Franz Stein

Franko Stein, also Franz Stein (1 June 1869 – 17 July 1943) was an Austrian and Czech journalist, politician, activist, and national syndicalist of German ethnicity. Very close to Georg von Schönerer, he led the union wing of his movement. He was also a member of the Bohemian Diet between 1899 and 1908 and of the Reichsrat between 1901 and 1907. Life Franko Stein was born in Vienna on 11 June 1869, the son of a factory worker. He trained as a mechanic and passed his journeyman exams. From 1888, at the age of 19, he was active in Georg von Schönerer's pan-German movement and tried to establish pan-German workers' organizations, through which he intended to bring Schönerer's cause to the working masses from which he came. In 1893, he founded the National Association of German Workers in Bohemia, which from 1899 was called the German Workers' Association of Germany. Stein further established a press organ for this national syndicalist organization called Der Hammer, which began publishing in 1895. From 1897 he worked as a journalist in Eger, where he published the Hammer yearbook in 1898–1938. In 1899, he convened the first national congress of German workers in Eger and pushed for the adoption of a twenty-five-point program for revolutionary action. With the turn of the century, he also became involved in regional politics. In the elections of 1899, he was elected to the Bohemian Diet in the city curia (Vrchlabí constituency). He defended the mandate for the same district in the regular elections of 1901. Politically, he belonged to the Alldeutschen Vereinigung. In the 1901 election, he was also elected to the Reichsrat, for the Eger district. In the years 1902–1906, he was also a member of the so-called delegations (parliamentary group for negotiations on common issues of both parts of Austria-Hungary). When the schism between Schönerer and Wolf occurred in 1903, after which Wolf and his supporters established the All-German Free Party, Stein was one of the few who remained loyal to Schönerer. After the schism, Schönerer's movement collapsed, which is why neither he nor Stein were reelected in 1907.