During the Prussian-led unification of Germany, the National Liberals became the dominant party in the Reichstag. While supporting the common ideals of liberalism and nationalism, the party contained two wings, which reflected the conflicting claims of its Hegelian and idealistic heritage: one emphasized the power of the state through the Nationalstaat, and the other emphasized the civil liberties of the Rechtsstaat.[2] Although that cleavage later proved fatal for its unity, the National Liberals managed to remain the pivotal party in the decades after unification by cooperating with both the Progressives and the Free Conservatives on various issues.[2]
Upon the victory over the Austrian forces at the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July, many of the liberals finally put aside their differences due to their support for Bismarck's highly successful foreign policy. Seizing the opportunity, he introduced a bill that subsequently formalized his circumvention of parliamentary budgetary rights.
At voting time on 3 September, the political division of the liberals was confirmed when 19 National Liberal deputies opted for his Indemnity Law. While the Liberals who opposed the bill argued that Bismarck was asking them to compromise on constitutional government, the bill’s supporters believed opposition was fruitless because Bismarck had the firm support of King Wilhelm I (under the constitution, the minister-president was responsible to the king, not parliament). They believed that if they accepted the Indemnity Law, they would be in a better position to press for greater freedom. This, the first National Liberal faction in the Prussian parliament was formed on 17 November around Eduard Lasker and Hans Victor von Unruh.
The National Liberal Party was founded in the course of the North German federal election held on 12 February 1867. They gathered support from the Prussian annexed territories of Hanover and Hesse-Nassau as well as from the other states of the Confederation, emerging as the largest faction in the North German Reichstag. An inaugural declaration was adopted on 12 June. The first party chairman was Rudolf von Bennigsen.
The National Liberals' period of great dominance was between 1871 and 1879, when they were Bismarck's chief allies in the Reichstag where they were avid supporters of the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf measures and the Anti-Socialist Laws. In the first all-German federal election held on 3 March 1871, the party reached 30.1% of the votes, becoming the strongest group in the Reichstag parliament with 119 seats. The Reichstag faction remained the political centre of power as the party never attained a large number of members. Chairman of National Liberal Party was Rudolf von Bennigsen.
The stabilization of the new state was in a large degree only feasible because of National Liberals' support as de factoruling party and their guidance of Bismarck's domestic policies, especially in regards to national economics and the legal foundations of the German Empire. Weights and measurements were standardized, a common German market and a national bank, the Reichsbank, created and the numerous regional currencies replaced with the Goldmark. The liberal economic policies, although temporarily unpopular in the recession of the 1870s, laid the groundworks for the economic boom the German nation experienced at the turn of the 19th century.
Decline
In 1879, Bismarck's alliance with the National Liberals broke over his abandonment of free trade by the adoption of a tariff. In the economic crisis following the Panic of 1873, several lobbying associations exerted pressure on Bismarck who increasingly favoured a more protectionist approach. However, these policies violated the liberal principles of both the National Liberals and the more left-leaning liberalGerman Progress Party. The shift was so important that it has been characterized as Bismarck's conservative turn. This meant an enduring shift of the Chancellor to the right, which changed the political climate of the fledgling nation and soured relations between Bismarck and a number of leading German liberals.
[O]nly those laws that separated state and church could be defended from a liberal point of view. Full state control over schools was a liberal ideal. It was also logical to introduce the obligatory civil marriage law and entrust civil agencies with the keeping of vital statistics. [...] But all the other measures constituted shocking violations of liberal principles. German liberalism showed no loyalty to the ideas of lawful procedure or of political and cultural freedom which had formerly been its lifeblood. With few exceptions the German liberals were hypnotized by the national state, which they wished to imbue with a uniform pattern of culture. They were unable to recognize that the Kulturkampf was bound to undermine the belief in the Rechtsstaat (government by law) and to divide the German people profoundly.[3]
David Blackbourn says the liberal attacks on the Catholic Church "left a political legacy that was the opposite of what liberals wanted. It made them beholden to Bismarck; and helped consolidate political Catholicism in Germany".[4]
Allies of big business
In 1905, Ernst Bassermann became chairman of National Liberal Party. He followed chairman Johannes von Miquel. The National Liberals came to be closely associated with the interests of big business, maintaining strong relations with mighty industrialist advocacy groups as well as with imperialist and nationalist associations like the Pan-German League. Increasingly threatened by the growing strength of the Social Democrats, the party gradually became more conservative, although it was generally split between a more liberal wing that sought to strengthen ties with the dissident liberals to their left and a right-wing that came to support more protectionist policies and close relations with the Conservatives and the imperial government.
Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. "Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest: The Old Authorities and the New Franchise in Imperial Germany," American Historical Review (1993) 98#5 pp.1448–1474 in JSTOR.
Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. Practicing democracy: Elections and political culture in Imperial Germany (2000).
Dorpalen, Andreas. "Emperor Frederick III and the German Liberal Movement," American Historical Review (1948) 54#1 pp.1–31 in JSTOR.
Gross, Michael B. "Kulturkampf and unification: German liberalism and the war against the Jesuits." Central European History 30#4 (1997): 545-566. in JSTOR.
Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (1957).
Mork, Gordon R. "Bismarck and the 'Capitulation' of German Liberalism," Journal of Modern History (1971) 43#1 pp.59–75 in JSTOR.
O'Boyle, Lenore. "Liberal Political Leadership in Germany, 1867-1884." Journal of Modern History (1956): 338-352. in JSTOR.
Sheehan, James J. "Political Leadership in the German Reichstag, 1871-1918." American Historical Review (1968): 511-528. in JSTOR.
von Strandmann, Hartmut Pogge. "Domestic origins of Germany's colonial expansion under Bismarck." Past and Present (1969): 140-159. in JSTOR.
Suval, Stanley. Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (1985) online.
White, Dan S. The Splintered Party: National Liberalism in Hessen and the Reich, 1867-1918 (Harvard University Press, 1976).
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a Prussian and later German statesman and diplomat.
Kulturkampf was a political conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 between the Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX and the government of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. A unique feature of Kulturkampf, compared to other struggles between the state and the Catholic Church in other countries, was Prussia's anti-Polish component. By extension, the term Kulturkampf is sometimes used to describe any conflict between secular and religious authorities, or deeply opposing values and beliefs between sizable factions within a nation, community, or other group.
The Centre Party, officially the German Centre Party and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Christian democratic political party in Germany. Influential in the German Empire and Weimar Republic, it is the oldest German political party in existence. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf waged by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party name Zentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.
The German Conservative Party was a right-wing political party of the German Empire founded in 1876. It largely represented the wealthy landowning German nobility and the Prussian Junker class.
The Free Conservative Party was a liberal-conservative political party in Prussia and the German Empire which emerged from the Prussian Conservative Party in the Prussian Landtag in 1866. In the federal elections to the Reichstag parliament from 1871, it ran as the German Reich Party. DRP was classified as centrist or centre-right by political standards at the time, and it also put forward the slogan "conservative progress".
This article aims to give a historical outline of liberalism in Germany. The liberal parties dealt with in the timeline below are, largely, those which received sufficient support at one time or another to have been represented in parliament. Not all parties so included, however, necessarily labeled themselves "liberal". The sign ⇒ denotes another party in that scheme.
The unification of Germany was a process of building the first nation-state for Germans with federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany. It commenced on 18 August 1866 with adoption of the North German Confederation Treaty establishing the North German Confederation, initially a military alliance de facto dominated by Prussia which was subsequently deepened through adoption of the North German Constitution. The process symbolically concluded when most of south German states joined the North German Confederation with the ceremonial proclamation of the German Empire i.e. the German Reich having 25 member states and led by the Kingdom of Prussia of Hohenzollerns on 18 January 1871; the event was later celebrated as the customary date of the German Empire's foundation, although the legally meaningful events relevant to the accomplishment of unification occurred on 1 January 1871 and 4 May 1871.
Eduard Lasker was a German politician and jurist. Inspired by the French Revolution, he became a spokesman for liberalism and the leader of the left wing of the National Liberal party, which represented middle-class professionals and intellectuals. He promoted the unification of Germany during the 1860s and played a major role in codification of the German legal code. Lasker at first compromised with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who later strenuously opposed Lasker regarding freedom of the press. In 1881, Lasker left the National Liberal party and helped form the new German Free Thought Party.
Robert Viktor von Puttkamer was a Prussian statesman, most prominent in his roles as Prussian minister of public education and worship in 1879 and as interior minister in 1881, under his brother-in-law Otto von Bismarck. He also introduced reforms in German orthography.
Baron Ludwig von Windthorst was a German politician and leader of the Catholic Centre Party and the most notable opponent of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck during the Prussian-led unification of Germany and the Kulturkampf. Margaret L. Anderson argues that he was "Imperial Germany's greatest parliamentarian" and bears comparison with Irishmen Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell "in his handling of party machinery and his relation to the masses."
The German Progress Party was the first modern political party in Germany, founded by liberal members of the Prussian House of Representatives in 1861 in opposition to Minister President Otto von Bismarck.
The German People's Party was a German liberal party created in 1868 by the wing of the German Progress Party which during the conflict about whether the unification of Germany should be led by the Kingdom of Prussia or Austria-Hungary supported Austria. The party was most popular in Southern Germany.
The Saxon People's Party was a left-liberal and radical democratic party with socialist leanings in Germany, founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel on 19 August 1866 in Chemnitz, and integrated into the newly-founded Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) on 8 August 1869. It was an alliance between liberal, anti-Prussian bourgeois and socialist workers' organizations in Saxony. It is considered one of the precursors to the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Conservatism in Germany has encompassed a wide range of theories and ideologies in the last three hundred years, but most historical conservative theories supported the monarchical/hierarchical political structure.
National liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal policies and issues with elements of nationalism. Historically, national liberalism has also been used in the same meaning as conservative liberalism (right-liberalism).
The Liberal Union was a short-lived liberal party in the German Empire. It originated in 1880 as a breakaway from the National Liberal Party and so was also called the Secession. It merged with the left liberal German Progress Party to form the German Free-minded Party in 1884.
The German National Association, or German National Union was a liberal political organisation, precursor of a party, in the German Confederation that existed from 1859 to 1867. It was formed by liberals and moderate democrats and aimed at forming a liberal, parliamentary Lesser German ("kleindeutsch"), Prussia-led national state.
The Reichstag of the North German Confederation was the federal state's lower house of parliament. The popularly elected Reichstag was responsible for federal legislation together with the Bundesrat, the upper house whose members were appointed by the governments of the individual states to represent their interests. Executive power lay with the Bundesrat and the king of Prussia acting as Bundespräsidium, or head of state. The Reichstag debated and approved or rejected taxes and expenditures and could propose laws in its own right. To become effective, all laws required the approval of both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. Voting rights in Reichstag elections were advanced for the time, granting universal, equal, and secret suffrage to men above the age of 25.
The Jesuit Law of 4 July 1872 forbade Jesuit institutions on the soil of the new German empire.
Georg Eugen Heinrich Arbogast Reichsfreiherr von und zu Franckenstein, was a Bavarian-German politician, a member of the German Reichstag from 1872 to 1890, a leading member of the Catholic Centre Party (Germany), its parliamentary group leader from 1875, First Vice-president of the Reichstag from 1879 to 1887 and President of the Bavarian House of Lords.
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