DRP Lower Saxony

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The German Reich Party Lower Saxony ( DRP ) was the state association of the right-wing German Reich Party in Lower Saxony . In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1955 , it reached 3.77% and entered the state parliament with six members .

history

The German Nazi Party came in early 1950 from a merger of Lower Saxony, the German right-wing party, a regional association of the German Conservative Party - German right-wing party (DKP-DRP), with the only in Hessen active National Democratic Party (NDP) out. Accordingly, Lower Saxony was the heartland of the DRP. The regional association was constituted on February 26, 1950 with the formation of a regional executive committee. State chairman was "Dr. Franz Richter" . The personnel decision turned out to be wrong. "Dr. Richter", regional managing directors Johannes Guth and Walter Kniggendorf tried to split off parts of the DRP and join the Socialist Reich Partyto convict. On April 3, 1950, "Dr. Richter" was expelled from the party, the day before the two other conspirators. At least 16 of the 41 district associations (and indeed the most active) had switched to the SRP. As a result, the DRP continued to shrink. At the state delegate meeting on May 21, 1950, only 19 district associations were represented. In 1951 the number of members had decreased to 1,200. On March 3, 1951, the board discussed the dissolution of the party and the recommendation to the members to join the FDP.

Participation in the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1951 was only possible on a joint list with the national rights . This provided personal support and a loan to finance the election campaign of around DM 10,000. Decisive for participation in the election was the transfer of DP MP Jürgen-Christian Frucht to the DRP before the election. With one member in parliament, the DRP was released from the obligation to collect 100 supporter signatures per constituency; a task that would probably have overwhelmed the party. The DRP received 74,017 votes in the election, which corresponded to 2.22% and was able to provide 3 members of the state parliament.

However, the election success did not change the party's organizational malaise. This changed when the SRP was banned (which had received 11.01% of the vote and 16 seats in the state elections) in 1952. For tactical reasons, the admission of former SRP members was carried out carefully in order to avoid being banned as a successor party (In 1960 such a ban took place at short notice at the DRP Rheinland-Pfalz ). Nevertheless, the number of district associations rose from 10 to 35 from 1951 to May 1953 and the number of members tripled. In the 1953 Bundestag election , 10% of the candidates on the DRP's state list had previously been members of the SRP.

The state election in Lower Saxony in 1959 resulted in 3.55% for the DRP and six seats. Even if this was a clear increase compared to the previous election, the right-wing extremist camp, if you add the votes of the SRP and DRP, lost around 10 percent of the voters.

Nevertheless, the DRP was now the undisputed strongest right-wing radical party in Lower Saxony. As such, it attracted more factions to the right. The most important was the German National Party (DNB), which Herbert Freiberger had founded in 1954 and which Otto Ernst Remer stood behind . On August 20, 1955, the DNB joined the DRP and Herbert Freiberger became chairman of the party. In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1955 , the DRP reached 3.77% and entered the state parliament with six members . A strong wing in the DRP called for the DRP to work with the FDP. In the local elections in Lower Saxony in 1956 , candidates from the FDP and DRP ran in a number of municipalities. Freiberger belonged to the national-neutralist wing of the party, which rejected this cooperation. The proposal to enter into an observation relationship between the parliamentary groups of the FDP-GB / BHE community group led to the first loss of members. The Kassel Federal Party Congress at the end of October 1957 supported the course of cooperation and the internship was entered into on November 5, 1957. After the state executive supported this on December 1, 1957, Freiberger and one hundred of his supporters left the DRP. The internship was terminated on June 2, 1958 by the FDP and GB / BHE.

In the following years the party's importance declined. In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1963 , the party achieved 1.47% of the vote and was no longer represented in the state parliament. At the beginning of September 1962, at the regional party conference in Osnabrück, it was decided to split the regional association into a regional association Northwest (including Bremen) and a regional association Hanover-Braunschweig.

In 1965 the party and with it the two state associations disbanded. The state association Hanover-Braunschweig had 18 and the state association Northwest 22 district associations (5 of them in Bremen). Large parts of the remaining members switched to the NPD , which was supposed to get 6.98% of the votes in the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1967 .

Strongholds of the party

Both in terms of organization and the electorate, the DRP had its party strongholds in the rural parts of East Friesland, in the Oldenburger Land and in Göttingen with a higher Protestant population. These were also the strongholds of the NSDAP in the early 1930s .

people

Party leader

  • Franz Richter (1950)
  • Anton Mainzer (1950–1951)
  • Kurt Jaeger (1951–1953)
  • Walter Liebehenz (1953–1954)
  • Hans Hertel (1954–1955)
  • Herbert Freiberger (1955–1957)
  • Hans-Heinrich Scheffer (1957–1960)
  • Adolf von Thadden (1960–1962)
  • Erich Blohm (Northwest Regional Association, 1962–1965)
  • Hermann Dröge (Hanover-Braunschweig Regional Association, 1962–1965)

MPs

literature

  • Oliver Sowinski: The German Reich Party 1950-1965. Organization and ideology of a right-wing radical party. Frankfurt am Main 1998, pp. 51-66, 393.