scholarly journals A Republican Potential: The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Party in Hof-an-der-Saale, 1918–1920

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-492
Author(s):  
Alex Burkhardt

AbstractIn January 1919, the Bürgertum of the Bavarian town of Hof voted overwhelmingly for the left-liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP). But the following summer, in the Reichstag elections of June 1920, the Democrats sustained significant losses against the right-wing nationalist Bavarian Middle Party (Bayerische Mittelpartei, BMP). This article explores the rise and fall of the DDP in Hof by showing that a pro-republican politics initially proved popular among the local Bürgertum, until its credibility was undermined and ultimately destroyed by a series of devastating crises: the Bavarian Räterepublik of April 1919, the publication of the Versailles Treaty a month later, and the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary convulsions triggered by the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. This article concludes that political violence and a burgeoning confrontation between bürgerliche and socialist milieus were the key factors in explaining the eclipse of left-liberalism in Hof during the first years of the Weimar Republic.

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Maškarinec

In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of the votes – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the pirate parties across Europe. However, as their electoral gain varies widely across the Czech Republic’s territory, this article analyses all (more than 6000) Czech municipalities in the elections of 2010, 2013, and 2017 to explain this variation. Overall, the success of the Pirates was driven especially by obtaining much more support in larger municipalities with younger populations (although not only those aged 18–24 but also older ones), lower unemployment, higher turnout, and lower support for leftist parties. Thus, from a spatial perspective, the patterns of Pirate voting largely resembled long-term spatial support for Czech rightist parties and we can conclude that the Pirates made considerable inroads to regions which had historically been strongholds of the Civic Democratic Party, as the former main party of the right, but also strongholds of minor right-wing (‘liberal centre’) parties of the 1990s and early 2000s. Success of the Pirates thus was based especially on votes from municipalities located in more developed areas, where the Pirates received many more votes than in structurally disadvantaged regions.


1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Strauss

The ruling National Party (N.P.) asked white voters during the 1989 election campaign for a mandate to negotiate with all concerned about a new constitution, an undivided South Africa, one citizenship, equal votes, protection of minorities, and the removal of stumbling blocks such as discrimination against people of colour.1 Although the N.P. achieved a cleat majority – 93 seats against 39 for the Conservative Party (C.P.) and 33 for the Democratic Party (D.P.) – the right-wing opposition made destinct progress by gaining 17 seats. After the C.P had captured a further three from the N.P. in by-elections, including Potchefstroom in February 1992, President F. W. de Klerk announced in Parliament that whites would be asked the following month to vote in a referendum in order to remove any doubts about his mandate. The carefully worded question which the electorate had to answer was as follows: Do you support continuation of the reform process which the State President began on February 2, 1990 and which is aimed at a new constitution through negotiation?


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Decker ◽  
Lazaros Miliopoulos

Right-wing extremist and populist parties operate in a rather difficult social and political environment in Germany, rendering notable electoral success fairly improbable, especially when compared to other European countries. The main reason for this is the continuing legacy of the Nazi past. Nevertheless the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) managed to gain substantial votes in recent Land elections and became the leading force in the right-wing extremist political camp. Its success is attributable to rightwing extremist attitudes in some parts of the electorate in connection with a widespread feeling of political discontent. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the NPD will be able to transform these attitudes into a viable ideological basis for two main reasons. On the one hand, maintaining a neo-Nazi ideology makes the NPD unattractive to many potential voters. On the other hand, given its internal power struggles and severe financial problems, the party may be unable to meet its challenges in organizational terms.


Significance The three main parties -- the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP), the centrist Liberals, and the right-wing Conservatives -- are nearly tied in national voter intention polls. While the effects of Canada's first-past-the-post voting system appear to give the Conservatives and the NDP better chances at winning a plurality of seats in parliament, all three parties have a chance at victory, an unprecedented situation in Canadian history. Impacts The death of refugee Alan Kurdi has resulted in all three parties promising to expand Canada's acceptance of refugees from Iraq and Syria. The longer campaign could result in a doubling of the election's cost to the taxpayer. Both the NDP and the Liberals have promised that this will be the final election using the first-past-the-post system.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 251-255
Author(s):  
Roland Lami

One of the institutions that has played a very important role in the post-communist period in Albania, is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For pragmatic reasons or for guaranteeing their legitimacy, political parties have found it indispensable to cooperate with this institution. But, if we consider the role of the IMF from ideological perspectives, we would find that regardless of which party was in power (Socialist Party or Democratic Party) the respective government still has to follow its instructions and recommendations of a neoliberal nature.  This behavior has prevented political parties, especially those of the left wing, to get structured from the perspective of ideological profile.  For this reason, the entire discussion is mainly focused on the left-wing political perspective, as the principles of the right wing are closer to the IMF’s neoliberal philosophy, from the ideological standpoint.


2019 ◽  
pp. 169-210
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen

This chapter describes the twin pulls felt by the German Right between 1924 and 1929: pragmatic adjustment and ideological purity. Which path the Right and its projects would ultimately take would necessarily impact questions of Jewish inclusion in right-wing circles. But Jews were by no means only bystanders in this process. Instead they actively participated in renegotiating the Right’s political positions in the Weimar Republic. Through renewed attempts at agricultural settlements, in the defense of Germandom in the East, at shared commemorations of the fallen of the Great War, or in party politics, conservative German Jews were active, though increasingly curtailed by antisemitism, in trying to devise new notions of national belonging and community that could be in direct contrast to the republican ideals of Weimar.


2019 ◽  
pp. 115-168
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen

This chapter describes the ways in which right-wing Jews, whether they described themselves as “royalist,” “nationally minded” (nationalgesinnt), or “conservative,” attempted to make sense of the political and social changes around them following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and amid revolution at home. None of them were mere bystanders but active participants in their environment. The extent to which they could remain integrated into the Right in the years between 1918/1919 and 1924, on what terms, and in which parts of it, reflects the wider development of social and political circles they moved in, and thus the development of the wider Right, in the first five years of the Weimar Republic. It traces the rise of new concepts of belonging, namely the community of the trenches and the people’s community.


1969 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen L. Evans

In descriptions of the political structure of the Weimar Republic, the German Center Party is usually grouped as a party of the “middle,” together with the German Democratic Party and German People's Party, between the left-wing Social Democrats and the right-wing German Nationalists. In the years after 1928, the Center showed an increasing disinclination to work in coalition with the Social Democratic Party and finally, under the leadership of Dr. Ludwig Kaas, the last chairman of the Center Party, broke completely with the Socialists. During the same years Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, made persistent, though futile, attempts to find an acceptable coalition partner for the Center on the Right, hoping, among other possibilities, to encourage a secession movement from the Nationalist Party in 1930. Because of the rapid dwindling of electoral support for the other parties of the middle, very little attention has been paid to the Center's relationship with them. It is the purpose of this article to show that the mutual antipathies between these parties and the Center were as great or greater than its antipathy toward Social Democracy on certain matters which were vital to the Center's existence. By 1928, in fact, coalition with the parties of the middle had become as unsatisfactory to the leaders of the Center as coalition with the party of the Left. The turning-point in this development was the breakup of the Marx-Keudell right-wing cabinet of 1927. The failure of that government to attain the party's goals in the realm of Kulturpolitik, i.e., religion and education, confirmed the Center's disillusionment with the workings of the parliamentary system itself.


2021 ◽  
Vol 01 (05) ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
A.A. Tyrygin ◽  

The article deals with the criticism of the financial reform of Reich Minister Matthias Erzberger in the Weimar National Assembly from the right-wing parties that expressed the interests of big proprietors and the industrial elite. Erzberger, seeking to create a centralized tax system, has come across consistent criticism from the leader of the radical wing of the German National People's Party faction Alfred Hugenberg, a Pan-German, experienced financier and former head of the Friedrich Krupp AG concern. The Hugenberg's criticism, who was seeking to make a political career, were the draft laws on socialization and emergency tax, submitted to the deputies of the National Assembly. The campaign against Erzberger, accompanied by sharp attacks and widespread public condemnation, ended with the rejection of part of the Reich Minister's law drafts and the subsequent resignation. The analysis of the published political speeches of Hugenberg and materials from periodicals shed light on the specifics of parliamentary discussions, allowing to reveal the arguments of the right against the continuation of democratization of the Weimar Republic in the early years of its existence.


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