Karl Freiherr von Vogelsang

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Karl Freiherr von Vogelsang (1818 - 1890), a social reformer, was one of the founders of the Austrian Christian Social Party, and the founder of the Austrian Christian Social Movement. He was born in Legnica, Poland, moved to Berlin in the 1850s, and to Austria in 1864. In 1875, he became editor of the Catholic newspaper "The Native Country." This newspaper was very influential, helping to establish the 40-hour work week and national health insurance for workers. As a social reformer, he was a precursor of the Austrian authoritarian state of the 1930s; he was quoted in the regime's propaganda by its leader, chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.

Vogelsang was the initiator of a great and successful Christian people’s movement in Austria an in some neighboring countries. Since some former friends of the anti-Semitic people’s movement of Carl Schoenerer (for example the famous Karl Lueger) joined Vogelsang, some authors call Vogelsang an Anti-Semite, too. But Vogelsang said as well that Christians not only should pray to God, but do good works for the poor so as to be God's people on the side of the Jews, His first chosen and forever beloved people.

Some of Vogelsang's pronouncedly disfavourable remarks about Jews in general were included by his admirer, the austrian fascist and later European federalist Eugen Kogon, in a volume entitled "Katholisch-konservatives Erbgut" which called for the establishment of a catholic Third Reich and was edited by the Benedictine abbot of Maria Laach, Ildefons Herwegen, in 1934, to be distributed to a large share of catholic households in Germany, Austria and Switzerland by the Herder publishing house. This choice of texts was certainly biased and could not be taken as representative of Vogelsang's thought.

While many of the people who gathered into Vogelsang's movement and some successors like Anton Orel staid being anti-Semitic, an important group of followers like Karl Lugmayer, Irene Harand, Pater Cyrill Fischer, Ernst Karl Winter (Sociologist and Vice-mayor of Vienna, 1938 emigrated to USA), Alfred Missong and Hildegard Burjan, correctly understood the aim of the thought of Vogelsang. They, like some other Christians, strained to help the poor and to establish new social laws, but they also tried to change people's minds and to help persecuted Jews, before and during Nazi period

(See: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Vogelsang)