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Hellmuth von Gerlach Describes a Conservative Election Campaign in Rural Silesia (1880s)

Hellmuth von Gerlach (1866-1935) began his career as an antisemitic journalist and follower of the Christian Social Party, which functioned as a wing of the conservative movement. Later, he became a strong advocate of liberal and pacifist views. In the passage below, drawn from his autobiography, Gerlach describes an election campaign in his native province of Silesia. Gerlach uses the term “Junker paradise” to indicate how easy it was for a rural nobleman to be elected there. Another contemporary term for the same kind of district was a “Riviera constituency,” because the conservative candidate was so certain to win the election that he could spend the campaign vacationing on the Riviera. Local conservative notables could influence the election outcome by virtue of their social standing, economic influence, and local authority. But gradually habits of deference eroded and such districts became hotly contested.

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[The Junker Paradise]

The first eighteen years of my life were spent in the district of Wohlau in Silesia. This district together with Guhrau and Steinau formed an electoral division that was called “the golden borough of the Conservatives” because it had never sent either to the Reichstag or to the Landtag a representative who did not belong to that Party. It was not necessary for the candidates to exert themselves either physically or mentally in running for office. Any Herr von Kessel or Herr von Nitzschwitz or Graf Carmer might be nominated by a committee of big landlords presided over by the Landrat. Thereupon his election was assured.

This department was so extremely reactionary that even the Free Conservatives were looked upon as dangerous revolutionaries. On one occasion a clergyman, who was also district school-inspector, ventured to run for the Landtag as Free Conservative candidate with the help of some of the public-school teachers. His presumption aroused a storm of resentment among the country gentry. In its name a certain Herr von Seydlitz published a statement in the local paper accusing the clergyman of base ingratitude because, after having been in his younger days graciously received into the family of one of the large estate owners as a tutor for his children, he had ventured to set himself up against the will of the landed interest.

Inasmuch as the landlords enjoyed the right of appointing most of the clergymen and teachers, the latter were utterly dependent on their favor. My father’s nearest neighbor was a certain Baron von Beust, a gentleman of Saxon origin. On one occasion he had to appoint a new incumbent for the parish on his estate of Herrnmotschelnitz. Several aspirants presented themselves for the position, each of whom delivered a probationary sermon. I personally heard all of them. Finally a very young clergyman, who had preached what was obviously the worst sermon of the series, was appointed. When I took Herr von Beust to task for this he merely grunted, “Well, you see the chap plays bully skat.” That qualification was decisive.

My father was a Protestant, but he had the appointment to the living at the Catholic Church and school in Gross-Schmograu. He hated Catholics. He used to say, “They are even worse than the Jews.” Consequently he did all in his power to get the most anti-Catholic priest he could find for the parish. Before long his policy was detected. After that the clerical aspirants for the position always represented themselves to my father as extreme freethinkers. After they were appointed, however, the lord of the parish had no control of them, and they always turned out in the end to be perfectly orthodox, and in several instances unusually zealous, priests and defenders of the Church. This only confirmed my father in his conviction that they were a breed of “Jesuitical hypocrites.” My private idea was that his experience only proved the immorality of the whole institution of clerical patronage; although the Junkers considered it the very foundation stone of their power and defended it with tooth and nail.

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