Persons and Governments
The party's first leader of the Protestant parish priest Friedrich Naumann who was popular and influential but failed with his Nationalsozialer Verein ten years earlier to link progressive intellctuals with the worker's class. He died early in 1919. Other still known politicians of the DDP were Hugo Preuß, the main author of the Weimar constitution, and the eminent sociologist Max Weber. Hjalmar Schacht, once a prominent supporter of this party and president of the Reichsbank, left the party in 1926.
Nearly all German governments from 1918 to 1931 included ministers from the DDP, such as Walther Rathenau, Eugen Schiffer, Hugo Preuss, Otto Gessler, Max Weber and Erich Koch-Weser. From their 18% share of the first elections under proportional representation in 1919, they dropped to for example 4,9% in 1928 and 1,0% in November 1932. An attempted merger with the Young German Order to form the German State Party in 1930 failed miserably, and the party's Reichstag delegation became practically insignificant.
Read more about this topic: German Democratic Party
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