United Associations of Upper Silesians Loyal to Their Homeland (VVHO)
United Associations of Upper Silesians Loyal to Their Homeland (VVHO)
1. Brief description
The organisation ‘Vereinigte Verbände Heimattreuer Oberschlesier e. V.’ (VVHO) was founded in 1919; it emerged from the ‘Freie Vereinigung zum Schutz Oberschlesiens’. The VVHO brought together nationally-minded Upper Silesians who advocated for Upper Silesia to remain part of the German Reich and sought to prevent the 1921 plebiscite from resulting in the region being assigned to the Polish state. In the run-up to the vote, the ‘Heimattreuen’ campaigned for a vote in favour of the German Reich and organised the travel of German Upper Silesians eligible to vote but not living in Upper Silesia to the polling area. From the 1921 referendum until the incorporation of the associations into the ‘Reichsbund ostdeutscher Heimatverbände’ (Reich Federation of East German Homeland Associations) in 1934, the VVHO, as the Upper Silesian Homeland Association, sought to keep the issue of Upper Silesia’s partition in the public consciousness and to promote the cause of a revision within the German Reich.
2. Tasks
The VVHO’s efforts were initially focused on the referendum on the status of Upper Silesia on 20 March 1921, on which they transported some 180,000 Germans – so-called ‘Upper Silesian exiles’ – who were originally from Upper Silesia and were therefore eligible to vote, to Upper Silesia on 250 special trains, and arranged for their meals and accommodation.
After the plebiscite, the VVHO formed the core of the Upper Silesian lobbyists, who kept alive the memory of the plebiscite period and the unaccepted partition of Upper Silesia, and who championed the German identity of Upper Silesia: “The VVHO e.V. aims, in order to foster love for the homeland and the revival of Upper Silesia as a German region, to unite the people of Upper Silesia and all those willing to contribute to this endeavour.”[1]
In doing so, they focused primarily on ‘raising awareness’ of the situation in Upper Silesia and on seeking a revision of its partition.
“Above all, they seek to inform the German public and the international community about the injustice inflicted on Upper Silesia by the Geneva ruling and to bring about a revision of this decision. All party-political and denominational endeavours are strictly excluded.”[2]
In a letter to the Governor of Lower Silesia in 1930, the Central Executive Committee described the VVHO’s mission as “to keep alive among the entire population the memory of the injustice of the Geneva ruling and its tragic consequences (the plight of those displaced, the burden on local communities, the unhealthy growth of commercial enterprises despite low purchasing power, unemployment and the housing shortage, etc.).[3]
Furthermore, the VVHO saw its role as providing legal representation and social support for Upper Silesian refugees and optants. They also sought to offer their members economic benefits, such as the sale of discounted coal or affordable funeral insurance.
Upon its foundation, the VVHO built on the work of the ‘Free Association for the Protection of Upper Silesia’, which had been established by Silesian industrialists. The VVHO also received 2.5 million marks as start-up capital from the estate of the ‘Upper Silesian Relief Organisation’ when it was dissolved in 1922. In 1923, the ‘Upper Silesian Relief Association’, which had been founded two years earlier, was also absorbed into the VVHO. During the referendum period, it had become something of a fashion to champion the cause of Upper Silesia – Reich President Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925) had assumed the honorary chairmanship of the Upper Silesian Relief Association, and Max Liebermann (1847–1935) had also joined in 1922. However, enthusiasm for the border region waned rapidly in the years that followed. The ‘Heimattreuen’ now mainly comprised Upper Silesians who wished to continue working against the ‘Polonisation’ of Upper Silesia. Outside the region, the ‘Heimattreuen’ offered emigrated Upper Silesians a heritage association that commemorated the customs, culture and history of their region of origin and where they could meet other people who also came from Upper Silesia.
Upper Silesian activists sought to use the ‘Heimattreuen’ to raise awareness throughout the Reich of the fate of their divided province and to keep the border drawn by the 1922 Geneva Agreement – which they perceived as a ‘wound’ – as open as possible, thereby working towards a revision of this border in Germany’s favour.
3. Organisation
Within the VVHO, some 18,000 individual members were organised into seven regional and 285 local groups. The ‘Heimattreue’ were not only found in Upper Silesia and Silesia, but also in other parts of Prussia such as the Ruhr region and Berlin, as well as in more distant regions such as East Frisia and in other states, for example Bavaria.
Until 1924, the ‘Heimattreuen’ had their headquarters in Breslau/Wrocław; thereafter, in Berlin. Teachers in particular were strongly represented in the association; in 1931, for example, 18 members were listed by name in the district of Oppeln/Opole, eleven of whom were teachers or headteachers, two others held doctorates, two members had no professional title, one was a district administrator and two were farmers.
The ‘Heimattreuen’ were funded through membership fees and support from state bodies. Thus, the central leadership, the Silesian regional associations and individual local branches received financial grants on an irregular basis from the Silesian provinces, and in some cases directly from the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.
From August 1924, the monthly magazine ‘Oberschlesien’ was published as the ‘official organ of the Upper Silesian Aid Association and the United Associations of Upper Silesians Loyal to Their Homeland, Berlin’. No subscription figures are available, but the magazine appears to have been in constant financial difficulty. There is no evidence of its influence extending beyond its membership. In October 1933, ‘Oberschlesien’ merged with the magazine ‘Der Heimattreue Schlesier’.
The VVHO, together with other regional and compatriot associations, was organised within the so-called ‘Ostausschuss’ (Eastern Committee), which was founded in 1926 by the Reich Ministry of the Interior and had its headquarters in Berlin. Chaired by Wolf Graf von Baudissin (1907–1993), it brought together, alongside the VVHO, the most important regional associations from the regions of Posen/Poznań, East and West Prussia and Danzig/Gdańsk, under the chairmanship of Wolf Graf von Baudissin (1907–1993), in order to enable the optimal utilisation of political potential and to facilitate political control by the government. Only the largest eastern association, the ‘Ostbund’, refused to be integrated into the committee. Above all, however, the ‘Heimattreuen’ were ideologically part of a wider network of ‘Eastern activists’ who did not accept the border demarcation in eastern Germanyresulting from Germany’s defeat in the First World War. They championed a vision of the ‘German East’ that one-sidedly emphasised the cultural achievements of the Germans and portrayed the Slavic peoples as inferior and less ‘culturally capable’. The aim was thus to maintain the claim to the territories that had formerly belonged to the German Empire but had been lost to Poland or Czechoslovakia. However, this völkisch ideology propagated, on a far broader scale, a ‘natural’ superiority of the Germans, thereby seeking to legitimise their claim to dominance over their Slavic neighbours. In 1934, the ‘Heimattreuen’ merged into the ‘Reichsbund ostdeutscher Heimatverbände’ (Reich Federation of East German Homeland Associations) without any significant protests.
4. History
During the referendum and up until the early 1930s, the VVHO’s membership ranged from Social Democrats to the Catholic People’s Party and the German Nationalists. From the outset, the VVHO was divided along party lines. In 1926, a leadership crisis arose when Albert Wilhelm Arlt, a member of the state parliament for the German People’s Party (DVP), was forced to step down as VVHO chairman after only a short time due to unclear financial dealings. He was succeeded in 1927 by Adolf Kaschny (1881–1951), a Centre Party politician and mayor of Ratibor/Racibórz, who steered the VVHO along a moderate course for some time. Following the association’s shift to the right, only Centre Party politicians remained on the executive committee alongside the German Nationalists. There is no evidence of a clear anti-republican stance on the part of the VVHO, nor, however, of a clear commitment to democracy.
As the ranks of the VVHO also included former members of the ‘Ostmarkenverein’, who had supported the German Empire’s anti-Polish policies, the association was not without its critics in Upper Silesia. The VVHO also collaborated with völkisch associations such as the ‘Verband der Auslandsdeutschen’ and the ‘Schutzbund’. Ever since its foundation, the ‘Heimattreuen’ had faced accusations of German nationalism. As early as 1920, their ‘jingoistic patriotism’ was criticised by members of the Catholic People’s Party and the Upper Silesian Centre Party, and even more strongly by the Social Democrats.
In addition to public events such as the referendum commemorations in Upper Silesia, the activities of the ‘Heimattreuen’ included lobbying provincial, state and Reich governments, as well as the printing and distribution of their own journal and propaganda material about their members in general and their regional and local groups in particular.
Among the members of the ‘Heimattreuen’, the teacher Karl Schodrok (1890–1978) played a prominent role. Even as a co-founder of the ‘Free Association for the Protection of Upper Silesia’, he actively campaigned during the referendum period for Upper Silesia to remain part of Germany; from 1924 onwards, he published the monthly magazine ‘Der Oberschlesier’ as a ‘cultural journal’. Following his expulsion from Upper Silesia, Karl Schodrok became director of the ‘Kulturwerk Schlesiens’ in 1952.
Another freelance activist for Upper Silesia was Arno Hoffmeister, former chief executive of the Chamber of Agriculture in Poznań and, from 1927, head of the ‘Reichsjugendleitung’ within the ‘German Ostbund’; organised the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the Upper Silesian referendum, as well as ‘Ostmark University Weeks’ at universities and training weeks for young people, thereby combining his lobbying work for Upper Silesia with his activities in Göttingen, Hanover, Braunschweig, Magdeburg and Frankfurt.
Bibliography
- Juliane Haubold-Stolle: The Myth of Upper Silesia. The Struggle for Memory in Germany and Poland, 1919–1956. Osnabrück 2008.
- Guido Hitze: Carl Ulitzka, or Upper Silesia between the World Wars. Düsseldorf 2002.
- Manfred Laubert: The Upper Silesian People’s Movement. Breslau 1938.
- Andrzej Michalczyk: Homeland, Church and Nation. German and Polish Nationalisation Processes in Divided Upper Silesia. Cologne 2011.
- T. Hunt Tooley: National Identity and Weimar Germany. Upper Silesia and the Eastern Border 1918–1922. Lincoln 1997.
Notes
[1] From the VVHO’s Articles of Association, in: AP Opole NPPG 1000. See also the reports on the VVHO’s ‘Silesian Days’ in Wrocław and Frankfurt an der Oder in 1930 in the ‘Upper Silesian Border Report for the months of July, August and September 1930’, in: AP Opole NPPG 18.
[2] Ibid.
[3] See the letter from the VVHO to Governor Thaer dated 30 October 1930, in AP Wrocław WSPS 856.
Citation
Juliane Haubold-Stolle: Vereinigte Verbände heimattreuer Oberschlesier e. V. (VVHO). In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2021. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32763 (as at 22 November 2021).
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