Volksfront (Alsace)
Volksfront was a political coalition in Alsace, France. Volksfront was formed in 1928 by the Popular Republican Union, a group of communists led by Charles Hueber, Progressives led by Camille Dahlet and the Autonomist Landespartei. The goal of the Volksfront was to seek greater autonomy for Alsace; safeguards for the German language, promotion of the Alsatian economy and administrative autonomy for the region. Largely Volksfront represented a continuation of the defunct Heimatbund. The Volksfront showed some similarities of the 1911 National Union, which also had been a loose coalition. Cooperation between Alsatian communists and clerical autonomists had begun with the Bloody Sunday events of 1926.
Regarding the sensitive issue of state-church relations, Volksfront avoided to publicly take a clear stand.
The Volksfront launched two candidates in a parliamentary by-election in 1928, Marcel Stuermel and René Hauss.
Volksfront won the 1929 municipal election in Strasbourg, defeating the incumbent socialist mayor Jacques Peirotes. Volksfront won twenty-two seats in the municipal council. They formed a municipal government with Hueber as mayor and Michel Walter as deputy mayor. The coalition also gained a strong presence in the municipal election in Colmar. After the election, the group around Hueber was expelled from the French Communist Party. They formed the Opposition Communist Party of Alsace-Lorraine, which became a new constituent of the Volksfront.
As the Landespartei moved closer to National Socialism, with an increasingly anti-semitic and anti-democratic discourse, divisions began to appear in the Volksfront. The UPR, alienated by the anti-democratic, anti-catholic and anti-religious postures of the National Socialists, deserted the coalition, followed by Dahlet's Progressives in 1933. Volksfront was dissolved in 1935.
