The "March fallen" ( German Märzgefallene ) is a definition that was initially assigned to the victims of the March revolution of 1848-1849 in Vienna and Berlin . Also used in relation to the victims of the Kapp putsch of 1920 in various cities. In 1933, the Nazi Party veterans began to ironically call the "March fallen" new members of the party, mostly officials and employees who joined the Nazi Party on an opportunistic basis after the elections to the Reichstag in March 1933 .
In Vienna, the "March fallen" called the dead during a demonstration on March 13, 1848, which marked the beginning of a revolution in the Austrian Empire. 35 women and men lost their lives from bullets and as a result of crush. The grave of the Vienna March fallen is located at the Central Cemetery of Vienna .
In Berlin, the “March fallen” are called those who died in battles for democratic rights on the barricades against the Prussian army on March 18 and 19, 1848. Historical studies have established the names of the 270 March fallen. For the most part these were artisans, as well as 52 workers, 34 messengers, 15 people from an educated class and four noblemen. Among those who fell on the March barricades in Berlin were 11 women, four children and 6 young men under 18 years old. The youngest of the March fallen in Berlin was a 12-year-old boy, the oldest was 74 years old, most of the revolutionary victims were from 22 to 26 years old. The official mourning ceremony took place on March 22 at Gendarmenmarkt . The funeral procession stopped at the Palace Square , where the royal couple gave the last honors to the fallen. The martyrs of the fallen in Berlin were buried at the cemetery of the fallen of March , which was specially laid for them, now in the Friedrichshain People's Park . The funeral ceremony in Berlin was depicted in his painting “Farewell to the March Fallen” by Adolf Menzel . The literary monument of the fallen of March was a poem by the poet Ferdinand Freiligrat Dead Dead.
During the Kapp coup in Weimar , nine striking workers who had gathered at a rally on March 15, 1920, were shot by the coup leaders. The fallen in March 1920 in Weimar were buried in the Weimar historical cemetery. On May 1, 1922, a monument to the lightning work of Walter Gropius was erected on their grave. It was demolished in 1936 by the National Socialists . Monuments to the victims of the Kapp putsch were also installed in other cities: Eisenach , Mechterstedt and Ordrufe .
In the Third Reich, the definition of "March fallen" got a different, nonheroic meaning [1] . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the admission of officials and civil servants to the party was permitted in the Nazi Party, which led to a sharp increase in the number of parties. The old party guards accused the new members of the party of opportunism and with contempt called them "the March fallen" [2] or the "March violets." Restraining the influence of newcomers to the party, on April 19, 1933, the NSDAP suspended admission to the party for four years and imposed a candidate term of three months. From June 1937 to June 1938, 2.1 million people joined the NSDAP.
Notes
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus. de Gruyter, Berlin ua 1998, ISBN 3-11-013379-2
- ↑ In German, the sacrament gefallen , formed from fallen (fall, fall), can mean both "fallen" (dead, dead) and "fallen" (which fell, fell morally). In the Large Russian Dictionary, the use of "fallen" in the sense of "fallen" is marked as obsolete.
Literature
- Peter Brandt ua: Die gescheiterte Revolution. In: Peter Brandt: Preußen, zur Sozialgeschichte eines Staates. Eine Darstellung in Quellen. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981, ISBN 3-499-34003-8 , S. 196-221.
- Jürgen W. Falter: Die "Märzgefallenen" von 1933. Neue Forschungsergebnisse zum sozialen Wandel innerhalb der NSDAP-Mitgliedschaft während der Machtergreifungsphase. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft. 24, 1998, ISSN 0340-613x , S. 595-616.