German Free-minded Party
독일 자유사상당
A left-liberal party of the German Empire formed in 1884 by the merger of the German Progress Party and the Liberal Union. It stood for wider parliamentary government, separation of church and state and an end to protective tariffs against Bismarck, but split in 1893 over an army bill into the Free-minded People’s Party and the Free-minded Union.
In depth
On 5 March 1884 Eugen Richter’s Progress Party merged with Franz von Stauffenberg’s Liberal Union. Both expected the supposedly liberal Crown Prince Frederick William to come to the throne soon and wanted a strong liberal bloc in parliament to support him. Stauffenberg chaired the central committee with Albert Hänel and Rudolf Virchow as deputies, while the real leadership, the executive committee, was headed by Richter.
Its programme called for full implementation of constitutional guarantees, parliamentarisation of the constitutional monarchy, freedom of press, assembly and association, separation of church and state and equality of all religious communities including the Jewish one, lower taxes and an end to protective tariffs. It opposed Bismarck’s social insurance laws as weakening workers’ self-help. From 100 seats at its founding it fell to 65 in the 1884 Reichstag election and to 32 in 1887. The death of Frederick III in 1888 after 99 days on the throne ended its hopes of office.
Once Bismarck had gone and the common enemy with him, the conflict between the former Progressive left and the former Secessionist right grew. In May 1893 deputies who voted for the Caprivi government’s army bill were expelled, the right wing left to form the Free-minded Union, and Richter’s left became the Free-minded People’s Party. The two reunited in 1910 as the Progressive People’s Party.