Internal Structures and Political Practice of the German Progress Party between Fundamental Opposition and Reform Policy (1861-1878/79)

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The German Progress Party is at best a niche topic of historical research. And yet, it played a decisive role in shaping the political landscape of Imperial Germany: initially as a staunch opponent of Otto von Bismarck in the Prussian constitutional conflict, by striving for a liberal nation state, and from 1867 as an important oppositional party. Based on archival sources the project critically analyses the German Progress Party and its political practice during the liberal era (1861-1878/79), using an actor-centred approach. It focuses on the party’s impact, scope of action, internal structures, opinion leadership, changes of political content, mentality and organisation as well as adjustment processes in the light of political upheaval, after internal conflicts within the party and with political opponents. The project also examines the party’s position within the Prussian and German political systems and its parliamentary practice.For this purpose, the research project applies theoretical and methodological aspects of the British ‘high politics’ approach to historical party research. In building upon an ideology-critical understanding of politics based on conflict, it also pays particular attention to everyday political life, personal relationships, ambitions and enmities to analyse and explain political action. However, the project will neither ignore the perspective of cultural and social history as well as of the history of ideas, nor lower politics merely to the history of elites. It aims to reconstruct political procedures and decision-making processes within the party to reveal centres of power, political strategies and motives, options and intentions to act as well as inner-party negotiations, conflicts and ambivalences. The project will explore an expanded group of active players and thus go beyond the scope of the history of ideas in evaluating political Liberalism. For the first time, source material from German archives will be systematically analysed: the party’s internal as well as institutional documents (ranging from police surveillance and informants’ reports to minutes to circulars etc) and ego documents (especially letters and notes of members of parliament). Transcripts of parliamentary debates and newspaper articles complement the archival material.Due to the manifold significance of the German Progress Party, the project touches upon several research areas of political history (the history of parties, of parliamentarianism, of liberalism and nationalism). It adopts a methodologically innovative perspective to explore the internal and external formation of the nation state.