Farmers' League (, BdL, ) was an ethnic

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

agrarian

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

. Ideologically the party was moderately conservative, having its base in the

Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and ) is a 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 border districts of Bohe ...

countryside.

Giovanni Capoccia Giovanni Capoccia is Professor of Comparative Politics and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Education and career He obtained his Doctorate in Political Science at the European University Institute of Florence, Italy ...

.
Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe
'.

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. p. 76 The party was led by

Franz Spina Franz Spina (5 October 1868 in Městečko Trnávka – 17 September 1938 in Prague) was a Germans in Czechoslovakia, German-Czechoslovak politician. He was right-wing and activist politician of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, First Republic E ...

. '' Landjugend'' was the youth wing of the party.Capoccia, Giovanni.
Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe
'.

: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. p. 82 In the 1920 election, the party won 11 seats (3.9% of the nationwide vote).Capoccia, Giovanni.
Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe
'.

Johns Hopkins University Press Johns Hopkins University Press (also referred to as JHU Press or JHUP) is the publishing division of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and is the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The press publi ...

, 2005. p. 75 In the 1925 election, BdL won 24 parliamentary seats (8% of the vote). Following the election, BdL joined the Czechoslovak government. Spina became a national minister. After having entered the government the party began cooperation with the Czechoslovak agrarians. In the 1929 election, the BdL parliamentary presence was halved. The party got 12 seats, having got 4% of the national vote. After the DNP and DNSAP had been banned in October 1933, the political atmosphere in Sudetenland changed. The BdL came under pressure from rightwing radicals in ''Landjugend'', and formed a movement called ''Landstand'' led by Gustav Hacker (the leader of ''Landjugend''). ''Landstand'' was formed with the intention of enabling cooperation with the ''Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront'' (SHF). Through the creation of ''Landstand'', it is possible that BdL sought to pre-empt competition from SHF in the Sudetenland countryside. BdL hoped to achieve a division of labour between ''Landstand'' and SHF, thinking that SHF would mobilize urban populace and BdL/''Landstand'' would retain their dominance over rural German politics. These overtures to the SHF caused rifts in the Czechoslovak government. The DSAP (German Social Democrats), who were also in the government, were particularly worried and called upon BdL to differentiate themselves from 'the

fascists Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social h ...

'. In the end, BdL was side-lined as the Czechoslovak agrarians began to cooperate directly with SHF. ''Landstand'' became a short-lived movement. In the 1935 election, BdL gathered 1.7% of the national vote. The party got five parliamentary seats. The party suffered badly from the competition from the

Sudeten German Party The Sudeten German Party (, SdP, ) was created by Konrad Henlein under the name ''Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront'' ("Front of the Sudeten German Homeland") on 1 October 1933, some months after the First Czechoslovak Republic had outlawed the Germ ...

(SdP), the new incarnation of SHF. After the election, BdL began to reorient itself towards cooperation with democratic forces, declaring their support to

Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1939 to 1948. During the first six years of his second stint, he led the Czec ...

as president just before the election. But the party suffered continuously from defections from its ranks. In the new scenario, BdL was divided into two fractions. One led by Hackner, who had become chairman of the party, and another led by Spina. After the ''

Anschluß The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany") arose after the 1871 unifica ...

'' of

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, Hacker called on all BdL members to join SdP. The situation in BdL became more and more chaotic. On March 22, 1938, Hacker proclaimed himself as the '

plenipotentiary A ''plenipotentiary'' (from the Latin ''plenus'' "full" and ''potens'' "powerful") is a diplomat who has full powers—authorization to sign a treaty or convention on behalf of a sovereign. When used as a noun more generally, the word can als ...

' of BdL, and went on to declare the party to merged into SdP. The Spina-led fraction tried to regroup, but failed to reconstruct the BdL.Capoccia, Giovanni.
Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe
'.

: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. p. 89

Footnotes

References

* {{Authority control German diaspora political parties Interwar minority parties in Czechoslovakia Defunct agrarian political parties in Czechoslovakia Sudeten German people