Alsatian Progress Party

Camille Dahlet, Progress Party leader

The Alsatian Progress Party (German: Elsässische Fortschrittspartei) was a political party in Alsace, France. The party was founded in October 1926 by Georges Wolf and Camille Dahlet as a autonomist, liberal and secular party.[1][2] Dahlet and Wolf had belonged to the Bas-Rhin branch of the Radical Party prior to establishing the Progress Party.[1] Wolf had been the chairman of a party with the same name and similar goals in the years prior to World War I.[3]

The Progress Party wanted to protect the status of Alsatian culture and the German language in Alsace. It demanded that the autonomy of the region, recognized in the German Constitution of 1911, be reinstated. 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 and Das Neue Elsass obtained 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 Protestant pastor. 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 the 1929 Strasbourg municipal election.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Fischer, Christopher J. Alsace to the Alsatians?: Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870-1939. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. pp. 190-191
  2. ↑ Hülsen, Bernhard von. Szenenwechsel im Elsass: Theater und Gesellschaft in Straßburg zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich : 1890 - 1944. Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl, 2003. p. 165
  3. ↑ 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
  4. ↑ Hülsen, Bernhard von. Szenenwechsel im Elsass: Theater und Gesellschaft in Straßburg zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich : 1890 - 1944. Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl, 2003. p. 264
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