Ideology
It was essentially the centre and right factions of the old National Liberal Party combined with some of the more moderate elements of the Free Conservative Party, and was formed in the early days of the Weimar Republic, led by Gustav Stresemann. During the Weimar Republic, it was one of two large Liberal parties in Germany, the other being the German Democratic Party.
The party was generally thought to represent the interests of the great German industrialists. Its platform stressed Christian family values, secular education, lower tariffs, opposition to welfare spending and agrarian subsides and hostility to "Marxism" (that is, the Communists, and also the Social Democrats). Due to its lukewarm acceptance of democracy, the party was initially part of the "national opposition" to the Weimar Coalition. However, Stresemann gradually led it into cooperation with the parties of the center and left. The party wielded an influence on German politics beyond its numbers, as Stresemann was the Weimar Republic's only statesman of international standing. He served as foreign minister continuously from 1923 until his death in 1929 in nine governments (one of which he briefly headed in 1923) ranging from the center-right to the center-left. After Stresemann's death, the DVP gradually moved back towards the right.
Read more about this topic: German People's Party
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“Liberation is an evershifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises.... It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred—it is the amphetamine of its believers.”
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