German Free-minded Party

The economists Ludwig Bamberger and Georg von Siemens as well as the liberal politician Eugen Richter were among the prime movers of the merger in the view of the forthcoming accession of the 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 Free-minded Party supported the expansion of parliamentarism in the German constitutional monarchy, separation of church and state and Jewish emancipation.

Under party chairman Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg along with his deputies Albert Hänel and Rudolf Virchow, the Free-minded Party received disappointing 17.6% of the votes in the 1884 federal election, representing a drop of 3.6% from the combined parties' results in the previous 1881 federal 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 federal election, the party 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 centre-right liberals became inconsolable. Upon Bismarck's demission in 1890, the party members lost their common adversary. In 1893, the Free-minded Party split in conflict over Chancellor Leo von 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.

Members of the Free-minded Party at the Reichstag foyer, 1889

• Ludwig Bamberger
• Theodor Barth
• Max von Forckenbeck
• Albert Hänel
• Max Hirsch
• Albert Kalthoff
• Ludwig Loewe
• Theodor Mommsen
• Eugen Richter
• Heinrich Edwin Rickert
• Georg von Siemens
• Rudolf Virchow

• Contributions to liberal theory
• Liberal democracy
• Liberalism
• Liberalism in Germany
• Liberalism worldwide
• List of liberal parties

Tillich, Paul; Translated by Franklin Sherman (1957). The Socialist Decision. Harper & Row. p. 57.

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