Alsatian Progress Party
Alsatian Progress Party Elsässische Fortschrittspartei | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Camille Dahlet |
| Founded | October 1926 |
| Newspaper | Das Neu Elsass |
| Ideology | Radicalism Regionalism Germanminority interests |
| Political position | Centre-left |
| National affiliation | Independent Left(to 1936) Independents of Popular Action(after 1936) |
TheAlsatian Progress Party(German:Elsässische Fortschrittspartei) was apolitical partyinAlsace,France.
The party was founded in October 1926 by Georges Wolf and Camille Dahlet as aregionalist,secularandRadicalparty, roughly corresponding toGermany's Radical People's PartyandFrance's Radical-Socialist Party.[1][2]
Dahlet and Wolf had belonged to theBas-Rhinbranch of theRadical Party,but had quit in disagreement with its policies of centralism and anticlericalism, instead establishing the Progress Party as a party for a more decentralised and moderately secular variant of Radicalism.[1]Wolf had been the chairman of a party with the same name and similar goals in the years prior toWorld War I.[3]
In cultural terms the Progress Party sought to protect Alsatian culture and the status and use of theGerman and Alsatian languages in Alsace.Institutionally, it demanded the return of thelocal autonomyof the region, as had been recognized by theGerman Constitution in 1911.
In April 1927 a party newspaper,Das Neue Elsass('The New Alsace'), was launched after Wolf had received financial guarantees from it. The Progress Party andDas Neue Elsassobtained a moderate degree of influence in Bas-Rhin.[1]
In 1928 Dahlet became the party leader, after Wolf resigned from the party. Wolf left politics, supposedly for personal reasons, and went back to serve as a pastor of theEPCAAL.Dahlet was elected to parliament in the same year, and would retain his seat until 1940. With Dahlet as the party leader the Progress Party became more radical in its regionalist demands, albeit never straying over to the separatist camp.[1]The party won two seats in the1929 Strasbourg municipal election.[4]
Between 1928 and 1936 Camille Dahlet sat in theFrench Chamber of Deputiesaccording to Radicalism, with other centre-left republican independents in theIndependent Left technical group.In 1936, however, he sat according to regionalism, in theIndependents of Popular Actiontechnical group dominated by the Catholic regionalists of theAlsatian Popular Union.
References
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- ^abcdFischer, Christopher J.Alsace to the Alsatians?: Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870-1939.New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. pp. 190-191
- ^Hülsen, Bernhard von.Szenenwechsel im Elsass: Theater und Gesellschaft in Straßburg zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich: 1890 - 1944.Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl, 2003. p. 165
- ^Kurlander, Eric.The Price of Exclusion Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898 - 1933.New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2006. pp. 161, 294
- ^Hülsen, Bernhard von.Szenenwechsel im Elsass: Theater und Gesellschaft in Straßburg zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich: 1890 - 1944.Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl, 2003. p. 264