Herrenklub

(Gentlemen's Club)

   sometimes called the German Club, it was founded in Berlin* in November 1924 by Heinrich von Gleichen-Russwurm, future editor of Der Ring (1928-1943). A rough extension of the Juni-Klub, a circle of the "homeless" Right founded in 1919 by Gleichen and Arthur Moeller* van den Bruck in response to the Versailles Treaty,* it encom-passed Young Conservatives who were, within strict limits, prepared to accept the Republic, if not the Weimar Constitution.* Led by Gleichen and Bodo von Alvensleben (its first chairman), the club's main Berlin branch met behind the Reichstag* in an elegant building on Friedrich-Ebert Strasse. By 1932 Germany supported approximately twenty chapters. Included in its membership were Junkers,* prominent members of heavy industry and finance, and ambitious writers. In Bavaria* its ideas and membership overlapped with those of the Gäa (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss).

   Among the forces gathered against the Republic's multiparty paralysis, the Herrenklub was noted for its intellectual force. The members, who were neither eccentrics nor intellectual lightweights, were united by a conviction that parlia-mentary democracy was unsuited to Germany and that the nation craved a con-servative revolution linked, perhaps, with a Christian revival. Tending to blend traditional nineteenth-century conservatism with the more radical neoconserva-tism of the 1920s, the club especially embraced the ideas of Edgar Jung,* Moeller van den Bruck, and Oswald Spengler.*

   Although Herrenklub membership never numbered more than five thousand, the club wielded a powerful influence on Germany's intellectual Right. Com-plemented by such like-minded journals as Deutsche Rundschau, Deutsches Volkstum, and Die Tat,* the club's Der Ring upheld the view that Germany required an authoritarian state, and that a predilection to aristocracy was sup-ported better by corporatism than by parliamentarianism. Members welcomed the Presidential Cabinet* established in 1930 under Heinrich Bruäning* as a step from Weimar's bankrupt structure to a new authoritarianism. Significantly, it was from the Herrenklub that President Hindenburg* found Bruäning's replace-ment. Franz von Papen,* one of the club's founders, was active in 1932 and close to Alvensleben. Valued for his social gifts, if not his intellect, Papen was endorsed by club members (Alvensleben, Kurt von Schleicher,* and Oskar von Hindenburg) as a likely Chancellor. Moreover, the January 1933 meeting be-tween Papen and Hitler* in the home of Cologne banker Kurt von Schroder— a meeting that led to Hitler's later appointment as Chancellor—was conceived by Papen and Schroäder at the Herrenklub.

   REFERENCES:Fritz Stern, Politics of Cultural Despair; Struve, Elites against Democ-racy; Turner, German Big Business; Von Klemperer, Germany's New Conservatism.