German Empire Party Deutsche Reichspartei | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | DRP |
| Leader |
|
| Founded | 21/22 January 1950[1] |
| Dissolved | 1965 |
| Merger of | |
| Merged into | National Democratic Party of Germany[5][6] |
| Newspaper | Reichsruf |
| Ideology | Before 1952: *German nationalism *Pan-Germanism *Antisemitism *Anti-communism After 1952: *Neo-Nazism |
| Political position | Far-right |
| European affiliation | National Party of Europe |
| Colors | Brown |
TheDeutsche Reichspartei (DRP), also known as theGerman Empire Party orGerman Imperial Party, was anationalist,far-right, and laterneo-Nazi political party inWest Germany. It was founded in 1950 from theGerman Right Party (German:Deutsche Rechtspartei), which had been set up inLower Saxony in 1946 and had five members in the firstBundestag, and from which it took the name. Its biggest success and only major breakthrough came in the 1959Rhineland-Palatinate regional election, when it sent a deputy to the assembly.[5]
Prior to its 1952 turn towards explicitneo-Nazism, the DRP advocatedGerman nationalism,pan-Germanism and support of a newReich, andpan-European nationalism. Ananti-communist,antisemitic, andanti-socialist party, itscriticism of capitalism was reflected ineconomic antisemitic terms rather thansocialism, in addition toracial antisemitism. When the openly neo-Nazi-orientedSocialist Reich Party (SRP) was declared unconstitutional and disbanded by theFederal Constitutional Court of Germany, many of its members joined the DRP.[7] With its lack of success, the party was symbolically liquidated and followed by the establishment of theNational Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).[5]
The DRP was established in 1950 when the majority of theDeutsche Rechtspartei (German Right Party) members of theBundestag decided to establish a more formal party network under the DRP name.[2] The new party absorbed the National Democrats, a splinter group fromHesse.[3] The party took its name from an earlier eponymous group that had existed during theGerman Empire period.[5] The initial three deputy chairmen,Wilhelm Meinberg, Otto Hess, and Heinrich Kunstmann, had all been members of theNazi Party.[5] From 1951, the group published its own newspaper, which was titledReichsruf (Call of the Reich).[8]
On 6 May 1951, the party won 2.2 percent of the vote inLower Saxony state election and with that, three deputies (as the state did not have an electoral hurdle before 1959). However, they were overshadowed by the explicitly neo-NaziSocialist Reich Party (SRP), which received 11% of the vote.
The party moved towards explicitneo-Nazism in 1952, when the SRP was declared unconstitutional and disbanded by theFederal Constitutional Court of Germany. Much of its membership then joined the DRP.[7] The membership ofHans-Ulrich Rudel in 1953 was seen as marking out the party as the new force of neo-Nazism and he enjoyed close ties toSavitri Devi andNazi mysticism.[9]
Stability under chancellorKonrad Adenauer of theChristian Democratic Union of Germany and the growth experienced during theWirtschaftswunder meant that the DRP struggled for support, averaging around only 1% of the national votes in the federal elections of 1953, 1957, and 1961.[5] The party still won 3.8% of the vote in the 1955 Lower Saxony state election and sent six deputies to the state assembly. In November 1957, the Lower Saxonian FDP andGB/BHE formed a joint parliamentary group and accepted the DRP members as the group's guest members, however, the state Minister-President Heinrich Hellwege (DP) was not willing to include them and formed a new coalition with DP, CDU and SPD.[10][11][12] The party's only major breakthrough came in the1959 Rhineland-Palatinate state election, where it won 5.1% of the vote and thus was able to send one deputy,Hans Schikora [de], to the assembly.[5]
The party's sudden breakthrough was due to local winegrowers' concerns that West German membership in theEuropean Economic Community would intensify competition with better and cheaperFrench wines, thus destroying their livelihoods; Rhineland-Palatinate beingGermany's most important winegrowing region at the time. As a result, the DRP's protectionism, as well as its anti-French sentiment with the slogan "Out with all the Occupiers" ("Raus mit allen Besatzern"), resonated with the winegrowers. However, the lone Schikora was quickly isolated by the democratic parties (CDU, SPD, FDP).[13]
On Christmas Eve 1959, two DRP party members, Arnold Strunk and Josef Schönen, defaced theRoonstrasse Synagogue inCologne with swastikas and the inscription "Deutsche fordern: Juden raus" ("Germans demand: Jews out").[14] They were sentenced to 14 and 10 months in prison, respectively, with loss of civil rights for two years.[15]
The party's Rhineland-Palatinate branch was declared to be an SRP successor organization and banned by the state's interior minister August Wolters (CDU) on 26 January 1960. The federal party leadership held Schikora responsible for this legal punishment and expelled him from the party. The SRP-associated members of party's previous state executive committee were also expelled, and the party ban was lifted on 24 November 1960. At the party's state delegates' conference in October 1961, the national-neutralist wing achieved a majority and re-elected Schikora as state chairman; however, he was again dismissed two months later and the party began to dissolve afterwards. By 1962, the state association had lost around 30% of its members, and in the 1963 state elections, the party fell below the 5% vote threshold and left the Landtag.[13]
In 1962, the party took part in an international conference of far-right groups hosted inVenice byOswald Mosley and signed up as members of hisNational Party of Europe.[16] This initiative did not take off as Mosley had hoped, as few of the member parties, including the DRP, were interested in changing their name to National Party of Europe, as he had hoped they would.[17] One of the party's last acts in 1964 saw it sponsor a tour of Germany by controversial American historianDavid L. Hoggan, a prominentHolocaust denier.[18]
Their lack of national success saw the leaders of the DRP seek to extend their influence further, and they made contact with the leaders of other rightist parties, such as theGerman Party and its successor (following that organisation's merger with theAll-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights), theGesamtdeutsche Partei seeking close ties.[19] It was soon decided that a more formal union with other rightist groups was desirable. They held their final party conference inBonn in 1964 in which they voted to form a new union of "national democratic forces".[5] The party was symbolically liquidated, with theNationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany, NPD) established immediately afterwards.[5]
| Election | Constituency | Party list | Seats | +/– | Government | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||||
| 1953 | 204,725 | 0.74 | 295,739 | 1.07 | 0 / 509 | ||
| 1957 | 290,622 | 0.96 | 308,564 | 1.03 | 0 / 519 | ||
| 1961 | 242,649 | 0.76 | 262,977 | 0.83 | 0 / 521 | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
