Banater Deutschtums), bolstering its struggle for self-affirmation. He forayed into the cultural field as a journalist, and later became active in politics. He held the position of editor-in-chief at Schwäbische Volkspresse for several years, strengthening the voice of the Swabian-German community. In September 1923 Karl von Möller actively participated in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the migration of the Swabians, organized by the Banat German Movement. In autumn 1919 he was briefly Deputy Mayor of Timișoara, after which he was elected four times to the Romanian Parliament, in which he served between 1919 and 1927 as a representative of the Swabians in Banat. In the parliamentary debate on the 1923 Constitution of Romania on 12 March 1923, he said he was speaking on behalf of the "Banat Swabian People", declaring the Germans' loyalty to their new homeland, but demanded that the new constitution should not jeopardize the existence of minorities from a national point of view; he said the new constitution did not include the promises made to the minorities by the Romanians in Alba Iulia. In May 1920 the "moderate" Swabians, led by formed the Swabian Party of Autonomy, joined by Karl von Möller, and Peter Schiff of the National Swabian-German party. In 1927, Möller withdrew from public life and settled in Jimbolia, where he married Margaret Jung, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from the Banat. Together they had two children, Karlheinz and Erich Involvement in Nazism At the beginning of 1931, he returned to public life, becoming the chief editor of the German-language Jimbolia newspaper, "Hatzfelder Zeitung", and president of the local ethnic community. Möller, who adhered to Nazi ideology, tried to use these positions to popularise Nazism and prepare the Banat population for its adoption. This attempt was thwarted, and he lost both positions by the end of 1931. After 1930, and especially after 1933, the Nazi movement had achieved a strong position in Romania, capturing the leadership of the Germans in Romania. The initiator of the Nazi movement among the German minority was the reserve captain Fritz Fabritius. From 1931, Fabritius tried to expand the movement in Banat, finding audiences in some circles of dissatisfied and young Swabians who returned from studies in Germany. At the end of 1931, Karl von Möller constituted a movement group at Jimbolia and was proclaimed the first Gauleiter of the Banat. From 1 July 1932, he published