Weekly newspaper party

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The Wochenblatt party was an association of Prussian liberal - conservative politicians of the 1850s / 1860s. The group was named after the “Prussian weekly paper for discussing political issues of the day” (published between 1851 and 1861).

Goals and Policy

Leading head was Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg . The group of around 40 men included important parliamentarians such as Maximilian von Schwerin-Putzar , Albert von Pourtalès and Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen . The politicians were among the advocates of a constitution, which fundamentally differentiated them from the highly conservative “ Kreuzzeitung party ” around the Gerlach brothers and Prime Minister Otto Theodor von Manteuffel . In 1851 the weekly newspaper party protested (in vain) against the reintroduction of the pre-revolutionary provincial estates. In contrast to the advocacy of a settlement with Austria during the reaction era , the group advocated Prussian hegemony in Germany and at times strove to resume the Erfurt Union .

During the Crimean War , she pleaded unsuccessfully for Prussia's military intervention against Russia . Around this time, their independent political influence waned. Although it allied itself in the Prussian House of Representatives with a small right-wing liberal faction (from 1858), its decline as an organized force could no longer be stopped. Nevertheless, their political ideas still played a certain role during the new era , as some of the leading members of the Wilhelm I group were personally close and Bethmann-Hollweg therefore also became a member of the liberal government as minister of culture . The Wochenblatt party was in many ways a forerunner of the Free Conservative Party .

literature

  • Wolfram Siemann : Society on the move. Germany 1849-1871. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-11537-5 , ( Edition Suhrkamp 1537 = NF 537 New Historical Library ), p. 259 f.
  • Walter Tormin : History of the German parties since 1848. 2nd revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1967, ( history and present ), p. 48.