German Democratic Party
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German Democratic Party Deutsche Demokratische Partei | |
|---|---|
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| Founded | 1918 |
| Dissolved | 1930 |
| Preceded by | Progressive People's Party |
| Merged into | German State Party |
| Youth wing | Young Democrats |
| Paramilitary wing | Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (1924–1930) |
| Ideology | Classical liberalism[1] Social liberalism[2][3] Republicanism[4][5] Economic liberalism[4] Progressivism[6] |
| Political position | Centre[7] to centre-left[6][8] |
| Colors | Black Red Gold (republican colors)[9] |
The German Democratic Party (German: Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP) was a liberal political party in Germany. It was founded in November 1918[10] by leaders of the former Progressive People's Party, left-wing members of the National Liberal Party and a new group calling themselves the Democrats (German: Demokraten).
In 1930, the party merged with the People's National Reich Association to form the German State Party.
Politics
The Democrats were a more left-wing or social-liberal party whereas the German People's Party was national-liberal. Many of the leading figures in the party had been supporters of Imperial Germany's aim of Weltpolitik[11] and Mitteleuropa.[citation needed]
Along with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Centre Party, the Democratic Party was most committed to maintaining a democratic, republican form of government. Its social bases were middle-class entrepreneurs, civil servants, teachers, scientists and craftsmen. It considered itself also a devotedly national party and opposed the Treaty of Versailles, but it emphasized on the other hand the need for international collaboration and the protection of ethnic minorities. The party was the one voted for by most Jews.[12] The DDP was therefore dubbed the "party of Jews and professors".[13]
People and governments
The party's first leader was Protestant parish priest Friedrich Naumann, a popular and influential politician, who ten years earlier had failed with his Nationalsozialer Verein to link progressive intellectuals with the working class. He died early in 1919. Other well-known politicians of the DDP were Hugo Preuß, the main author of the Weimar Constitution; the eminent sociologist Max Weber and his brother Alfred. Physicist Albert Einstein co-signed the Democrats' founding document but was not an active party member.[14] Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank and one of the founders of the party, left the party in 1926 and eventually helped Adolf Hitler to power. Women played a relatively active role in the party (i.e. compared to most other parties during that era). Notable female politicians include women's rights activists Helene Lange, Marianne Weber, Gertrud Bäumer and Marie-Elisabeth Lüders.
Nearly all German governments from 1918 to 1931 included ministers from the DDP, such as Walther Rathenau, Eugen Schiffer, Hugo Preuß, Kurt Riezler, Otto Gessler, Max Weber and Erich Koch-Weser. From their 18% share of the first German federal elections under proportional representation in 1919, they dropped, for example, to 4.9% in the 1928 German federal election and to 1.0% in the November 1932 German federal election.
The party merged with the more right-leaning People's National Reich Association to form the German State Party in 1930. With Ludwig Quidde (Nobel Peace Prize winner of 1927) and others, the party had a pacifist wing which left the party in 1930 and founded the Radical Democratic Party, which represented radical democratic and more left-wing policies.
Other prominent figures associated with the party included the philosophers Ernst Cassirer[15] and Ernst Troeltsch, the patron of the arts Harry Graf Kessler, and the pacifist Hellmut von Gerlach.
Election results
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats | +/– |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1919 | 5,641,825 | 18.6 (3rd) | 75 / 423
|
New Party |
| 1920 | 2,333,741 | 8.3 (6th) | 39 / 459
|
 36
|
| May 1924 | 1,655,129 | 5.7 (7th) | 28 / 472
|
11
|
| December 1924 | 1,919,829 | 6.3 (6th) | 32 / 493
|
 4
|
| 1928 | 1,479,374 | 4.8 (6th) | 25 / 491
|
7
|
After 1945
After 1945, former politicians of the DDP joined mainly the new Free Democratic Party (1945/1948) as did the liberals from the German People's Party. First Federal President Theodor Heuss, a journalist and professor of history, had been a German State Party deputy in 1933. In the Soviet occupation zone, the liberal leader was former DDP minister Wilhelm Külz.
Other DDP members went to the Christian Democrats, such as Ernst Lemmer, the former leader of the Young Democrats and Federal Minister in 1956–1965, Ferdinand Friedensburg, interim mayor of Berlin during the 1948 blockade, and Otto Nuschke, leader of the East German CDU.
Pictures
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Feminist and DDP co-founder Helene Lange
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Funeral celebration for Walther Rathenau, the murdered DDP minister of foreign affairs, 1922 -
Psychologist Willy Hellpach, DDP candidate for Reich Presidency in 1925 -
DDP ministers Wilhelm Külz (left, interior) and Otto Gessler (defence), 1926 -
One of the political leaders of the party, Hermann Dietrich, 1926 -
Ludwig Quidde, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1927 -
DDP flag 1929 -
Former DDP minister Bernhard Dernburg in 1931 -
Allied prisoner Hjalmar Schacht in 1945 -
Federal President Theodor Heuss in 1953
See also
- Liberalism in Germany
- Democratic Party of Germany
- Liberalism
- List of liberal parties
- National League of German Democratic Youth Clubs, youth wing of the party
- Weimar Republic
References
- ^ Mommsen, Hans (1996). The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy. University of North Carolina Press. p. 58. ISBN 0-8078-2249-3.
- ^ Van De Grift, Liesbeth (2012). Securing the Communist State: The Reconstruction of Coercive Institutions in the Soviet Zone of Germany and Romania, 1944–48. Lexington Books. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-7391-7178-3.
- ^ Lash, Scott; Urry, John (1987). The End of Organized Capitalism. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 27. ISBN 0-7456-0068-9.
- ^ a b Kurlander, Eric (2006). The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933. Berghahn Books. p. 197. ISBN 1-8454-5069-8.
- ^ Maier, Charles S. (1975). Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade after World War I. Princeton University Press. p. 56. ISBN 0-691-05220-4.
- ^ a b Sartori, Giovanni (1976). Parties and Party Systems. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 156.
- ^ Lee, Stephen J. (1998). The Weimar Republic. Routledge. p. 23. ISBN 0-415-17178-4.
- ^ Allinson, Mark (2015). Germany and Austria since 1814 (second ed.). Routledge. p. 58.
- ^ Preuss, Hugo (2008). Schwarz-Rot-Gold: Zum Nürnberger Parteitag (1920) [Black-Red-Gold: For the Nuremberg Party Congress (1920)] (in German). Mohr Siebeck. p. 155.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^ "German Democratic Party (DDP) Election Poster (1924)".
- ^ Smith, Woodruff D. (1989) The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. Oxford University Press, p. 196–197.
- ^ Niewyk, Donald L. (1980) The Jews in Weimar Germany. Louisiana State University Press, p. 31.
- ^ Baumgarten, Albert I. (2010). Elias Bickerman as a historian of the Jews: a twentieth-century tale. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. p. 73. ISBN 9783161501715.
- ^ Möller, Horst (2018). Die Weimarer Republik: Demokratie in der Krise [The Weimar Republic: Democracy in Crisis] (in German). Piper.
- ^ Jones, Larry Eugene (2001). Crossing Boundaries: The Exclusion and Inclusion of Minorities in Germany and the United States. Berghahn Books. p. 125.
Further reading
- Frye, Bruce B. (1963). "The German Democratic Party 1918–1930". Political Research Quarterly. 16 (1): 167–179. doi:10.1177/106591296301600112.
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