Al Verband

Al Verband (league panallemande) existed of 1891 to 1939 and was the smallest of number - but not on the financial plan - movements agitators existing in the German Empire. It was perceived like one of noisy and most influential of these groupings. Its program was expansionist and Nationaliste. In particular in the empire Austro-Hungarian of the Habsbourg an anti-semitism and anti-slavisme had already been done day before the First World War. On a regional basis, Al Verband posted in personal union with the groupings called Kriegsvereinen (groupings warmongers).

History

Prolog

The initial release of the foundation of Al Verband was the signature of the treaty Heligoland - Zanzibar on July 1st, 1890. Alfred Hugenberg published in several newspapers a call which asked for the creation of a Nationalverein (national league) for the defense of the German colonial interests. This led to a meeting on September 28th, 1890 with Francfort-sur-le-Main, that the members of Al Verband were going thereafter to regard as the event founder of their association. Among the founding members appeared Alfred Hugenberg, Emil Kirdorf, Emil Possehl, Friedrich Ratzel and others.

Development until 1918

April 9th, 1891 “ Al Deutsches Verband ” was born in Berlin with the support of Carl Peters. It was not that in 1894 qu' it accepted the name of Al Verband . In the deed of partnership, it was specified that new association did not intend to fight the government, but wished to make it sensitive to the spirit of its program. The fundamental goals were to revive the national conscience, the administration and the support of the German interests abroad and the requirement of a policy in favor of the German interests marked by acts.

The denomination " Al; (any German), at the beginning conceived primarily like a widening of " Reichsdeutsch" (German empire), accepted in the expressions used within the grouping one second significance " of a patriotic fidelity particulière" ; - the expression became comparative word " Deutsch " (German).

The recognition by Al of the complete community of all the Germans, and not only with those which were localized within the borders of the empire, their approach Völkisch, made naturally house of Habsbourg the main target of their propaganda, since it is in Austria-Hungary that were the greatest groups of German-speaking populations not to belong to the German empire.

During first years of existence of the movement, there were innumerable discussions on the orientations to adopt. Thus, the president of the time, Karl von der Heydt, defended the idea that the grouping was to create its political own party, whereas its opponents required on the contrary a strict independence and the maintenance of the movement apart from the policy of the parties. It was ultimately this position which ends up being essential. Program Al was already fixed in its fundamental tendencies as of the years 1890. Expansion, development of the fleet, support with what accentuated the German national character and fights against the minorities of the German Empire. This last aspect aimed in particular the Poles to the East and the French in Alsace-Lorraine.

The day of the association of 1903 created a caesura in the history of Al Verband. The future president Heinrich Class held to with it a speech entitled “Assessment of the new orientation”. By this speech, in which it was caught some bitterly not only to the Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, but also with the emperor Guillaume II, Al Verband materialized its passage to the national opposition. In substance, one reproached the German Empire his renouncements as regards foreign politics and one required a more energetic representation of Germany with respect to the foreigner. The increasing opposition of the grouping against the direction of the Empire and Guillaume II led the grouping at the edge of the internal rupture. For this reason in 1908 Class, which had been elected president of the grouping, felt on the one hand obliged to apply a brake at sour criticisms against the policy of the direction of the empire and, on the other hand, in particular in the question of the German policy with regard to Austria-Hungary - to entirely re-examine the line defended hitherto by the grouping. Whereas until 1908, the question of the annexation of the German-speaking territories of Austria-Hungary to the German Empire was a central point, one was going from now on to be satisfied to recommend a close link between the double crown habsbourgeoise and the German Empire. This raised however a certain opposition within association. Theodor Reismann-Grone in particular, editor of very influential the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Zeitung was declared entirely against the orientation modified by Class. Until the First World War bursts, the latter did not dare to assume the conflict with Reismann-Grone openly because he feared that does not lead to a schism within the grouping, which would have been right of the influence that the latter had on the political plan. Moreover, the grouping faced considerable financial problems which prevented it at least to the First World War from arriving at a consolidation. To that increasing contradictions with other nationalist associations were added. For these reasons, the government of Berlin managed to keep Al Verband away until the First World War and to use it only according to its interests. But even at the time of the second crisis of Morocco, the Secretary of foreign affairs took his distances compared to the positions defended by the direction of the grouping.

Thus the exit of the second Moroccan crisis showed the limits facing the members of Al Verband when they tried to exert an effective pressure on the government. For this reason, their influence on the public opinion in Germany remained rather reduced. To the eyes of Al, the government directed by Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had yielded in front of the France. For Al Verband, this meant rejection of the German national policy. Consequently, Al required a reinforcement of the army. Collaboration with the other nationalist groupings remained however reduced. No moment, Al Verband could play in Germany a decisive part within the nationalist groupings before the First World War. Ultimately, the internal discussions with the grouping were the cause. They had as a consequence that at the time of the declaration of war that Rheinisch Westfälische Zeitung, the body of Reisman-Grones was going to be prohibited, at the same time as the democratic social newspaper Vorwärts, because she had decided in a way very decided against the entry in war of Germany at the sides of Austria-Hungary.

The thought of Al penetrated of the lesson of the social Darwinism and Lamarck, of the Kampf ums Dasein (to fight to be present), of the " Recht of Stärkerens " (reason of most extremely) and the conviction that the German people in rapid growth needed more than vital space ( Lebensraum in German) to be able to survive. At the time of the foundation of Al Verband, one said: “ it is necessary to live the antique " again; Drang nach Osten " ”. If one made them the reproach which they with the minorities the rights refused that for their part they asserted with the profit of their congeneric abroad, they often admitted to represent only the interests of the German nation and thus to have raised their nationalist selfishness with the ideological row of program.

The powerful echo that Al caused before and during the war abroad, was found however less highlighted in the official publications of the grouping which, for tactical reasons, was presented in the form of “moderate and full with measurement” that in the writings of those that one called the " Al sauvages". This is why the most known works and most complete of the foreign authors who are interested in the danger represented by Al Verband, contain only one negligible fraction of the remarks which are ascribable to the grouping. Circles Al were impregnated of a dark and sharp-edged anti-semitism, of a complex of autarky requiring the expansion and the recognition of the war like a creative vital force, like “ regenerating and preserving, the eminent doctor and gardener, who accompanies Humanity towards his greater development ”. The State that Al planned in their writings would have, thanks to its regulations in favor of the order and the requirement for a “purity of the race” of its inhabitants, marked the achievement of the Prussian authoritative militarist State with its reverence with respect to the authority and its general standardization, dependant on the discrimination of the marginal groups or people who think differently. The exaggerated stressing related to the concomitant German national character with the expulsion or the forced assimilation of the populations Slavic and Jewish of the annexed territories, was put by Al at the same level as the reinforcement of the “old German virtues” like the zeal, the direction of the duty and a conservatism firmly anchored on the ground. Here also, the expansion and the reinforcement were supposed to push back outside and thus apparently to solve internal problems like the social strains as well as the social injustices, legal or political.

Al Verband during the First World War

The First World War was for Al Verband one period of great flowering. Finally their continental requirements of expansion were not isolated any more since the number of its members grew like his influence on the right parties. The grouping developed an importance which it had never met previously within the German company.

For a propaganda turned towards objectives in relation to the war the grouping was not however a suitable medium because of the eagerness of which it had made proof during years and who had strongly discredited it in the middle-class circles. For this reason, it stuck largely to a role of coordination and intermediation played in background, its members engaging in groups like the " Unabhängigen Ausschuss für einen deutschen Frieden " (Independent Committee for a German peace). This one, with members like Stresemann, Westarp, Wangenheim, and later Tirpitz and H. St Chamberlain and its president Alldeutschen Dietrich Schäfer became the center of the discussions relating to the goal of the war. Al Verband acted rather as a species of ideological “holding company” politico which provided to other associations the spiritual weapons. Thereafter, Ausschuss was going to take share with the foundation of the Deutschen Vaterlandspartei (Left the German fatherland), as a species of trade union of all the nationalist movements in which the same men (9/2/1917) collaborated.

During the war, radicals Al supported radical objectives. Thus, they recommended the creation of a Customs union in Central Europe under German hegemony. Moreover, the Netherlands and the Swiss as well as the Belgium (which they called the parts “ of the German Empire withdrawn illegally ”) and the parts isolated populated from Germans of the Austria-Hungary as well as the Liechtenstein (called “lost left Federation”) were to become members of the German Empire. Moreover, of the parts of the France were to be put under German monitoring. The plans concerning the borders in the East were similar: the Russia was to lose a substantial part of its territories in the West. The British Empire was to be crushed with the profit of the German colonial empire. Adolf Hitler took up the ideas relating to the vital space (the Lebensraum ) of Al Verband. The Lebensraum concept was forged by the geographer and founding member of Al Verband Friedrich Ratzel. This last wrote with the turning of the century that the History was a combat for vital space and postulated a “ instinct of expansion ” of the “ healthy people ”. The idea of the installation of Eastern Europe as a zone to be colonized was also propagated in a book supported by Al Verband and written by the military theorist Friedrich von Bernhardi " Deutschland und DER nächste Krieg ".

Development of 1918 to 1939

After the First World War, Al Verband did not play any more one great part on the public stage. At the instigation of the senior official pertaining to Al Verband and mentor, Paul Tafel, Anton Drexler had founded DAP, the precursor of NSDAP. In the storm of the post-war period, it bound to the Party of the Irregular forces and looked after the contacts with the reactionary Société of Thulé. October 19th, 1918, the direction of Al Verband emitted a call in which the grouping openly recognized for the first time Antisémite. This call was followed on February 16th, 1919 by the “declaration of Bamberg”, which confirmed the continuation by the grouping of its objectives of before the war as well from the political point of view as from the territorial point of view. In August 1919 followed a modification of the payment which recadrait the declaration of Bamberg: re-establishment of the Empire, creation of a strong army, recovery of the lost territories, racial development of the German people, exclusion of the Jewish S of the grouping.

In 1926, Al Verband and its president of the Elatz time returned once again under the projectors in a short and negative way. The criminal police force of Berlin had found at his place and other politicians business men of right-hand side of the detailed plans of a coup d'etat having for object the destruction of the Republic and the creation of an authoritative dictatorship. The business generated in the German press an great attention like much of incomprehension (apart from the newspapers of extreme right-hand side) and of refusal.

Until 1939, Al Verband did not manage any more to mark the German policy of its print. Ideologically, the grouping was certainly near the NSDAP, but did not follow it unconditionally however. In 1932 an estrangement of short duration occurred were the NSDAP and the grouping, when it was reproached the grouping for having put sticks in the wheels of Adolf Hitler to prevent it from reaching the chancellery. In return, Al reproached the National-Socialists for having betrayed the National Idea and invited their sympathizers to support the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP). After the seizure of power by the NSDAP, Al were tolerated because of their ideological proximity. Ultimately, on March 13rd, 1939, Al Verband was dissolves by Reinhard Heydrich with the reason that their program (namely the gathering of all the Germans within Large Germany) was filled. In their global design, in their requirement according to which the Germans as individuals were to subject themselves without conditions with all the people, represented by the State and the public authorities, the projects of Al Verband were incontestably precursory Nazisme. The expansion in the East, the conquest of a new vital space were not lucky finds of Hitler, the child of Al (Fritz Fischer) or of Himmler, but were concepts which had already been created by Al.

Many members

One year after its foundation, Al Verband had already: 21000 members. This number will never be exceeded before the First World War. In 1894, because of internal dissensions, the number of members had regressed until: 4600 hardly. In 1900, the grouping laid out again of more than: 20000 and at the time of the declaration of war of 1914: 18000 members were recorded. In 1918, this number was assembled to: 36377 before starting to go down again. Al Verband reached its greater number of affiliated in 1922 with approximately: 52000 members. Thereafter, of many members left the movement so that in 1932, it counted nothing any more but eight thousand members. Until its dissolution in 1939, this figure did not change any more to a significant degree. In addition to the affiliation with in an individual capacity, there existed also an affiliation reserved for the companies which allowed whole associations to become members of Al Verband. In 1905, hundred and one associations, representing approximately: 130000 people on the whole were members of the grouping. There do not exist figures available on this point for the posterior period to the First World War. The grouping itself never had many members and was never a movement of mass. It laid out however associates and sympathizers in all the important sectors of the public life consequently of a considerable influence.

Publications

Mitteilungen of Al Deutschen Verbandes . (1891-1893); in einer Auflage von 12.000
Al Blätter . (ab 1894); wöchentlich in einer Auflage von 10.000
Flugschriften of Al Verbandes . (1894-1914); insgesamt 34 Hefte in unterschiedlicher Auflagenhöhe zu bestimmten Anlässen
Der Kampf um das Deutschtum . (1897-1911); 16 Hefte in unbekannter Auflagenhöhe
Handbuch of Al Verbandes . (ab 1896)
Al Werbe- und Merkbüchlein . (ab 1897); jährliches Erscheinen

Movement Al in Austria

To Al Verband of the Empire corresponded in Austria-Hungary and, after the First World War, in the République of German Austria (1918/1919) and then in the République of Austria (as from 1919) the Al Bewegung (ADB), whose executives often came from the organizations Austrian national-Socialists and whose bastion was with Vienna.

The founder of Al Bewegung was in 1901 the knight Georg von Schönerer. The colors of Al Bewegung were the “Black-White-Red”, namely the colors of the German Empire, and he regarded himself as the successor of the Deutschnationale Bewegung .

Al Bewegung was large-allemande, anti-semite, antisocialist, even antibolchevic and antidemocratic. With the incorporation of the ideas anti-semites in the ideology of the movement the separation of with large-German started who in addition remained faithful to the Christian Churches whereas Schönerer started to detach its movement of the Judeo-Christianity in favor of “Wotan”.

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