Economic Party (Germany)

Early History

Following the establishment of the Weimar Republic, the German National People's Party (DNVP), which emerged as the main conservative party, hoped to include Germany's established bourgeoisie as a natural part of its own support base. This however was not to be the case, as the party quickly became associated with general rural interests as well as those of big business, and as a result the WP was formed in September 1920 by a Berlin baker named Hermann Drewitz to be the party of these middle-class views.

The party brought together a collection of almost entirely urban, often-contradictory, middle-class interests. The party incorporated artisans, property owners, small and medium businessmen, pensioners, professionals, and bureaucrats whose commonality was the degradation of their status caused by inflation. These groups had contradictory views of how the economy should be run. the artisans had a more corporatist mentality and demanded protection against the ‘‘excesses of free competition,’’ while property owners generally called for a restoration of classical laissez-faire economics.^[2] In order to reflect the views of this group, the WP called for a reduction in government economic involvement, a freer hand for business and lower taxes.^[3] It was particularly opposed to Currency revaluation, which it considered an attack on the rights of property owners.^[4] The WP did not dominate as the middle class vote, as some went with either the DNVP or one of the two liberal parties (the DVP and the DDP), whilst others preferred more radical right alternatives, but generally the WP emerged as the main group to specifically target the middle classes for its support.^[5] The parties primary policy goals where usually whatever best served the Middle Class at that particular moment and as such the party was willing to work with any party to achieve these goals, including the DNVP, The NSDAP, and the KPD.^[2]

Rise to Prominence

The WP quickly attracted the interest of organized housing interests headed by the former DNVP politician Johann Victor Bredt. Bredt’s allies in the Prussian chapter of the Central Association of Home and Property Owners’ Organization, a lobby for housing interests, threw their full support behind the Party in the 1921 Prussian State Elections and were rewarded when the WP won it first representation in a State Landtag with 4 seats. Because of this, in its early history the WP was often viewed as a puppet of organized housing interests. In 1925, following the recommendation of its most famous member, Johann Bredt, the party changed its name from the Economic Party to the Reich Party of the German Middle Class. as attempt to escape its perception as special interest and to broaden its appeal among Germany’s middle-class voters. Despite this change the previous name remained more popularity^[2][5][6]

The party first appeared in the Reichstag in May 1924 election achieving 7 seats.^[3]

In the July of 1925 the WP held its first national party congress in Görlitz and during the Congress established their new new party program called the Görlitz Guidelines (German: Görlitzer Richtlinien). The work of Saxon party leader Walther Wilhelm, the Görlitz Guidelines sought to strengthen the party’s ideological profile by incorporating the traditional demands of homeowners, artisans, and small businessmen into a corporatist agenda. With the new party program, the Business Party’s transformation from a party easily stigmatized as an agent for organized housing interests into one that claimed to represent the entire spectrum of the German middle class was finished. All of this, including the choice of Görlitz as the site of the party congress, was part of a conscious effort to give the WP the best possible chances in the upcoming Saxon elections. This proved successful when in the 1926 Saxon Landtag elections provided the WP achieved 10.1 percent of the vote and received a very useful platform for validating themselves as the party of the Middle Class and their discontent.^[6]

1928 Elections

Among the German Right, the campaign for the 1928 Reichstag elections was dominated above all else by electoral attacks of various special interests parties such as CNBLP and the WP. The WP, which had been steadily growing at the expense of the other right wing parties since their founding, continued to campaign for the support of the parts of the middle-class that had not benefitted from Germany's economic stabilization in the late 1920's. On 18 March 1928 WP Hermann Drewitz and the leaders of a nonpartisan organization known as the Reich Cartel of the German Middle Class (German: Reichskartell des deutschen Mittelstandes) launched with a series of demonstrations throughout the country under the slogan “Mittelstand in Not.” This initiative reached its high point in Berlin, where several thousand small business owners closed their shops and took to the streets in protest against high taxes, rent controls, and excessive government spending. Though officially nonpartisan, the demonstrations gave the WP an great opportunity for attacking other parties. They focused their attacks on the DNVP, especially for their support of the 1927 work hours law, which put more restrictions on working hours. The party improved their performance and won 23 seats.^[7]

The parties seat total was reduced to two only in The July 1932 election by which time it had lost most of its support to the Nazi Party.^[3]