman of the organization .
aims
At its first rally in Berlin on January 7, 1918, the Volksbund passed a resolution in which u. a. the abolition of the three-tier suffrage and a parliamentarization of the political system were called for. However, the Volksbund could not completely part with previous ideas. For example, Hans Delbrück continued to claim large colonial holdings in Africa and felt it was dishonorable that he was portrayed as a politician of renunciation.
effect
However, the Volksbund did not succeed in counterbalancing the agitation of the Fatherland Party. With a differentiated argumentation he did not come up against simple slogans. On the other hand, the demands of the Volksbund did not go far enough for many workers. However, Meinecke saw the Volksbund as a model for the later Weimar coalition .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chronology of the German trade unions 1918.
- ↑ Holger Afflerbach: Review of: Steffen Bruendel : Volksgemeinschaft or Volksstaat. The "Ideas of 1914" and the reorganization of Germany in the First World War.
literature
- Steffen Bruendel : Volksgemeinschaft or Volksstaat. The "Ideas of 1914" and the reorganization of Germany in the First World War. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-05-003745-8 .
- Herbert Gottwald : People's Federation for Freedom and Fatherland (VfFV) 1917–1920 . In: Dieter Fricke et al. (Ed.): Lexicon on the history of parties 1789–1945 . Vol. 4, VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1986, pp. 414-419.
- Marcus Llanque : Democratic Thinking in War. The German Debate in the First World War. Berlin 2000, p. 221 ff. ( Digitized version ).
