German Social Party (Weimar Republic)

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The German Social Party (DS or DtSP, DSoP or also DsP) was a völkisch - anti-Semitic party in the Weimar Republic and in the Free City of Danzig .

history

The party was founded on February 23, 1921 in direct competition with the German Socialist Party . The party founder and chairman was the elementary school teacher and journalist Richard Kunze (1872–1945), who “always ruled dictatorially in his own ranks”. Their organizational center was in Berlin . The DtSP reached 34,000 members at its wedding around 1925. Of these, 3,000 came from Berlin, 5,000 from Saxony , 2,400 from Central Silesia , 2,300 from the Posen-West Prussia border region and 5,000 from the Free City of Danzig .

The DtSP operated anti-capitalist rhetoric and did not shrink from violence. One of the initial main guidelines was to break the "Jewish rule in Germany [...] under all circumstances". Jews and “ Jewish relatives ” were excluded from party membership. The party also advocated the protection of businesspeople from large-scale and branch operations, the participation of workers in company profits and the cheaper food. The Versailles peace treaty was rejected; the future form of government should be determined in a referendum. Members and interested parties of the party were recommended to read the writings of Theodor Fritsche , Anton Drexler , the young conservative Edgar Jung and other ethnic authors. The content of the leaflet “Volksgenossen” and the party’s internal text “Path to Rescue” should be learned by heart.

According to reports in the Berliner Tageblatt , the party was financially supported by large agricultural and German national circles. In December 1922, the Reich Commissioner for the Monitoring of Public Order (RKO) considered the party to be comparable in its goals to the NSDAP , but organizationally independent. The DtSP had already come into the RKO's field of vision in July 1922, after it was reported in confidence that a group within the party was planning the murder of leading representatives of the Weimar Republic. According to reports from the social democratic forward , Jews were openly threatened with murder at party events in Berlin. In Thuringia , the DtSP was banned in December 1922 as a substitute organization for the NSDAP.

In the Reichstag election in May 1924 , the DtSP succeeded in gaining four seats in the Reichstag , those of Kunze (constituency 3 - Potsdam II) and Konrad Jenzen (1882– ?; Reich election proposal), Hans Kurth (1896–1973; constituency 7 - Wroclaw ) and Friedrich Stock (1877–1937; Reich election proposal) were perceived. The latter two migrated to the National Socialist Freedom Party before the end of the electoral term . In the Reichstag election in December 1924 , the party lost more than half of the votes and all seats in the Reichstag.

The situation was similar to that in the Reichstag at the grassroots level: the supporters of the DtSP had been courted by the newly founded Deutschvölkische Freedom Party (DVFP) since the beginning of 1923 . The partially successful recruitment efforts prompted Kunze in the spring of 1923 to conclude a combat alliance with the DNVP directed against the DVFP . The managing director of the DtSP, Scheibler, left the party in September 1924 and founded the "German Social Working Group" with his supporters. Scheibler accused Kunze of using the party only for private purposes to make money. Contrary to the practice at the time, Kunze raised entrance fees for public events; He also used the DtSP office to sell sausages, which were sold there to subscribers of Kunze's newspapers at reduced prices.

From 1925 onwards, many members of the DtSP went over to the newly founded NSDAP and in May 1926 a number of them went over to the German National Freedom Movement (DVFB). Ernst Schlange and Arthur Greiser were among the members who switched to the NSDAP . In December 1925, the DtSP joined the DVFB alliance, later known as the Völkisch-Sozial Arbeitsgemeinschaft . According to the Berlin Political Police, this cooperation actually accelerated the decline of the party: if there were 4,000 party members in Berlin in May 1926, this number had dropped to 1,000 a year later. From November 1927, there were in fact two parties with the same name who were at odds over the question of their position in relation to the NSDAP. In the course of the conflict, party founder Kunze was expelled on May 25, 1928 by opponents of affiliation with the NSDAP. In the run-up to the 1928 Reichstag election, Kunze had joined the fatherland opposition bloc around the DVFB, but left the group after internal disputes in February and March 1928. In May 1929 Kunze dissolved his party and joined the NSDAP himself. The Berlin Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels commented on this in his newspaper The Attack under the headline “Party owner Kunze at the end”.

Election results

Reichstag elections 1920–1928

Constituency June 1920 May 1924 December 1924 May 1928
German Empire 22,954 0.1% 333.427 1.1% 140.189 0.5% 45,884 0.1%
1 East Prussia - - 27,618 2.7% 7,810 0.8% 1,327 0.1%
2 Berlin - - 35.176 3.2% 13,733 1.2% 1,424 0.1%
3 Potsdam II - - 40,135 4.6% 18,816 2.1% 2,057 0.2%
4th Potsdam I. - - 22,474 2.6% 8,765 1.0% 1,024 0.1%
5 Frankfurt Oder - - 24,609 3.0% 10,756 1.3% 2,761 0.3%
6th Pomerania - - 18,259 2.0% 8,974 1.0% 621 0.1%
7th Wroclaw - - 38,487 4.1% 15,909 1.7% 13,312 1.4%
8th Liegnitz - - 23,291 3.8% 17,899 2.9% 7,281 1.2%
9 Opole 22,954 4.5% 6,877 1.5% 5,651 1.0% 3,765 0.7%
10 Magdeburg - - 13,530 1.5% 4,442 0.5% 797 0.1%
11 Merseburg - - 5,443 0.8% 1,360 0.2% 557 0.1%
12 Thuringia - - - - - - 1,733 0.2%
13 Schleswig-Holstein - - - - 1,804 0.2% - -
14th Weser-Ems - - 3,937 0.6% 1,679 0.2% 941 0.1%
15th East Hanover - - 6,242 1.2% 1,039 0.2% - -
16 South Hanover-Braunschweig - - 6,595 0.7% 1,640 0.2% 986 0.1%
17th Westphalia north - - 6.113 0.6% 1,206 0.1% - -
18th Westphalia south - - 6,427 0.5% - - 1,202 0.1%
19th Hessen-Nassau - - - - - - 1,898 0.2%
20th Cologne-Aachen - - 8,213 0.9% - - - -
21st Koblenz-Trier - - 4,055 0.7% 1,759 0.3% - -
22nd Düsseldorf East - - - - - - 392 0.0%
23 Düsseldorf West - - 3,061 0.4% 865 0.1% 613 0.1%
24 Upper Bavaria-Swabia - - - - - - - -
25th Lower Bavaria - - - - - - - -
26th Francs - - - - - - - -
27 Palatinate - - - - - - - -
28 Dresden-Bautzen - - 23,452 2.4% 10.137 1.0% 1,561 0.2%
29 Leipzig - - 5,565 0.8% 2.126 0.3% 329 0.0%
30th Chemnitz-Zwickau - - 3,868 0.4% 3.121 0.3% 825 0.1%
31 Württemberg - - - - - - - -
32 to bathe - - - - - - - -
33 Hessen-Darmstadt - - - - - - - -
34 Hamburg - - - - 698 0.1% 478 0.1%
35 Mecklenburg - - - - - - - -
  1. ↑ Name of the election proposal in December 1924: German Social Party and Reich Association for Upgrading.
  2. ^ The Reichstag elections in 1920 were held in the constituency of Opole on November 19, 1922.
  3. Jump up ↑ In southern Hanover-Braunschweig in May 1924 as the German Social Party, nationalist list towards Richard Kunze .

Free City of Gdansk

The German Social Party participated twice in the elections for the People's Day of the Free City of Danzig.

date Share of votes Mandates
November 18, 1923 6.2% 7th
November 13, 1927 1.2% 1

In 1923 she voted for the bourgeois Senate Sahm II , even if her votes were not needed for a majority.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This assessment by Bernd Kruppa: right-wing radicalism in Berlin 1918–1928. Overall-Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-925961-00-3 , p. 193.
  2. ^ A b Martin Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist «seizure of power» in Berlin and Brandenburg 1926–1934. Technical University of Berlin 2005, pp. 18-20.
  3. ^ Manfred Weißbecker: German Social Party 1921–1928. In: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945). Volume 2, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1984, p. 538.
  4. ↑ Bernd Kruppa: right-wing radicalism , p. 146.
  5. ^ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 148.
  6. ↑ Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 153, with reference to the Berliner Tagblatt , May 2, 1921 (No. 204).
  7. ^ Letter from the Reich Commissioner for the Monitoring of Public Order to the Vienna Police Department of December 21, 1922, quoted in Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 147.
  8. ^ Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 194.
  9. ↑ Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 194, with reference to Forward , No. 327 (July 19, 1922).
  10. ↑ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 197.
  11. ^ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 209.
  12. ↑ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 300.
  13. ↑ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 151f.
  14. ^ Reimer Wulff: The German National Freedom Party 1922–1928. University publication, Marburg 1968, p. 143 f.
  15. ↑ a b Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 328.
  16. ^ Weißbecker: German Social Party , p. 539.
  17. ^ Wulff, Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei , p. 160.
  18. ↑ Schuster 2005, p. 43.
  19. ↑ general election results in www.gonschior.de: June 1920 , May 1924 , December 1924 , May 1928 .
  20. ↑ Results of the People's Day elections at www.gonschior.de: November 1923 , November 1927 .