Schorlemer-Alst, Burghard von

SCHORLEMER-ALST, Burghard von. - German politician, b. 20 Oct. 1825 at Herringhausen near Lippstadt, d. 17 March 1895 at Alst (district of Steinfurt). Having first embraced a military career, he later abandoned it to devote himself to politics and to the defense of the interests of the peasants of Westphalia.

The critical conditions in which agriculture found itself from 1850 onward, its development being compromised by the industrialization of the country, drove him to lay aside the uniform. He therefore founded on 10 June 1862 an association among agricultural proprietors, with the intention of working in common accord for the safeguarding of their respective religious and social interests. Starting indeed from the notion that industry and the power of capital tended toward the annihilation of small and medium-sized agrarian property and consequently toward the rupture of the particularly vivid family bond among the peasants, Schorlemer, perceiving an attempt to overturn the Christian order from its foundations through the destruction of the family, promoted union among the peasants so that they might resist with good prospects of success not only the dangers arising to the particular interests of agrarian proprietors and peasants, but also the decay of Christian sentiment. His initiative served as an example to other similar organizations, which arose on the model of the one he founded, and in 1867 the constitution was proceeded with, on a federative basis, of a great central union of the Westphalian peasants at Münster, the Westfälischer Bauernverein. The fundamental purpose of this Association was the defense of the moral and material interests of agricultural proprietors by means of the establishment of credit and insurance institutions, as well as of cooperatives, so as to prevent the fragmentation and sale of the farms. Only those could be members of the Association who directly cultivated a piece of land and who belonged to one of the two Christian confessions, fulfilling however its duties, and who led a life conformable to the precepts of religion. With the institution of the Bauernverein Schorlemer had laid the foundations for the solid defense of the German peasant and agricultural world in the face of the threats of other social classes. Subsequently, through his political activity, he set himself the aim of strengthening the position of farmers in the life of the country. A deputy to the Diet of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1870 to 1890 and to the Reichstag from 1875 to 1890, Schorlemer immediately became one of the most representative figures of the Catholic Center and took the floor various times during the Kulturkampf, distinguishing himself both for the seriousness and incisiveness of his arguments and for the causticity with which he sometimes attacked his adversaries and replied to the accusations leveled by Bismarck against his party. The struggle for the rights of Catholics did not, however, divert Schorlemer from attentive consideration of the conditions of the peasants and agricultural proprietors. The grain crisis after 1875, brought about by the competition of Indian, Russian and American wheat, forced Schorlemer and the Center no longer to advocate the free-trade system, but to demand in its place the adoption of protective tariffs. Within the Reichstag he, together with Windhorst and 85 deputies of the Center, constituted in 1878 an Economic Union of Protectionists, of which many conservative, national-liberal and other-party parliamentarians were also members, for a total of 204, so as to form the strongest group on economic questions. Shortly thereafter Bismarck's conciliatory policy toward the Center made it easier for Schorlemer to collaborate with the Chancellor, of whom years earlier he had been a bitter adversary, without however preventing him from voting against the anti-school legislative bill, considered contrary to every legal form and to every moral precept.

Silvio Furlani