Schönerer, Georg, Ritter von

▪ Austrian politician

born July 17, 1842, Vienna, Austria

died Aug. 14, 1921, Rosenau bei Zwettl

      Austrian political extremist, founder of the Pan-German Party (1885). He was a virulent anti-Semite (anti-Semitism) and was perhaps the best-known spokesman for popular antidemocratic sentiments in the late empire.

      A left-wing Liberal when first elected to the Reichsrat (federal parliament) in 1873, Schönerer gradually developed what was to be his characteristic Prussophile, anti-Semitic position. He eventually acquired a strong personal following, especially among the Viennese lower middle class and the fraternities (Burschenschaften). His Pan-German Party languished after his imprisonment for an assault on a newspaper office (1888) but quickly revived following his reelection to parliament in 1897. Schönerer led the attacks upon the pro-Czech language ordinances of that year and was popularly credited with having driven the prime minister, Count Kasimir Badeni (Badeni, Kasimir Felix, Graf von), from office. He became closely associated with the anti-Catholic Los von Rom movement after 1898, though more for nationalistic than for religious reasons. As a national political figure, he reached the peak of his influence in 1901, when 21 Pan-Germans were returned to the Reichsrat; his violent temperament, however, so disrupted the party that by 1907 it had all but disappeared from Austrian parliamentary politics. This did not diminish his long-lasting ideological influence. Consequently, one of his most ardent followers was the young Adolf Hitler.

Additional Reading

Andrew Gladding Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism (1975).

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