Witikobund

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The Witikobund is a ethnic Sudeten German association that sees itself as a "national community of the Sudeten Germans". The association is based in Munich . The Witikobund was classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Ministry of the Interior until 1967 and is suspected of pursuing right-wing extremist goals.

Self-image

According to its own description, the association is an independent, not partisan or church-bound elitist "national community of the Sudeten Germans". It was named after the fictional character " Witiko " by Adalbert Stifter . The association locates its roots in the Sudeten German gymnastics movement and the home, culture and protection associations of the Sudeten Germans, to whose tradition it feels obliged.

Membership is basically for life: "Whoever betrays the old duty today will also betray the new tomorrow."

The association includes a youth association, the "Junge Witikonen" (JW). The approximately 1000 members so far have been and are being elected. For every new future member, two Witikons have to vouch.

The association issues the association publication Witikobrief four times a year .

history

The Witikobund was officially founded on October 1, 1950 in Stuttgart by supporters of the Sudeten German Party (SdP) led by Konrad Henlein in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s . This was preceded by a collection movement that was launched in 1947. At the invitation of the entrepreneur Emil Lode and the former Henlein confidante Walter Brand , seven former National Socialists met in Waldkraiburg on November 9, 1947 and founded the forerunner organization to bring together representatives of the ethnic Sudeten Germans. In addition to Emil Lode and Walter Brand, there were the former Hitler Youth leader Rudolf Bayer , the former chairman of the Nazi League of German Technology in the Sudetenland Rupert Glaas , Konstantin Höß , the former Gestapo head of Belgrade Karl Kraus and the former Senator of the SdP Hugo Liehm .

According to Richard Stöss , the Witikobund in the 1950s and 1960s was an "influential elitist traditional community", which was largely composed of former leading "völkisch-nationalist" National Socialists from the Sudetenland. The federal government exerted great influence on the All-German Bloc / Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (GB / BHE for short), the All-German Party (GDP) and the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft .

In 2003, the association reactivated the “Witikobund Austria Working Group” under the leadership of Martin Graf as an Austrian regional association .

positioning

Membership structure

Many members of the Witikobund were National Socialist functionaries before 1945. Thilo von Uslar stated in a Zeit article from 1966 that of 634 Witikobund members on a membership list from 1958, more than 600 people had exercised such functions before 1945.

For example, among the founding members were:

In addition to the founding members, numerous other leading members of the Witikobund had a National Socialist past that was not limited to mere membership, e.g. B .:

Relations with the NPD and other right-wing extremist organizations

In the 1960s there were close ties to the NPD , and several party members such as Heinz Flöter and Ernst Anrich were on the board of the Witikobund in 1967. Some of these connections continue to this day. Both the NPD federal press spokesman and former federal chairman of the National Democratic Union of Universities (NHB) and the Young National Democrats (JN) Karl-Heinz Sendbühler and the former NHB federal manager Günter Schwemmer are Witikonen, as are the two former NPD members of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament Rolf Kosiek and Karl Baßler .

In the 1970s , several activists of the Wiking youth took part in the “Reich Foundation Ceremonies” of the Witikobund regarding the foundation of the German Empire . In the 1980s there were again new relationships with the Southern Africa Aid Committee .

Right-wing historical revisionism

In addition, several members expressed themselves in a right-wing revisionist way and relativized or denied the Holocaust . Activists from the Witikobund such as Walter Staffa and Werner Nowak founded the German Seminar in 1970 , which organized lectures mainly by right-wing extremist speakers.

Right-wing politicians and publicists

Numerous right-wing and right-wing extremist politicians and publicists were and are active in the Witikobund and especially its board of directors. B.

In addition to the NPD members mentioned, the former REP candidates for the Bavarian state parliament Henning Lenthe , Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel (* 1944) and Horst Rudolf Übelacker (* 1936) and Hellmut Diwald (1924–1993) are members of the association. Ardelt was a member of the CDU for many years , which he left in the 1990s.

Numerous Witikons have published in the right-wing conservative Junge Freiheit . The former deputy editor-in-chief of "Junge Freiheit" and organizer of the JF summer university 1993, Hans-Ulrich Kopp , has been a member since 1983 and since 1992 editor of the "Witikobrief".

For example, Alfred Mechtersheimer was a speaker at the events of the Witikobund in November 2003 .

Several people recognized in the bourgeois camp are or were Witikons, e.g. B. the long-time CDU functionary Rüdiger Goldmann (* 1941; 1965 to mid-1990s), the former CDU parliamentary group assistant in the Hessian state parliament and Thuringian State Secretary Wolfgang Egerter (1930-2008) (Deputy Federal Chairman of the WB) and Herbert Fleissner (1928 –2016, member of the CSU).

Radicalization of other associations of displaced persons and infiltration

The Witikobund always represented the right wing of the Sudeten German expellees and radicalized other expellee associations, trying to lead them on a “ national-ethnic line”. Here he works “isolated” and sees himself as a “management organization ”.

Members of the Witikobund tried - often successfully - "to fill positions in political parties or other organizations". These were the NPD, communal party offices , state parliament positions, the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, the Federation of Expellees , other right-wing extremist organizations, publishers, the media and positions in the state and business. The Federal Assembly of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft had “for decades over fifty percent” Witikonen. The "Ostkunde", a school subject that was introduced in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s, was either appropriated or influenced. Members infiltrated other organizations and filled posts.

Program

According to the statutes , the Wikitobund e. V. "the promotion and support of the legitimate concerns of refugees and displaced persons", "the reparation of the injustice of displacement on the basis of international law " as well as the "return of the confiscated property on the basis of a fair compensation" as its main tasks.

In the opinion of critics, these demands support a renewed annexation of the Sudetenland, which is now part of the Czech Republic, to Germany. The " Sudetenland should be brought home into the Reich " and the German borders from 1939 restored.

In addition, the Witikobund is accused of stirring up racism and xenophobia. For example, the long-time federal chairman Horst Rudolf Übelacker said in the Witiko letter, among other things: “The Germans, squeezed into the remaining areas in western and central Germany as well as in Austria and also beset by an 'army of millions' of foreign immigrants, are faced with a gradually crumbling façade of contemporary history . ”Furthermore, the Shoah is relativized or denied. In the 1974 Witikobrief, for example, the following assertion can be found: “The 6 million Jews are among the most powerful historical lies of the recent past ”.

Assessments by the protection of the constitution

In response to inquiries in 2001, 2008 and 2011, the federal government announced that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution at the Witikobund had found a “concentration of evidence for right-wing extremist activities”. One such clue is the “accumulation of anti-Jewish passages in particular” in the publication Witiko-Brief .

Federal chairwoman of the Witikobund

Structure of the Federation

The federal government is divided into regional associations and local districts.

Sub-groupings

Walter Staffa, for example, headed a “Nürtingen debate group” in Nürtingen in 1964. In 1968, on the initiative of Staffa, a "state political working group" was founded, which was to act as the spiritual center of the Witikobund. He then founded the “German Seminar” with other Witikonen in Stuttgart in 1970 as an offshoot and spearhead, which in 1984 also had its headquarters in Nürtingen. In 1997 in Nürtingen he founded an "action group" of the Witikobund with the Witikonen Rolf Kosiek, Karl Baßler and the then Witikonen Werner Nowak.

literature

  • Kurt Nelhiebel : The Henleins yesterday and today: Background and goals of the Witikobund. Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1962, DNB 453549667 .
  • Georg Herde, Alexa Stolze: The Sudeten German Landsmannschaft. Cologne 1987.
  • Martin Dietzsch : cadre against the forty-five - the völkische Gesinnungsgemeinschaft Witikobund. In: Helmut Kellershohn (ed.): The plagiarism. Duisburg 1994.
  • Sönke Braasch: The Witikobund. In: The Right Edge. June / July / August 1995.
  • Jens Mecklenburg : Handbook of German right-wing extremism. Elefanten-Press, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-88520-585-8 , p. 364ff.
  • Thomas Grumke , Bernd Wagner (ed.): Handbook right-wing radicalism. People - organizations - networks from neo-Nazism to the middle of society. Opladen 2002, pp. 439-442.
  • Andreas Kossert : Cold home. The history of the German expellees after 1945. Munich 2008, especially p. 182 ff.
  • Tobias Weger : “Volkstumskampf” without end? Sudeten German Organizations, 1945–1955. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57104-0 .

Own representation

  • Hans Erich, Walter Brand : The Witikobund. Path, essence, work, 20 years of the Wikibund (= contributions of the Witikobund to questions of time , volume 20). Munich 1969, DNB 458675040 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Hedwig: Nazi past of former Hessian state parliament member. (pdf) Documentation of the conference on March 14 and 15, 2013 in the Hessian state parliament. Norbert Kartmann, President of the Hessian State Parliament, 2014, p. 187 , accessed on March 7, 2017 .
  2. ^ Andreas Kossert: Cold home. The history of the German expellees after 1945 ; Munich 2008, p. 183.
  3. ↑ Richard Stöss: Party Handbook: the parties of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1980 , 2nd volume, Westdeutscher Verlag 1984, p. 1452.
  4. ↑ Thomas Grumke, Bernd Wagner: Handbook right-wing radicalism . Springer-Verlag, 2013, p. 440 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ↑ Stefanie Mayer: "Dead Injustice"? The “Beneš Decrees” - a historical-political debate in Austria. Peter Lang, 2009, p. 113.
  6. ↑ Thilo von Uslar: " The 'honorable' Karmasin " , Die Zeit of June 24, 1966.
  7. ↑ a b Cf. Andreas Kossert: Kalte Heimat. The history of the German expellees after 1945. Munich 2008, p. 182 ff.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Scholz: Solidarity with those affected. In: our zeit - newspaper of the DKP. May 25, 2001. Retrieved December 2, 2017 .
  9. ^ Statutes of the Witikobund e. V. in the version of October 13, 2007 .
  10. ↑ The Witikobund. Late realization ; Article from December 16, 2001 in: haGalil.com, available online
  11. ↑ BT-Drs. 14/7865 : Answer of the federal government to the small question of the deputies Jelpke and the faction of the PDS
  12. ↑ BT-Drs. 16/10755 : Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question of the MPs Ulla Jelpke, Sevim Dagdelen, Petra Pau and the parliamentary group Die Linke.
  13. ↑ BT-Drs. 17/5725 : Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from the MPs Volker Beck (Cologne), Claudia Roth (Augsburg), Monika Lazar, other MPs and the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group
  14. ^ Articles of Association. § 6: Structure of the Federation. In: witikobund.de. Witikobund e. V., October 13, 2007, accessed June 29, 2017 .
  15. ^ Rainer Nübel: "German Seminar" under observation. The protection of the constitution has its sights on right-wing extremist think tank - Nowak co-founder. In: Nürtinger Zeitung of February 10, 1998
  16. ↑ The statement that Stain was a member of the Bundestag does not apply; he was an MdL in Bavaria