Nassau Progress Party

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The Nassau Progressive Party was a liberal party in the Duchy of Nassau .

prehistory

Since the March Revolution of 1848/1849, political associations , the predecessors of the later parties, could be formed. However, the elections were still pure personality choices. There were just as few party lists as there were election campaigns for the individual groups.

In the Duchy of Nassau, the liberals joined together to form a number of local associations, which joined together in mid-1848 to form the “Federation of Democratic Associations”. Even if these associations enjoyed a high level of acceptance among the population, they were persecuted by the government and then dissolved again. For example, the "Democratic Association Wiesbaden" was founded on July 12, 1848 in Wiesbaden . Founding members were, among others, the MPs Karl Braun and Gustav Dünkelberg . However, the association was dissolved by the government just three days later. As a result, the “Association for the Protection of People's Rights” was founded as a successor organization. The founding members included Christian Minor , Friedrich Snell and Wilhelm Zais. These associations were dissolved in the reaction era. These associations can be seen as the forerunners of the Nassau Progressive Party.

founding

In December 1863, shortly before the state elections, the Nassau Progressive Party was founded. It was the first formally founded party of the Duchy of Nassau and would remain the only one until its end. At the beginning of 1863, Theodor Dilthey , Hubert Hilf , Daniel Raht , Friedrich Schenck , Louis Gourdé , Christian Scholz and other liberals got together and worked out the program of the future party. This program was promulgated at town meetings across Nassau on March 1, 1863. They acknowledged the principles of liberalism, demanded the reinstatement of the imperial constitution of 1848 and the Nassau constitution of 1848 and the electoral law of that time, and strived for a German nation state. In doing so, she assumed a small German and thus Prussian-friendly position. The Nassau Progressive Party got along well and acted as the Nassau section of the national association .

Electoral successes

In the state elections in December 1863, the Nassau Progressive Party won out of the blue and won 17 out of 24 seats in the second chamber and even all 9 electoral mandates of the first chamber of the estates of the Duchy of Nassau . In the elections on June 24, 1864, the Progressive Party achieved a landslide victory. She received 20 of 24 seats in the second chamber and all electoral seats in the first chamber.

After the end of Nassau

With the annexation of the Duchy of Nassau by Prussia , Nassau's state independence ended in 1866. The Nassau Progressive Party continued to operate independently in its field. Of its five deputies after the first Reichstag election under Prussian rule , two joined the national liberal faction , two with the German Progressive Party and one with the free conservatives .

Despite the small German orientation, the Nassau Progressive Party came into opposition to the Prussian government shortly after the annexation, in line with the conflict between the Liberals and Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck at the time . Regionally, this was expressed in particular in the agitation against special regulations on hunting rights in the former Nassau. These were far more feudal than in Prussia and provided sovereign hunting rights even on private property. The Prussian administration only wanted to give up this regulation in exchange for redemption payments from the peasants, which led to considerable displeasure among the rural population. Karl Braun in particular took the side of the rural population on this issue, which gave the Nassau Progressive Party in the Reichstag election in February 1867 successes outside of its regular bourgeois electorate. Similarly, in the following years the party campaigned for the interests of the regional population vis-à-vis the Prussian state, for example for maintaining the simultaneous schools common in Nassau .

A little later than on the Prussian and North German level, the liberal movement split in Nassau. Points of contention were different views on the need for constitutional reforms in North Germany and in the power struggle between the Prussian government and the opposition in the state parliament. This led on January 9, 1869 in Wiesbaden to the self-dissolution of the electoral association of the Nassau Progressive Party and thus de facto also the party.

In the Reichstag election in 1871 , the former representatives of the Nassau Progress Party ran for the German Progressive Party and the National Liberals. Of the five constituencies on the territory of the former duchy, the Progress Party won three, the Center and the Conservatives one each.

literature

  • Nassau parliamentarians. Part 1: Cornelia Rösner: The Landtag of the Duchy of Nassau 1818–1866 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau. 59 = Prehistory and history of parliamentarism in Hesse. 16). Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-930221-00-4 , pp. VII – XXXV.
  • Wolf-Arno Kropat : The liberal bourgeoisie in Nassau and the founding of an empire. In: Nassau Annals . Vol. 82, 1971, pp. 307-323.