Breaking interest bondage

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" Breaking interest bondage" was the title of a money reform pamphlet by Gottfried Feders , which became the core economic policy term and slogan in the 25-point program of the NSDAP . Gottfried Feder founded the German Combat League in 1919 to break the bondage of interest and published his manifesto on the break of bondage of interest in the same year . The economic policy concept was anti-capitalist and anti-communist , but saw itself as socialist in the sense of the national community and was also anti-Semitic . In the National Socialist Völkisch ideology , this slogan was closely related to the slogan “ Common good before self-interest”, which also appears in the program of the NSDAP, and with the distinction between “collecting and creating capital”.

term

The term of interest bondage was used for the first time by the German Workers' Party in Bohemia, which, under the influence of Walter Riehl , created a new program at a party congress in Iglau in 1913 . In 1919 the DAP was absorbed into the German National Socialist Workers' Party , which existed as a splinter party until 1926. The Sudeten German DAP politician Rudolf Jung used the term in a series of essays that appeared in the Wiener Deutschen Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1913 .

The demand for "breaking the bondage" was formulated by the later economic theorist of the NSDAP, Gottfried Feder, according to his own statements in mid-November 1918. In 1919 he founded a “Kampfbund to break interest bondage” and wrote its manifesto. Whether Feder leaned on Silvio Gesell's free economics theory is controversial in the scientific literature. The two theorists met once in April 1919, but both always denied what they had in common.

The spiritual roots of Feder's ideas can be found in Wenzel Schober and Josef Schlesinger's theory of an uncovered “people's money” without gold binding . Feder also resorted to ideas from Karl Marx .

The background for this and other monetary reform proposals in the immediate post-war period was the high expenditure on debt servicing for war bonds , which in 1919 made up around 80% of the Reich budget. With his manifesto, Feder wanted to combat “the international overpowering monetary powers, the supranational financial power enthroned above all the peoples' right to self-determination , international big business , the so-called golden international ”, codes for Judaism, which he is responsible for the spread of materialism and general moralization made. He believed that with the "breaking of interest bondage" he could abolish all direct and indirect taxes that would mean "only duty to pay tribute to big business, but not, as we sometimes imagine, voluntary sacrifice for the realization of community work". “Liberation from the bondage of interest on money” is “the clear slogan for the world revolution , for the liberation of creative work from the shackles of supranational money powers”. He suggested that all major public tasks be financed by issuing interest-free “state treasury vouchers ” while avoiding borrowing .

The manifesto for breaking interest bondage contains a nine-point program and legal requirements derived from it:

  1. Conversion of all debt instruments of the German Reich and the German federal states with the repeal of the interest obligation to legal tender at the nominal amount
  2. In the case of fixed-interest securities, the interest obligation is converted into a repayment obligation.
  3. Installment repayment of real estate debts and mortgages
  4. The entire monetary system is subordinated to the central treasury. All private banks are affiliated as branch operations.
  5. Real estate loan is only granted by the state bank. Personal and commercial credit is left to private bankers against a state license.
  6. Redemption of equity securities in the same way as fixed income securities
  7. All people who are not able to earn their living will receive an annuity instead of the previous interest income on delivery of the securities .
  8. Confiscation of war bonds and other debt instruments of the Reich or the states, graduated according to assets
  9. Popular education that money is and must not be anything other than an instruction on work done.

National Socialism

In 1920, Feder's economic policy ideas found their way into the 25-point program of the NSDAP. In point 11, the "abolition of work and effortless income" was called for, another formulation by Feders. Beneath it was written in bold as an emphatic subheading of the following points "Breaking interest bondage!" Point 11 itself was presented as a consequence of the common good principle of point 10: "The first duty of every citizen must be to create mentally or physically . The activity of the individual must not violate the interests of the general public, but must take place within the framework of the whole and for the benefit of all. "Points 12-18 represent individual aspects of the breaking of interest bondage and public benefit :" 12. In view of the immense sacrifices of property and blood that every war demands of the people, personal enrichment through the war must be described as a crime against the people. We therefore demand complete confiscation of all war profits. 13. We demand the nationalization of all (so far) already socialized ( trust ) companies. 14. We demand profit-sharing in large companies. 16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its maintenance, immediate communalization of the large department stores and their leasing at cheap prices to small traders, the strictest consideration of all small traders when delivering to the state, the federal states or municipalities. 17. We demand a land reform adapted to our national needs , the creation of a law on the free expropriation of land for public benefit purposes. Abolition of land interest and prevention of all land speculation. 18. We call for ruthless struggle against those who damage the common interest through their activities. Common criminals, usurers, smugglers , etc. are to be punished with death , regardless of religion or race. "

Until the National Socialists came to power, Feder was considered an important economic theorist of the NSDAP, his publications are praised in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf : He explained to him the “difference between this pure capital as the ultimate result of creative labor and capital, its existence and nature exclusively based on speculation ”. The need to combat this stock exchange and loan capital with a Jewish connotation was one of the prerequisites for founding the NSDAP.

In Joseph Goebbels ' Little Abc of the National Socialist from 1925, a distinction was also made between “state and stock market capitalism”, that is to say: between “nationally creating and internationally-raving capital”. The contrast led to the demand for "breaking interest bondage":

"By breaking the bondage we understand the elimination of the tyrannical money power of the stock exchange in the state and economy, which exploits the working people, morally contaminates them and makes them incapable of national thinking."

In the process, the supposedly non-productive, “demanding” capital, whose interest bondage had to be broken, was associated with Judaism. In this way, the widespread anti-capitalist or socialist longings of parts of the German population were to be redirected to the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists.

Goebbels' cynical comment shows that the “breaking of interest bondage” had no meaning through this propagandistic function , “only those who listen to this nonsense have to break”.

What exactly was meant by “breaking the bondage of interest” changed the more realistic a takeover of government by the NSDAP seemed to become: If it was initially understood to mean the abolition of all interest, soon only interest rate cuts and “fair interest” were required. In 1924, Feder advocated the expropriation of both Jewish property and unprofitable large estates and a freeze on interest rates. For him it was always in the foreground that the state should receive sovereignty over the currency and thus the possibility of state money creation independent of the gold cover . In the Great Depression , he demanded job creation measures , by a certificate created Giro money should be paid. But he only wanted to make use of this possibility "in a moderate way", because the later economics ministers Hjalmar Schacht and Walther Funk had warned Hitler that an implementation of Feder's plans would finally ruin the German economy.

After the seizure of power , Feder's ideas played no role in the actual politics of the Nazi regime . Initially, Feder got the post of State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Economics, but was then deported to increasingly insignificant posts until he finally withdrew into private life with resignation. However, some measures have been taken to cut rates, such as: B. the "Law on Mortgage Debt". As a result of these measures, the discount rates of the private banks fell from an annual average of 4.95% in 1932 to 2.91% in 1937. These measures were described by the National Socialist press as “breaking the bondage of interest”. Political scientist Christoph H. Werth sums up:

"Ultimately, the doctrine of" breaking the bondage of interest "had no other function than that of a materially trivialized 'salvation doctrine' related to this world, which could only acquire a certain meaning because of its lack of content."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Francis L. Carsten: Fascism in Austria. From Schönerer to Hitler . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1977, ISBN 3-7705-1480-7 , p. 33.
  2. ↑ Christian Hartmann , Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Institute for Contemporary History Munich - Berlin , Munich 2016, vol. 1, p. 572.
  3. ↑ Gottfried Feder: The Manifesto for the Breaking of the Interest Bondage of Money (PDF) 1919. Retrieved on March 1, 2015.
  4. ↑ Assume an influence by Gesell on Avraham Barkai : The economic system of the National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 29; Hermann Weiß : Feder, Gottfried . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 225 (accessed from De Gruyter Online); Frédéric Krier, on the other hand, is skeptical: socialism for petty bourgeoisie. Pierre Joseph Proudhon - pioneer of the Third Reich. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2009, pp. 61–74.
  5. ↑ Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Institute for Contemporary History Munich - Berlin, Munich 2016, vol. 1, p. 566.
  6. ^ Gerhard Senft : From "Volksgeld" to "Mefo change". About the origin and nature of the National Socialist monetary and financial policy. In: Zeitschrift für Sozialökononomie, 85th episode, June 1990.
  7. ^ Herf: Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich . Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-521-33833-2 ( com.ph [accessed January 6, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Institute for Contemporary History Munich - Berlin, Munich 2016, vol. 1, p. 572; Avraham Barkai: The National Socialist Economic System . Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 29.
  9. ^ Matthew Lange: Golden International. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 112.
  10. ↑ Gottfried Feder: The manifesto for breaking the interest bondage of money . Publishing house Jos. C. Huber, Dießen am Ammersee 1919, p. 9, quoted in Thomas Klepsch: National Socialist Ideology. A description of their structure before 1933 . LIT, Münster 1990, p. 100.
  11. ↑ Robert Kriechbaumer: The great stories of politics: political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 . Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2001, ISBN 978-3-205-99400-8 ( com.ph [accessed January 6, 2019]).
  12. ↑ Robert Kriechbaumer: The great stories of politics: political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 . Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2001, ISBN 978-3-205-99400-8 ( com.ph [accessed January 6, 2019]).
  13. ↑ Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Institute for Contemporary History Munich - Berlin, Munich 2016, Vol. 1, pp. 564–567; Avraham Barkai : The National Socialist Economic System . Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 29.
  14. ↑ Joseph Goebbels: The small Abc of the National Socialists. Freedom and bread! Elberfeld 1925
  15. ^ Avraham Barkai: The economic system of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 29.
  16. ^ Herf: Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich . Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-521-33833-2 ( com.ph [accessed January 6, 2019]).
  17. ↑ Joachim Fest : Hitler. A biography. Propylaea 1993, p. 393.
  18. ↑ Robert Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 71.
  19. ^ Avraham Barkai: The economic system of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 29.
  20. ↑ Robert Wistrich: Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 71.
  21. ↑ Robert Wistrich: Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 72.
  22. ^ Avraham Barkai : The economic system of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, politics. 1933-1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, pp. 192–194.
  23. ^ Christoph H. Werth: Socialism and Nation. The German ideology discussion between 1918 and 1945. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1996, p. 229.