German Conservative Party - German Right Party

The German Conservative Party - German Right Party (abbreviated DKP-DRP ) was a party in the British zone of occupation (1946–1950).

history

The DKP-DRP came into being on March 22, 1946 through the merger of the German Construction Party (DAP) and the German Conservative Party (DKP). The DAP saw itself as the successor party to the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP), which split off from the German National People's Party (DNVP) in 1922 , while the DKP tried to win back the supporters of the DNVP. The party stood in the tradition of monarchistically oriented Prussian conservatism .

A conservative-Christian party program with slightly monarchist features, with which one leaned on the party programs of the DNVP and strongly condemned National Socialism , was written in 1946 by Hans Zehrer and Otto Schmidt-Hannover on Sylt . In the German Conservative Party (i.e. in the regional associations of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein ) this program was called the Conservative Manifesto , in the German Right Party as the manifesto of the right (regional associations in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia ).

The gradual dissolution of the party began as early as the summer of 1947 when Erwin Jacobi , a member of the DKP-DRP zone council from Hamburg, joined the German party (DP) with numerous party friends, including the future Senator for Finance Wilhelm Ziegeler . This trend continued when on November 11, 1947 the Lübeck district association under Hans Ewers , who had co-founded the DAP, split off and also went to the DP. Other district associations ( Eutin , Lauenburg ) joined them. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the DNVP-critical group around Joachim von Ostau also soon left the party.

Ballot for the first federal election in 1949

In the run-up to the 1949 Bundestag election , negotiations were held with the DP and the National Democratic Party (NDP) on a merger, but these ultimately failed because the British occupying power in particular declared that a merger party made up of the DP, NDP and DKP-DRP would not be in their area Get license. For the 1949 federal election, the DKP-DRP then concluded an electoral alliance in Lower Saxony with the Association of Independent Germans (GuD) under Fritz Dorls and " Franz Richter ", which had not received a license. Sometimes she appeared there under the name "DRP - German Right Party". The GuD also joined the DKP-DRP organizationally after the federal election in 1949. Dorls and his supporters ( Otto Ernst Remer and Gerhard Krüger, among others ) were expelled on October 2, 1949, and on the same day they founded the Socialist Reich Party (SRP), which was later banned .

On January 21, 1950, after the compulsory licensing had ended, the Lower Saxony (and most important) regional association of the DKP-DRP joined the German Reich Party (DRP) with the Hessian NDP under Heinrich Leuchtgens , whose National Socialist wing had meanwhile also joined the SRP. together.

A small group around the last chairman, Hermann Klingspor , continued to run the remainder of the party, which did not want to participate in the merger, for a while as “national rights”. This small group moved closer to the more conservative state associations of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), in which most of the NR members finally joined. In Lower Saxony, the German right-wing party entered the state elections in 1951 with little success.

Election results

Election results of the DKP-DRP
choice	Share of votes	Seats
Bundestag election 1949	1.8%	5 *
Hamburg 1946 (as DKP)	0.3%	0
Lower Saxony 1947 (as DRP)	0.3%	0
North Rhine-Westphalia 1947 (as DKP)	0.3%	0
Schleswig-Holstein 1947 (as DKP)	3.1%	0
Lower Saxony 1951 (as RP)	0.1%	0

*) because of jumping over the five percent hurdle in Lower Saxony with 8.1%

Parliaments

In the first Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein appointed by the British military government , the German Conservative Party was represented by Walter Harckensee in 1946/47 , and in the second Landtag in 1947 by Hans Ewers .

Besides the five seats in the Bundestag for Adolf von Thadden , " Franz Richter ," Fritz Dorls , Herwart Miessner and Heinz Frommhold the DKP-DRP achieved in the elections to the Hamburg Parliament on 16 October 1949, a mandate for Carl Schlumbohm within the electoral alliance father Urban Bund Hamburg from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), FDP and DKP-DRP. In addition, the DKP-DRP managed to win individual mandates in local elections in the British zone at the end of the 1940s. Outstanding results were the almost 70% (18 of 25 city council seats) that the DKP-DRP reached on November 26, 1948 in Wolfsburg under Leonhard Schlueter , Adolf von Thadden and Bernhard Gericke .

After the formation of the national right , Alexander Hirschfeld , Wilhelm Piepenbrink and Hansjoachim von Rohr came in 1950, three of their members through an electoral alliance with the FDP in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament.

Federal Chairperson

Wilhelm Jaeger

Period	Chairman
June to September 1946	Franz Sontag
November 1946 to April 1947	Hermann Klingspor
April 1947 to August 1949	Wilhelm Jaeger
September 1949 to January 1950	Hermann Klingspor

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Göttingen City Archives: Chronicle 1951

literature

• Horst W. Schmollinger, The German Conservative Party - German Right Party, in: Richard Stöss , Party Handbook, Westdeutscher Verlag , Opladen 1986, pages 982 ff., ISBN 3-531-11838-2 .