A Republican Potential: The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Party in Hof-an-der-Saale, 1918-1920

Abstract

In January 1919, the Bürgertum of the Bavarian town of Hof voted overwhelmingly for the left-liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP). But the following summer, in the Reichstag elections of June 1920, the Democrats sustained significant losses against the right-wing nationalist Bavarian Middle Party (Bayerische Mittelpartei, BMP). This article explores the rise and fall of the DDP in Hof by showing that a pro-republican politics initially proved popular among the local Bürgertum, until its credibility was undermined and ultimately destroyed by a series of devastating crises: the Bavarian Räterepublik of April 1919, the publication of the Versailles Treaty a month later, and the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary convulsions triggered by the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. This article concludes that political violence and a burgeoning confrontation between bürgerliche and socialist milieus were the key factors in explaining the eclipse of left-liberalism in Hof during the first years of the Weimar Republic.