The Pan-German League (german: Alldeutscher Verband) was a
Pan-German
Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
organization which was officially founded in 1891, a year after the
Zanzibar Treaty was signed.
Primarily dedicated to the
German Question
The "German question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve a unification of Germany, unification of all or most lands inhabited by Germans. From 1815 to 1866, about 37 independ ...
of the time, it held positions on German imperialism,
anti-semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
, the
Polish Question
The Polish question ( pl, kwestia polska or ) was the issue, in international politics, of the existence of Poland as an independent state. Raised soon after the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, it became a question current in Euro ...
, and support for German minorities in other countries.
The purpose of the league was to nurture and protect the ethos of German nationality as a unifying force.
By 1922, the League had grown to over 40,000 paying members. Berlin housed the central seat of the league, including its president and its executive, which was capped at a maximum of 300. Full gatherings of the league happened at the Pan-German Congress.
Although numerically small, the League enjoyed a disproportionate influence on the German state through connections to the middle class, the political establishment and the media, as well as links to the 300,000 strong
Agrarian League.
Background
The origins of the Pan-German League lie in the growing movement for German colonial expansion, which gained traction over the course of the 1880s. In order to gain public support for the passing of the Steamboat Subsidy Act of 1885, which was a precursor to a state-funded colonial policy, chancellor
Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...
raised public outrage against British deals with both France and Portugal in dividing up Africa. Membership in pro-colonial societies, such as the (Colonial Society) and the (Central Society for Commercial Geography) grew rapidly. In the following year, colonist
Carl Peters
Carl Peters (27 September 1856 – 10 September 1918), was a German colonial ruler, explorer, politician and author and a major promoter of the establishment of the German colony of East Africa (part of the modern republic Tanzania).
Life
H ...
, who had acquired the majority of Germany's colonial holdings up to this point, returned from Africa, and, using the public awareness following the steamboat subsidy debate to initiate a congress on German overseas interests. Taking place from 13-16 September 1886, the congress ended with the establishment of the (General German Society for the Furthering of German National Oversea Interests). The Society was not successful and marked by internal strife and after Peters left again for Africa, it dissolved.
History
Foundation and early struggles (1890–1894)
![Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R30019, Dr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R30019%2C_Dr._Carl_Peters.jpg)
On 1 July 1890, the
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
signed the
Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty with
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
. The treaty was the first major sign of the new foreign policy of Emperor
Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empir ...
, following the dismissal of chancellor Bismarck earlier in the year. The pro-colonial, national-conservative factions within Germany strongly opposed the treaty, as it gave away colonial possessions in Africa to the British. Peters was particularly negative, declaring that Germany had exchanged "two kingdoms,
Witu and
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
..for a bathtub." Shortly before the signing of the treaty, on 24 June 1890, a declaration, signed by four Germans living in Switzerland, appeared in several German newspapers, titled "Germany awake!", calling for Germans to oppose to the treaty. In another letter three weeks later, the authors called for the foundation of a National League, "the purpose of which should be to give expression to what we wanted and expected of a national government in situations similar to the situation created by the Anglo-German treaty". By 1 August 1890, industrialist
Alfred Hugenberg
Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg (19 June 1865 – 12 March 1951) was an influential German businessman and politician. An important figure in nationalist politics in Germany for the first few decades of the twentieth century, Hugenbe ...
had picked up the call and declared himself temporarily in control of the management of such a league, while at the same time calling onto Peters to become its leader. Peters, who had just recently returned from Africa, originally refused, not wanting to antagonise the German government, who he hoped would fund his further East African endeavours.
The first official meeting of the organisation that would become the Pan-German League took place in
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
on 28 September 1890, presided over by university professor John Wislicenus and attended by seven people. As a result of the meeting, Hugenberg and Wislicenus issued another call to action. After the initial political struggles over the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty had subsided, Peters eventually agreed to join forces, on the condition that the remnants of the earlier General German Society were included. On 25 January 1891, Peters personally invited a number of members of the
Reichstag, the German federal parliament, and several other people to meet with Hugenberg and Wislicenus. As a result, the ''Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein'', a nominal resurrection of Peters' original society, was founded on 9 April 1891 in Berlin. The League took a quotation by
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg
Frederick William (german: Friedrich Wilhelm; 16 February 1620 – 29 April 1688) was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia, from 1640 until his death in 1688. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he is ...
as its motto: ("Remember that you are a German").
Peters initially took over the presidency of the League, but soon went back to Africa and resigned from his post, in order not to come into conflicts of interest between the League and the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
. Karl von der Heydt, a banker, took over the position. The early period of the League was difficult. While membership rose quickly, from around 2,000 in June 1891 to around 21,000 in May 1892, management of the League was lacking. The membership fee was set low, aimed to attract members, but the profits proved insufficient to run the operation. The League's journal, the ''Mitteilungen des allgemeinen deutschen Verbandes'' (News of the General German League) were only produced seven times between 1891 and 1893 and even those were not distributed to all members, since this required an additional fee. Expansion of the League outside of Berlin and Prussia was also scarce, partly due to improper management as well as bans on political associations in states like
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
and
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
. A rise in open
anti-semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
in the Berlin branch affected the image of the organisation in the public eye. Additionally, von der Heydt and his general manager, along with other members of the League, attempted to form a new political party towards the end of 1892. Since the League had been formed as a body above party politics, this endavour threatened its existence. The failed attempt to sell a "Calendar of all Germans", leading to a deficit of 6,000
marks
Marks may refer to:
Business
* Mark's, a Canadian retail chain
* Marks & Spencer, a British retail chain
* Collective trade marks, trademarks owned by an organisation for the benefit of its members
* Marks & Co, the inspiration for the novel '' ...
, further weakened the League's position. By July 1894, membership had dropped to just 4,637.
A crisis meeting in Frankfurt am Main in the summer of 1893 was called by West-German branches of the League, against the declared will of the leadership, with the intention of dissolution. However, John Wislicenus again presided over the meeting and as a result, a formal meeting was arranged for 5 July 1893 in Berlin. Here, von der Heydt resigned along with many other members of the League's executive committee. Von der Heydt paid 4,000 of the 6,000 marks debt, with Peters covering the remaining 2,000 marks. The presidency of the League was taken over by , a university professor from
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
. Hasse, together with new general manager Adolf Lehr, put the League on a more secure financial footing. On 1 January 1894, the first issue of the new journal, the , was released. At a meeting of the executive committee on 1 April 1894, a decision was made to change the name of the organisation to (Pan-German League). This came about as an amalgamation between the League with a society called (General German Association), aimed at promoting German education, led by , the president of the Reichstag. The term (pan-German) had been a suggestion by August Diederichs, a friend of Hasse's, who had set up a donation fund for the League under this name. The name change took effect from 1 July 1894.
![Heinrich Claß](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Heinrich_Cla%C3%9F.jpg)
The aim of the Alldeutscher Verband was to protest against government decisions which they believed could weaken Germany. A strong element of its ideology included
social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
. The Verband wanted to uphold German
racial hygiene
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...
and were against breeding with so-called inferior races like the
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
s and
Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
. Agitation against Poles was a central focus for the Pan-German League. The agitations of the Alldeutscher Verband influenced the German government and generally supported the foreign policy developed by
Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...
.
One of the prominent members of the league was the sociologist
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...
who, at the League's congress in 1894 argued that Germanness (''Deutschtum'') was the highest form of civilization. Weber left the league in 1899 because he felt it did not take a radical enough stance against Polish migrant workers in Germany.
Later Weber went on to become one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the
Kaiser
''Kaiser'' is the German word for "emperor" (female Kaiserin). In general, the German title in principle applies to rulers anywhere in the world above the rank of king (''König''). In English, the (untranslated) word ''Kaiser'' is mainly ap ...
's war policies.
He publicly attacked the
Belgian annexation policy and
unrestricted submarine warfare
Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships such as freighters and tankers without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules (also known as "cruiser rules") that call for warships to sea ...
and later supported calls for constitutional reform, democratisation and
universal suffrage
Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stanc ...
.
The position of Pan-German league gradually evolved into biological racism, with belief that Germans are "superior race", and Germans need protection from mixing with other races, particularly Jews.
By 1912 in the publication "If I were the Kaiser," Claß called on Germans to conquer eastern territories inhabited by "inferior"
Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
, depopulate their territories and
settle German colonists there.
There were also calls for expulsion of Poles living in
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
.
The Alldeutscher Verband had an enormous influence on the German government during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, when they opposed democratization and were in favour of unlimited
submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
war. Opponents of the Verband were called cowards. Influential figures in the founded the in 1917 following the request of the majority of the German parliament to begin peace negotiations with the allies.
After World War I, the supported General
Erich Ludendorff
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was a German general, politician and military theorist. He achieved fame during World War I for his central role in the German victories at Liège and Tannenberg in 1914. ...
in his accusation against democrats and socialists that they had betrayed Germany and made the Germans lose the war. According to Ludendorff and the Verband, the army should not have been held responsible for the German defeat. Ludendorff, however, had declared that the war was lost in October 1918, before the German
November Revolution. That fanciful allegation was known the "
Stab-in-the-back myth
The stab-in-the-back myth (, , ) was an antisemitic conspiracy theory that was widely believed and promulgated in Germany after 1918. It maintained that the Imperial German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead ...
" ().
Membership in the league was overwhelmingly composed of middle- and upper-class males. Most members' occupations reflected the League's emphasis on education, property ownership and service to the state.
The League was clearly close ideologically to the Nazis and anticipated many of their basic ideas, such as the demand that the individual Germans should unconditionally submit to the national whole, represented by the state and the authorities, or the idea of expansion to the east in order to gain "Living Space" (). Still, the League's concrete relations with the Nazis were not always smooth. Especially, in 1932, there was moment when the Pan-German League accused the Nazis of betraying the national idea and called on their supporters to support the rival German National People's Party (DNVP). The Nazis, who came to power on the next year, did not forget that incident.
After the Nazis came to power, the Pan-Germans were for a time tolerated due to their ideological closeness, but on the eve of the Second World war were finally dissolved by
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
on March 13, 1939, on the grounds that their program (namely the unification of all Germans in one Greater Germany) had been fulfilled with the Austrian
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
and the annexation of the
Sudetenlands
The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
.
See also
*
German entry into World War I
Germany entered into World War I on August 1, 1914, when it declared war on Russia. In accordance with its war plan, it ignored Russia and moved first against France–declaring war on August 3 and sending its main armies through Belgium to captu ...
References
Bibliography
*
* Chickering, Roger. ''We Men Who Feel Most German: Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886-1914''. (Harper Collins, 1984).
*
* Harrison, Austin, ''The Pan-Germanic Doctrine''. (1904
online free*
*
*Jackisch, Barry Andrew. Not a Large, but a Strong Right': The Pan-German League, Radical Nationalism, and Rightist Party Politics in Weimar Germany, 1918-1939''. Bell and Howell Information and Learning Company: Ann Arbor. 2000.
*
*
*
Encyclopædia Britannica
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German nationalist organizations
Organizations established in 1891
Political history of Germany
Antisemitism in Germany
1891 establishments in Germany
Organizations disestablished in 1939
1939 disestablishments in Germany
Pan-Germanism