Abstract
This study ocuses on the genesis of the concept ethnic loyalty. EIt is not viewed here as a precursor to but as part of the process of nationalisation.
The Eiche association was formed at the initiative of a male auxiliary association as an association of German workers born out of the organisational ferment that in 1904 gave rise to the German Workers' Party. Relations between members developed uccessfully, the association was founded on the principle of solidarity between women from higher urban social strata with women from a manual labour background, a significant number of whom nonetheless were also housewives.
The radicalisation of the DAP's programme caused the Eiche association to redirect itself away from the DAP and move more towards established national organisations. The association's de-politicisation was itself, however, an important political act, which only confirmed the notion of ostensibly separate spheres, which, at least in theory, divided the social world into male spheres of productive work and public activity and female reproductive activities in the private sphere.
Nevertheless, the association's purpose was based on a situation that contradicted this central tenet of this division as it emerged out of the situation of working women trying to earn a living. The combination of charity (solidarity) and a self-help approach led to a change in ethnic loyalty, which in a state-regimented liberal framework and to the detriment of social democracy made it possible to weaken radical nationalist and class identification, and to capture the support of another segment of society - working women - for the nationalist policy firmly in the hands of Liberec's urban elites, to the expense of the reforming and radicalising DAP.
Nationalist slogans called for loyalty to an association, which as always as a specifically German attribute was supposed to be rewarded with 'treudeutscher Dank', even though the German ethnic community was nothing permanent.