German Progress Party
독일 진보당
The first modern programmatic party in Germany, founded in 1861 by liberal deputies of the Prussian House of Representatives. Calling for rule-of-law reform, a government responsible to parliament and lower military spending, it opposed Bismarck during the constitutional conflict. In 1884 it merged with the Liberal Union to form the German Free-minded Party.
In depth
On 6 June 1861 Max von Forckenbeck, Leopold von Hoverbeck and others who had broken away from the Vincke group in the Prussian House of Representatives joined members of the German National Association in adopting a founding programme. Figures outside parliament such as Theodor Mommsen, Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, Rudolf Virchow and Hans Victor von Unruh also took part. It was the first party in Germany to stand for election under a fixed programme and its own name. The programme demanded independent judges and jury trials, a government responsible to parliament, local self-government, the abolition of estate privileges, equality of religious communities and separation of church and state, and freedom of trade, and it called for cuts in military spending and a defence resting on a militia rather than a standing army.
The Progress Party was the largest group in the Prussian House from 1861 to 1866. Its refusal to raise military spending started the Prussian constitutional conflict, and it denounced as a breach of the constitution Bismarck’s “gap theory” and his rule without a budget. After Prussia’s victory in 1866 the mood changed: the majority accepted Bismarck’s indemnity bill, and those who favoured cooperation split off in 1867 to found the National Liberal Party.
After the founding of the Empire the party was a minority with 6–9 percent in Reichstag elections. It backed Bismarck in the Kulturkampf but rejected the imperial constitution as insufficiently democratic and opposed the Anti-Socialist Laws. From the 1870s Eugen Richter took control of the party organisation; after his cry of “away with Bismarck” in 1879 the party reached its peak in 1881 with 12.7 percent. On 5 March 1884 it merged with the Liberal Union, a breakaway of the National Liberal left, to form the German Free-minded Party.