Policies
The economists Ludwig Bamberger and Georg von Siemens, as well as the social liberal politician Eugen Richter were among the prime movers of the fusion, in the view of the coming accession of considered "liberal" Crown Prince Frederick William to the throne (which took place only in 1888). Richter aspired to build up a strong united liberal force in the Reichstag parliament, similar to the British Liberal Party under William Ewart Gladstone. The DFP supported the extension of parliamentarism in the German constitutional monarchy, separation of church and state as well as Jewish emancipation.
Under party chairman Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg with his deputies Albert Hänel and Rudolf Virchow however, the Free-minded Party received disappointing 17.6% of the votes in the 1884 election, representing a drop of 3.6% from the combined parties' results in the previous 1881 election. The main beneficiaries of this defection were the conservative forces, supporting the protectionist, colonist and anti-socialist policies of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In the 1887 election, the DFP again lost half of their seats, dropping down to 32 Reichstag mandates. Though urged by his wife Princess Royal Victoria, Crown Prince Frederick William did not dare to meet trouble with Bismarck by openly taking the party's side. His early death in 1888 and the accession of his son William II terminated all liberal hopes.
During the decay, the differences between "Progressives" and cente-right liberals became inconsolable. Upon Bismarck's demission in 1890, the party members lost their common adversary. In 1893 the party split in conflict over Chancellor Caprivi's policies into the Free-minded People's Party and the Free-minded Union. A re-union took place in 1910, when both further weakened liberal parties merged with the German People's Party to form the Progressive People's Party.
Read more about this topic: German Free-minded Party
Famous quotes containing the word policies:
“Unfortunately, we cannot rely solely on employers seeing that it is in their self-interest to change the workplace. Since the benefits of family-friendly policies are long-term, they may not be immediately visible or quantifiable; companies tend to look for success in the bottom line. On a deeper level, we are asking those in power to change the rules by which they themselves succeeded and with which they identify.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)
“Modern women are squeezed between the devil and the deep blue sea, and there are no lifeboats out there in the form of public policies designed to help these women combine their roles as mothers and as workers.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“... [Washington] is always an entertaining spectacle. Look at it now. The present President has the name of Roosevelt, marked facial resemblance to Wilson, and no perceptible aversion, to say the least, to many of the policies of Bryan. The New Deal, which at times seems more like a pack of cards thrown helter skelter, some face up, some face down, and then snatched in a free-for-all by the players, than it does like a regular deal, is going on before our interested, if puzzled eyes.”
—Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980)