Georg Ritter von Schönerer

Georg Ritter von Schönerer (17 July 1842 – 14 August 1921) was an

Shaken by Austria's defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, the dissolution of the German Confederation, and the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, Schönerer became a political activist and ardent admirer of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He wrote passionately admiring letters to Bismarck, and continued doing so even after Bismarck made clear that he rejected any sort of Austro-German nationalism and would not allow Austria's pan-Germans to jeopardize the Dual Alliance.^[3]

Entering parliament

During the

Tensions rose even further in 1879 due to the accession of

Ironically, this manifesto fit in very well with the dreams of Polish, Hungarian and Croatian nationalists. The anti-Slavic inclinations of the framers, however, are well represented in the following excerpt from their manifesto: "We protest against all attempts to convert Austria into a Slavic state. We shall continue to agitate for the maintenance of German as the official language and to oppose the extension of federalism ... [W]e are steadfast supporters of the alliance with Germany and the foreign policy now being followed by the empire."^[5]

Adoption of antisemitism

During the 1880s, Schönerer came to consider his struggle for the German Austrians a fight against the Jews.

Schönerer's approach became the model for German national

Schönerer's movement had various strict criteria: it only allowed its members to be Germans; none of the members could have relatives or friends who were Jews or Slavs, and before any member could marry, they had to prove "Aryan" descent and be checked for health defects.[9] Other pan-German movements generally followed suit by expelling Jews and generally Slavs as well.^[10]

Schönerer was addressed by his supporters as the "Führer," and he and his followers also used the "Heil" greeting, things Hitler and the Nazis later adopted.^[11] Schönerer and his followers often met during the summer and winter to celebrate German history and listen to German battle songs. Schönerer told his followers to prepare for a battle between Germans and Jews; he said, "If we don't expel the Jews, we Germans will be expelled!"^[10]

In 1888, Schönerer was temporarily imprisoned for ransacking a Jewish-owned newspaper office and assaulting its employees for prematurely reporting the imminent death of the German emperor

Wilhelm I. His attack increased his popularity and helped members of his party get elected to the Austrian Parliament. Nevertheless, the prison sentence also resulted not only in the loss of his status as a noble, but also of his mandate in parliament. Schönerer was not reelected to the Imperial Council until 1897, while rivals like the Vienna mayor Karl Lueger and his Christian Social Party

took the chance created by his disfavor to get ahead.

Schönerer left the

Lutheran denomination.^[12]

End of career in politics

In 1897, Schönerer helped orchestrate the expulsion of

Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni from office. Badeni had proclaimed that civil servants in Austrian-controlled Bohemia must know the Czech language, an ordinance that prevented many Bohemian ethnic German speakers, most of whom did not speak Czech, from applying for government jobs. Schönerer staged mass protests against the ordinance and disrupted parliamentary proceedings, actions that eventually led Emperor Franz Joseph

to dismiss Badeni.

During these years, while the

Hitler and the Nazi Party.^[13]

Death

Schönerer died at his Rosenau manor near Zwettl, Lower Austria on 14 August 1921. He had arranged to be buried near Bismarck's mausoleum on his estate at Friedrichsruh, Lauenburg, in present-day Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany.

Reception

Hannah Arendt, in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism", described Georg Schönerer as the "spiritual father" of Adolf Hitler.^[14]

References

1. ^ Whiteside 1975, p. 66.
2. ^ "SCHÖNERER, GEORG VON - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
3. ^ ^{a b} Hamann 2010, p. 238.
4. ^ Hamann 2010, p. 236.
5. ^ Eric Roman, [url=https://archive.org/details/austriahungarysu0000roma Austria-Hungary and the Successor States: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present] p. 512.
6. ^ Hamann 2010, p. 241.
7. ^ Unowsky 2005, p. 157.
8. ^ Giloi 2013, pp. 161–162.
9. ^ Hamann 2010, p. 244.
10. ^ ^{a b} Hamann 2010, p. 243.
11. ^ Hamann 2010, pp. 13, 244.
12. ISBN 978-1-62-157551-1
13. ^ Childers 2017, pp. 9–11.
14. LCCN 58-11927
    .

Bibliography

• Childers, Thomas (2017). The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  ISBN 978-1-45165-113-3
  .
• Evans, Richard (2005). The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin.
  ISBN 978-0-14303-469-8
  .
• Giloi, Eva (2013). Monarchy, Myth, and Material Culture in Germany 1750–1950. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-107675407
  .
• Hamann, Brigitte (2010). Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man. Tauris Parke Paperbacks.
  ISBN 978-1-84885-277-8
  .
• Schorske, Carl E. (1980). Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Random House.
  ISBN 978-0-394-74478-0
  .
• Unowsky, Daniel L. (2005). The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-557534002
  .
• Whiteside, Andrew G. (1975). The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  ISBN 978-0-52002-434-2
  .
• Newspaper clippings about Georg Ritter von Schönerer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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