Nationalism in Germany, 1848-1866 by Hewitson Mark

Author:Hewitson, Mark.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

Source: A. Biefang, Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland 1857–1868 (Düsseldorf, 1994), 104

Table 5.2 Participants in the Abgeordnetentag according to their state of origin

Source: A. Biefang, Politisches Bürgertum, 245.

Note: The number of members of upper chambers is given in round brackets, the number of former members of the Frankfurt Parliament in square brackets.

The geographical spread of the Fortschrittspartei’s leadership itself suggests that the Progressives were more than a protest party reacting against Wilhelm I and Bismarck. The party’s origins, of course, were Prussian, resulting from the discussions in late 1861 and early 1862 of Forckenbeck, Behrend, Hoverbeck and Brämer – all leaders of the Nationvalverein – with other members of Vincke’s moderate liberal faction in the Prussian Landtag, with the intention of giving the liberal programme greater coherence and of limiting the powers of the faction’s leaders. When the majority of the faction voted against a ‘German policy in the sense of that of the Nationalverein’, though agreeing with the other elements of a joint liberal programme, Heinrich Ancker and ten other deputies seceded on 2 March 1861 to form a separate group, for which, as the Frankfurt liberal newspaper Zeit later put it, ‘the policy of the liberal era was inadequate, and inadequate primarily on national grounds’.25 After Schulze-Delitzsch joined the faction on 15 March, having gained a seat in a by-election, the Nationalverein became involved in organising the faction into what Schulze termed a ‘national party’.26 The name eventually agreed, after a meeting of Schulze, Hoverbeck and Forckenbeck from the faction with Unruh, Mommsen, Virchow and the editors of the National-Zeitung and the Volks-Zeitung, which served as the principal organs of the Nationalverein, was the ‘Deutsche Fortschrittspartei’, embodying the national and progressive aims of its founders. Although its initial organisational task was to prepare for the December elections in Prussia, the first point in its founding programme of 6 June 1861 – and its ideological priority – imitated that of the National Association, calling for the ‘secure unification of Germany’ with ‘a strong central power in the hands of Prussia’ and a ‘common German national assembly (Volksvertretung)’.27 To Schulze and other leaders, the Progressive Party and the Nationalverein were complementary. In March 1862, the two organisations even convened their committee meetings in the same Berlin hotel.28

Table 5.3 Meeting places and dates of Annual General Meetings

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