The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law

The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law (PMPWBL, ; ) was a satirical political party in Cisleithania (Austria-Hungary), founded by Jaroslav Hašek in 1911. The party campaigned satirically for election to the Imperial Council (Austria). Due to their dual nature as both a political "party" and a political-artistic "action group", it is often extremely difficult to differentiate the reality from the fiction of the SMPVMZ.

History

Founding According to the statements of the party leader Hašek, the party was founded in 1904 in the restaurant 'The Golden Liter' (Czech: Zlatý litr) in Prague's Vinohrady quarter. Other participants were the writer František Langer and the Prague Technikum official Eduard Drobílek, who came up with the idea and served as treasurer. The party name referred to the controversial Imperial Rescript dated September 12, 1871, in which the Bohemian Landtag, as the representative organ of Czech political power, was asked to contribute to "the contemporary constitutional order, in the spirit of moderation and reconciliation." The party was most likely founded as a direct response to the overly accommodating behavior of the Czech Social Democratic Party ("Evolution, not Revolution"), whose Prague representatives held events in Zlatý litr. The party slogan abbreviation was "SRK", which officially stood for "Solidarity, Rights and Comradeship" () but in practice meant Slivovitz, Rum and Kontusovka.

The party grew slowly. By its own account, there were only eight members as of December 14, 1904. As time went on, membership grew to include a few lawyers and doctors, as well as numerous figures from Prague's cultural scene including: anarchist journalist and publisher Antonín Bouček; satirist, painter, and anarchist František Gellner, who served two stints as party secretary; writers and satirists including Karel Toman, Josef Mach, Gustav Roger Opočenský, Louis Křikava, and Josef Skružný; anarchist poet Josef Rosenzweig-Moir; the journalists Karel Pelant and Karel V. Rypáček; illustrator Josef Lada; ballet dancer Franz Wagner; "Hero of the Macedonian Uprising", as well as self-proclaimed Voivode Jan Klimeš,For several years starting in 1904, Jan Klimeš was a member of the Prague Bohemians. His book Life under the Macedonian Uprising was published in 1906. and police commissioner Slabý, who served as "Enforcers" at party meetings. There is no evidence the party engaged in any public activities until 1911. The only record is a political pamphlet by Hašeks from 1904 referred to as "I am a member of a secondment from the country" that is possibly a description of the earliest form of the party's work. However, numerous researchers place the founding of the party with the activities of the 1911 elections. In contrast, numerous texts describe pre-1911 propaganda expeditions by party members to different regions of the K.u.K-Monarchy. The journeys were described by the party leader as figurative "apostolic missions" through Moravia, Lower Austria, Hungary, Croatia, the Carniola, Styria, Upper Austria, Bohemia and Vienna. Since these trips have a strong resemblance to the "Vagabond Wanderings" () Hašek regularly undertook starting in 1900, perhaps the party history is a case of an after-the-fact blurring and mystification on the part of the author, as evidence shows Hašek active as a journalist for an anarchist newspaper and an anarcho-syndicalist organizer during this time. For example, in 1907 he disturbed an electoral event of the Clerical Party as an agent provocateur, and in the same year was sentenced to a month in prison on charges of "assassination" and "incitement to assault". Therefore, some researchers consider the PMPWBL an "anarchist front-group".

1911 election

On April 8, 1911, after the dissolution of the old imperial council, the Austrian Interior Minister set a general election date of June 13, 1911, for the election of deputies to the 21st session of the Austrian House of Deputies that was to begin in mid-July.s. Reichsgesetzblatt 1911, S. 165; Stenographisches Protokoll. A few days later at the new party headquarters, the Cow Stall () in the Vinohrady quarter, an executive committee of the reorganized "Party for Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law" announced they would participate in the election with their own candidate. At the same time, they published a manifesto to the Czech people, in which they introduced to party ideology of "Moderate Progress":

"The Svatopluk Čech Bridge was not built overnight. First Svatopluk Čech had to be born, become a famous poet, die, then there had to be an urban renewal, and only then was the Svatopluk Čech Bridge built."Manifest der Partei des maßvollen Fortschritts in den Grenzen der Gesetze. In: Jaroslav Hašek: Die Partei des maßvollen Fortschritts in den Grenzen der Gesetze. Frankfurt a. M. 1971, Anhang, S. 137–139. The manifesto was even signed by leading Czech social democrats Emanuel Škatula and Bohumír Šmeral, later co-founders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. However the two politicians stood in the election as candidates, and it is highly doubtful they were aware of their signatures in advance.

The platform of the candidate for the Vinohrady election district, Jaroslav Hašek, consisted of seven points: The reintroduction of slavery. The nationalization of janitors ("similar to how it is in Russia [...], where every janitor is simultaneously a police informer"). The rehabilitation of animals. The institutionalization of feeble-minded MPs. The reintroduction of the Inquisition. Judicial immunity for priests and the Church ("In cases where a schoolgirl is deflowered by a priest"). The mandatory introduction of alcoholism.

The party hosted numerous speaker evenings, which included Max Brod and Franz Kafka among the spectators.Ritchie Robertson: Kafka: Judentum, Gesellschaft, Literatur. Stuttgart: Metzler 1988, S. 189; Zur Tradition der deutschen sozialistischen Literatur. Ein Auswahl von Dokumenten 1926–1949. Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag 1979, S. 312; Ekkehart Krippendorff: Politische Interpretationen. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1990, S. 105. Hašek gave multi-hour campaign speeches "with a great deal of promises and reforms, [he] smeared the other parties, denounced his opponents, everything that befits a decent candidate to such an honorable [position]", according to attendee František Langer.zit. n. Walter Klier: Zwangseinführung des Alkoholismus. In: Wiener Zeitung v. 9. Dezember 2006. The songwriter Josef Mach wrote a party hymn especially for the campaign:

"Milión kandidátů vstalo, / by oklamán byl bodrý lid, by voličstvo jim hlasy dalo / prý ochotně je chtějí vzít. Ať prudký pokrok chtějí jiní, / násilím zvracet světa řád, my pokrok mírný chceme nyní, / pan Hašek je náš kandidát!"zit. n. Petr Hora: Lidi, nedejte se, držím vám palce!. In: Obrys-Kmen Nr. 23/08 v. 7. Juni 2008. English Translation (from German):

"A million candidates marching on,/giving false council to clueless people. They want to get your votes,/every voter will be accepted. They want thunderous advances,/to violently change the way the world is run, But we stand up for reasonable progress/with the candidate Mr. Hašek!"deutsche Nachdichtung von Benutzer:Svickova und Benutzer:Tvwatch; eine freiere Übersetzung findet sich in: Karl-Heinz Jähn (Hrsg.): Das Prager Kaffeehaus. Literarische Tischgesellschaften. Berlin (Ost) 1988, S. 36: „Nun treten die Parteien an, Verbreiten ihre Lügen, Sie wollen, jede, wie sie kann, Das gute Volk betrügen. Wir treten für den Fortschritt ein, Jedoch ganz moderat. Gemäßigt muß der Fortschritt sein Und Hasek Kandidat.“

Moreover, they campaigned for their candidate with pamphlets and placards: "Voters - what you hope to get from Vienna, you'll also get from me!" "Voters, use your ballot to protest against the earthquake in Mexico!" and "Each of our voters will receive a small pocket aquarium".Der Tag der Wahlen. In: Jaroslav Hašek: Die Partei des maßvollen Fortschritts in den Grenzen der Gesetze. Frankfurt a. M. 1971, Anhang, S. 141–143.Radko Pytlík: Jaroslav Hašek in Briefen, Bildern und Erinnerungen. Berlin (Ost)/Weimar 1983, S. 215. Even on the day of the election, the leadership of the party tried to expand the size of the campaign team by hanging a notice: "Wanted: a respectable man to defame opposing candidates". All of this was in vain: after the around 3,000 votes cast in the Vinohrady district were totaled, only 38 were cast for the PMPWBL, or according to a contemporary periodical publication, as few as 16 votes.Radko Pytlik: Jaroslav Hašek in Briefen, Bildern und Erinnerungen. Berlin (Ost)/Weimar 1983, S. 213f. The newspaper Čas reported in its "Daily Chronicle", on July 15, 1911, "Nothing is known about the fate of this candidacy, and the Imperial press office has not made any official statement regarding it. The candidate intends to protest." The silence of the Imperial election commission was not unexpected, as the party had apparently not even officially registered its candidacy. As a result, the votes for Hašek were considered invalid. Later, on July 17, 1911, PMPWBL-member František Gellner wrote a positive review of the campaign in the magazine Karikatury: "Assuming that the enthusiastic agitation by the supporters of the Party for Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law increases their vote tally in the next election by a factor of ten, and the Austrian Parliament is dissolved a few more times in the foreseeable future, then in a few years the candidate for the Party for Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law will be seated in parliament."

Further developments The first party congress was held in 1913, in the restaurant Na Smetance in the Prague district of Žižkov, but was only attended by a few party members. When the party leader inadvertently sat down on the service cap of the supervising police commissioner, the event was dissolved. Hašek reports on a subsequent "long-term persecution of the party",Jaroslav Hašek: Minutes of the II. a subsequent dramatic exaggeration.

After the outbreak of the First World War Hašek was called up in February 1915 as a soldier, and was captured by Russians in September 1915. In 1916 he joined the Czechoslovak Legion, but deserted to the Red Army in 1918, where he held various functions, mainly serving as political commissar in the Political Department of the 5th Siberian Army. In December 1920 Hašek returned to Prague under false papers.

During the year 1921 the second PMPWBL congress took place in Prague-Žižkov, in a large hall in the restaurant Yugoslavia, and was attended by about 300 people. The highlight of the congress was the unanimous adoption of a foreign policy resolution calling for the demolition of the globe due to the hopeless world situation.

Although it had been declared that a third, secret party congress would be announced by newspaper advertisements in the section "Where to Today?," the activities of the PMPWBL ended in 1921. This was due to poor health of the party founder and chairman Jaroslav Hašek, who retired to Lipnice nad Sázavou in August 1921, where he worked until his death in January 1923 on his novel The Good Soldier Švejk.

Reality and literary treatment