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Die Wahlkampagne der Sudetendeutschen Partei 1935

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Zimmermann M.
Střed. Časopis pro mezioborová studia Střední Evropy 19. a 20. století. / Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
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2014
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vol. 6
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issue 1
94-126
EN
The Sudeten German Heimatfront (SHF), later called Sudeten German Party (SdP), should have become the embodiment of the so called Volksgemeinschaft (“people‘s community”). This meant for the leading group around Konrad Henlein to incorporate all Germans in Czechoslovakia without a look on their class or profession in a united movement. While all other political parties were denounced as disuniting elements, the Heimatfront offered a structure which should have represented all political and social needs of the German-speaking minority. The membership in the SHF/SdP was equalized with being part of the Volksgemeinschaft and so the campaign manager K. H. Frank tried to present a uniformed appearance of the party in the public. To succeed with this, he released detailed instructions which determined the whole election campaign but also the private life of the members. The permanent public presence of party symbols, banners, posters, chanting, and uniformed members had an impressive effect on Sudeten Germans. Those, who admired the German Nazi movement, may have recognized certain similarities with the SHF/SdP. On the other hand, those who didn’t sympathize with the Nazis were exposed to an immense peer pressure to join the Heimatfront, because everyone around them confessed to the Volksgemeinschaft. The election campaign of the SHF/SdP used several instruments. The most important was the broad membership base and the constant pressure on the people to join the party so that they no longer hinder a unified German people’s community. To complete the pressure, the party organized dozens of rallies in the German inhabited areas, distributed thousands of leaflets, and created a cult around the leader of the Heimatfront, Konrad Henlein. The campaign wasn´t aimed against the Czechoslovak state, but mainly against the leftist parties like the social democrats or the communists but also against the agrarians, organized in the league of Farmers (Bund der Landwirte). The SHF accused them of disuniting the German people by a class-oriented or profession-oriented policy. After the vote counting, it was clear that the claim of the party to become a movement of all Germans in Czechoslovakia was a success. 1.249.530 inhabitants voted in the parliament elections for the Henlein-movement which is a total of 15,2 percent of all votes in the whole Republic and 63 percent of all German votes. Compared to the 1.249.530 voters in the elections, the conclusion is clear: each member of the SHF needed to persuade only four other friends, colleagues or relatives to achieve the victory. Therefore the concept of the Heimatfront, to incorporate the people into its structures, was very successful.
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