Wolfgang Kapp - The Political Activist

The Political Activist

After an ordinary official career, Kapp became the founder of the Agricultural Credit Institute in East Prussia which achieved great success in promoting the prosperity of landowners and farmers in that province. He was consequently in close touch with the Junkers of East Prussia, and during the First World War made himself their mouthpiece in an attack on Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Kapp's pamphlet, entitled Die Nationalen Kreise und der Reichskanzler and published in the early summer of 1916, criticized German foreign and domestic policy under Bethmann Hollweg. This pamphlet appeared about the same time as the attacks of “Junius Alter” and evoked an indignant reply from Bethmann Hollweg in the Reichstag, in which he spoke of “loathsome abuse and slanders.”

In 1917, along with Alfred von Tirpitz, Kapp founded the “Deutsche Vaterlandspartei” (Fatherland Party), of which he would briefly become Chairman. He was one of a number of prominent figures of the right, including General Ludendorff and Waldemar Pabst, who set up in August 1919 the Nationale Vereinigung (National Union), a right-wing think-tank which campaigned for a counter-revolution to install a form of conservative militaristic government. The Nationale Vereinigung did not, however, press for the restoration of the monarchy, the Kaiser having bowed to US pressure and left for his exile near Utrecht in November 1918. 1919, which saw the consolidation in Germany of the Weimar Republic, found Kapp a member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (National Peoples’ Party).

Germany’s defeat in the First World War was seen by nationalists such as Kapp as a humiliation and a betrayal. He became an exponent of the Dolchstoß legend and a vehement critic of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919 he was elected to the Reichstag as a monarchist.