!!!Deutschnationale Bewegung

Deutschnationale Bewegung (German-Nationalist Movement), important 
political force in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which made itself 
felt during the 1%%sup st/%  Republic and the period of National 
Socialism. Several different nations in Austria had developed a 
national consciousness in the period between 1815 and the Revolution 
of 1848, among them the German-speaking population in the alpine 
regions and the lands of the Bohemian Crown. Participation in the  
Deutscher Bund after 1815 and the  Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 
1848/1849 made many intellectuals champions of the Pan-Germanic cause, 
which would have assigned leadership in Germany to the Austrian 
Empire. The triumph of Prussia, which caused Austria to withdraw from 
the Deutscher Bund (German Confederation) in 1866 and resulted in the 
formation of the German Empire in 1871, caused young and more 
determined political forces in Austria in the 1870s to look for new 
ideas and new forms of organisation. The powerful position of the 
German Empire, clearly visible at the Berlin Congress of 1878, had a 
strong impact, especially on the students in the German-speaking 
lands. They turned away from the old Pan-Germanic ideas and adopted 
more radical viewpoints. A first political manifestation was the 
Aussee Programme of the "German Autonomists" in 1867, which aimed at 
securing German dominance and a German-speaking majority by detaching 
Galicia, Bukovina and Dalmatia from the western half of the Empire. 
This particular form of German-Nationalist Liberalism gave birth to a 
movement which initially consisted of intellectuals and members of the 
lower middle classes in the provincial towns, led by Georg von  
Schoenerer. Following the tradition of the Liberals, who had been in 
opposition since 1879, he and H.  Friedjung, E.  Pernerstorfer, V.  
Adler drew up the  Linz Programme of September 1, 1882. Along with 
demands for social and economic reforms, it called for making German 
the official language and preserving the German character of the lands 
which had formerly belonged to the Deutscher Bund (German 
Confederation). Despite the fact that the Linz Programme was continued 
by various German-Nationalist and radical groups, it did not become 
the basis of a national-democratic party on a larger scale; this was 
partly due to the rigid ideas of Schoener, who three years later 
included an anti-Semitic paragraph in the Programme, and partly to the 
emergence of parties for the masses based on other ideas, such as the 
Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists.

\\
The larger group within the Deutschnationale Bewegung recognised the 
Austrian State and the Habsburg dynasty and joined to form the 
"Deutscher Klub" ("German Club") in the lower house in 1885; together 
with other groups it set up the "Vereinigte Deutsche Linke" ("United 
German Left") and acted as opposition to the government ("Iron Ring"). 
The "Vereinigte Deutsche Linke" was re-organised under the names of 
"German National Party" in 1891 and "German People´s Party" in 
1896, while Schoenerer´s supporters founded the "Alldeutsche 
Vereinigung" ("All-German Union") in 1901. At first, these groups 
formed a loose alliance during the 1907 elections, but in 1910 they 
joined forces to set up the "Deutscher Nationalverband" ("German 
National Association"), which, in 1911, became the strongest party in 
Parliament, holding 104 seats. By 1917, however, it had split into 17 
groups, from which after 1919 emerged the  Grossdeutsche Volkspartei.

!Literature
P. Molisch, Geschichte der deutsch-nationalen Bewegung in 
Oesterreich von ihren Anfaengen bis zum Zerfall der Monarchie, 1926; 
F. Wolfram, Die deutsch-nationale Bewegung in der Monarchie, in: 
Freiheitliche Argumente 1, 1974; A. Fuchs, Geistige Stroemungen 
in Oesterreich, 1984 (reprint); A. G. Whiteside, 
G. R. v. Schoenerer, Alldeutschland und sein Prophet, 1981; 
L. Kammerhofer (ed.), Studien zum Deutschliberalismus in Zisleithanien 
1873-1879, 1992.


%%language
[Back to the Austrian Version|AEIOU/Deutschnationale_Bewegung|class='wikipage austrian']
%%

[{FreezeArticle author='AEIOU' template='Lexikon_1995_englisch'}]
[{ALLOW view All}][{ALLOW comment All}][{ALLOW edit FreezeAdmin}]