Economic Party (Germany)

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. In 1925, following the recommendation of its most famous member, Johann Bredt, the party chnged its name from the Economic Party to the Reich Party of the German Middle Class. Despite this change the previous name remained more popular.^[2][3]

A 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 tax.^[4] Close to the Central Association of House and Property Owners, it was particularly opposed to revaluation, which it considered an attack on the rights of property owners.^[5] 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.^[3] 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]

Its first representation was in the Landtag of Prussia in 1921, and it appeared in the Reichstag in 1924.^[4] Its best performance in a national election came in 1930 when it won 23 seats.^[4] This total reduced to two only two years later by which time it had lost most of its support to the Nazi Party.^[4]

The party enjoyed its strongest following in Saxony during the 1920s and when it first contested the Landtag of Saxony elections in 1924 it received 7.9% of the vote in Chemnitz-Zwickau, the only district in which it stood.^[6]

In 1926 the party co-operated with the German People's Party, DNVP and the Reich Party for Civil Rights and Deflation in a pact against "red parties" in Saxony, arguing that the left was using that state to launch its assault on the Weimar Republic in order to establish communism in Germany.^[7] The pact was not a success however as a Social Democratic Party of Germany government took office in the state and before the WP was squabbling with their Reich Party allies over the issue of property revaluation (which WP opposed and the Reich Party supported).^[8]

Nonetheless, their support in Saxony was reflected in the 1928 Reichstag election, where the party's 8.5% vote share was by some distance their highest in the country.^[9] This fell to 7.3% in 1930 and to as low as 1% in July 1932 by which the WP, which had flirted with anti-parliamentary rhetoric and corporatism, saw its support transfer to the Nazi Party in Saxony as was the case elsewhere.^[10]