page_title: German National People's Party
section_title: National Opposition, 1918–1924
hierarchical_section_title: German National People's Party / History / National Opposition, 1918–1924
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Die Reichstagseröffnung am 5. Januar 1925. Die erste Tagung nach der Auflösung im neuen Jahr. Reichstagsabgeordneter Wulle, Deutsch-national, begibt sich zur Sitzung.
context_page_description: The German National People's Party was a national-conservative party in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the Nazi Party, it was the major conservative and nationalist party in Weimar Germany. It was an alliance of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch and antisemitic elements supported by the Pan-German League.
  It was formed in late 1918 after Germany's defeat in World War I and the November Revolution that toppled the German monarchy. It combined the bulk of the German Conservative Party, Free Conservative Party and German Fatherland Party with right-wing elements of the National Liberal Party. The party strongly rejected the republican Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles which it viewed as a national disgrace, signed by traitors. The party instead aimed at a restoration of monarchy, a repeal of the dictated peace treaty and reacquisition of all lost territories and colonies.
  During the mid-1920s, the DNVP moderated its profile, accepting republican institutions in practice and participating in centre-right coalition governments on federal and state levels.
context_section_description: The party was formed in December 1918 by a merger of the German Conservative Party and the Free Conservative Party of the old monarchic German Empire. It was joined soon afterward by the most right-wing section of the former National Liberal Party, and most supporters of the dissolved radically nationalist German Fatherland Party, the antisemitic Christian Social Party and German Völkisch Party. Thus, the party united most of the formerly fragmented conservative spectrum of the Empire. The process that led to the DNVP began on 22 November 1918 when an ad appeared in a number of Berlin newspapers calling for a new right-wing party for "which we suggest the name of German National People's Party". The founding of the DNVP was a response to the November Revolution of 1918 and the sense of extreme crisis it had engendered amongst the German right, where there were widespread fears that society was on the verge of destruction. As a result of the crisis atmosphere of late 1918, a very wide assortment of different parties came together to form the DNVP. This proved to be as much weakness as a strength as the DNVP had strong fissiparous tendencies throughout its existence, which was the product of the various different streams of conservatism that found themselves flowing uneasily together in one party. There was much disagreement about who was to lead the new party, and Oskar Hergt was chosen as leader on 19 December 1918 very much as the compromise candidate, being a little-known civil servant who was thereforth acceptable to all the factions. British historian Ian Kershaw wrote that ever since the late 19th century there had been tension on the German right between traditional conservatives and the more radical populist völkisch elements, saying: "Even the German National People's Party, itself with many fascistic characteristics, could only uneasily accommodate the new strength of the populist forces on the radical Right".
  At the founding convention in December 1918, Siegfried von Kardorff gave the keynote speech, in which he stated "Our new party, in which friendly right-wing parties have united, has no past and rejects any responsibility for the past. We have a present, and God willing, a good future", to which the delegates shouted "But without the Jews!" The task of writing out a common platform acceptable to all fell to a committee headed by Ulrich von Hassell. Reflecting a strong anti-Semitic orientation, right from the start Jews were banned from joining the DNVP. In the elections on 19 January 1919 for the National Assembly that was to write the new constitution, the DNVP produced a pamphlet entitled "The Jews—Germany's vampires!"
  Generally hostile towards the republican Weimar constitution, the DNVP spent most of the inter-war period in opposition. Of the 19 cabinets between 1919 and 1932, the DNVP took part in only two governments and their total period in office over this 13-year period was 27 months. The party was largely supported by landowners, especially from the agricultural, conservative and Protestant Prussian east (East Elbia), and wealthy industrialists, moreover by monarchist academics, pastors, high-ranking government officials, farmers, craftsmen, small traders, nationalist white-collar and blue-collar workers. Because most of the Protestant aristocracy, high civil servants, the Lutheran clergy, the Bildungsbürgertum (the upper middle-class), university professors, and Gymnasium (high schools for these destined to go to university) teachers supported the DNVP until 1930, the party had a cultural influence on German life far beyond what its share of the vote would suggest. Because so many university professors and Gymnasium teachers supported the DNVP, everyone who went to university in Germany under the Weimar republic was exposed in some way to Deutsch-National influence. More women than men voted for the DNVP, and despite the party's traditionalist values, women were very active in the DNVP. The women in the DNVP came mostly from the evangelical Protestant church leagues, associations representing ho
caption: Reinhold Wulle (left) was one of the leaders of the DNVP's völkisch wing in the early 1920s who walked out of the party in 1922
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