1932 was not only a year of severe economic and financial hardship, but at the same time also a year of elections. People in germany were called to the polls a total of five times this year. In these elections, the fate of germany on the way to the dictatorship of national socialism was decided.
However, before the election of the reich president, the NSDAP had its own local groups only in grafenberg, heiligenstadt, plankenfels, streitberg, pottenstein and hollfeld. They organized the election meetings in the neighboring communities and got their speakers mostly from nurnberg, bamberg and bayreuth.
Direct election of the reichsprasident
Propaganda for the election of the reichsprasident began as early as february. Adolf hitler, 42 years old, ran against the 84-year-old paul von hindenburg. Reich chancellor bruning had tried in vain to have the head of state elected by the reichstag rather than by the people by means of a constitutional amendment.
In contrast to 1925, in 1932 the democratic parties, the SPD, the centrum and the german democratic party, supported the re-election of the aged field marshal general paul von hindenburg, because they no longer had anyone who stood a real chance against adolf hitler, who had risen to political stardom within two years.
The national socialists deliberately made the age difference between the two candidates the subject of a "change of fate". In it – so it knocked for example in an aggressive reader letter to the forchheimer tagblatt – "the german people's court will speak the judgement over the catastrophe politicians ruling us in 13 years in ground and soil".
Hindenburg was considered a perfectly acceptable "ideal figure" but now a "younger person with a strong will and new ideas" had to take his place enter.
At an election meeting in muggendorf, the nazi state speaker franz ganninger demanded that hindenburg "make way for the youth, give them room to rise, and himself lead an evening of life like that of a historical figure.
The heated debate reinforced the public impression that the "old november system" had been abandoned against the "young national movement" loses ground. The vote on the two candidates was deliberately elevated to a question of system: the NSDAP as a young, revolutionary and dynamic "movement" against the "old" parties with their "november criminals.
Fighting the system
The locally appointed nazi speakers were in the spring 1932 between late twenties and early forties: the gau leader hans schemm 41, the gau speakers franz ganninger 32, konrad horeth 27 and curt wittje 37, the bamberger district leader lorenz zahneisen 35 years old.
What they had in common was a militaristic and taut appearance and a previously unknown rhetorical aggressiveness with which they attacked the supposedly encrusted "old system declared war on the.
Well-known people from forchheim and the surrounding area founded a "non-partisan hindenburg committee" and published full-page appeals for the re-election of the incumbent reichsprasident in the three coarse daily newspapers. They idealized hindenburg as the "father of the fatherland", as a "symbol of our belief in germany's future", as a "symbol of german loyalty, of the "uber allen parteien" (above all parties) and the "leader in peace the ideal of the most unconditional fulfillment of duty" had become.
The national socialists countered that under the seven-year presidency of hindenburg, unemployment, tax pressure, the plight of the peasants and hopelessness had increased. "These are the fruits of the previous party economy, which, under the cover name of our venerable field marshal v. Hindenburg seals germany's downfall."
Cultural resurgence
the nsdap did not attack hindenburg head-on, loving his honor as a successful war hero, but accusing him of inaction in the face of the "totengrabersystem the "old power parties to have stayed. "But if you want to help in the cultural and economic resurgence of germany, then vote on the 10. April the first fighter for germany's freedom and coarse, for work and bread, the leader of the nsdap adolf hitler."
In the first ballot, none of the four candidates – in addition to hindenburg and hitler, ernst thalmann (KPD) and theodor duesterberg (stahlhelm/DNVP) – achieved the required absolute majority.
In the second, hindenburg prevailed against hitler. In the overall result, hindenburg also remained the winner in forchheim and french-speaking switzerland, but, as in germany as a whole, lost support from the first to the second ballot. Hitler, on the other hand, gained four percent in one month, but over six percent at the reich level.
No vote in eschlipp
The result belies the fact that the rural communities were politically divided from village to village. 45 of the 129 municipalities in the districts of forchheim and ebermannstadt voted for the leader of the nsdap, in some cases by overwhelming margins.
They were the predominantly protestant communities from hagenbach to grafenberg and hiltpoltstein as well as from streitberg-muggendorf to heiligenstadt and from wiesentfels to wonsees.
In traindorf and oberfellendorf, hitler won all the votes. He gained an above-average 32 percent from the first to the second ballot in zaunsbach. In total, hitler won 103 out of 164 votes there. In hetzeldsdorf, the party gained 28.2 percent and won 92 percent of the vote.
In walkersbrunn, the voter turnout dropped by 60 votes from 80.7 percent to 161, with the result turning in favor of hitler. He increased his votes from 58 to 94. This corresponds to a share of 58.4 percent. Hitler thus also overtook hindenburg, whose share of the vote fell from 61.1 percent to 41.6 percent. The cause of the change of mood in walkersbrunn cannot be explained from the available documents.
On the other hand, there were also communities where hitler did not receive a single vote: rettern, reifenberg and eschlipp. In spite of this, the mood of optimism for national socialism was also noticeable in french-speaking switzerland.
Even in strongholds of the bavarian people's party (BVP), such as ebermannstadt, there was an increase in the formation of local NSDAP groups from the spring of 1932 onward.