German Conservative Party

In the early 1870s, Otto von Bismarck formed his majority with the base in the National Liberal Party which emphasized free trade and anti-Catholicism.

[1] According to Robert M. Berdahl, this redirection illustrated "the slow and painful process by which the landed aristocracy adjusted to its new position in the capitalist 'class' system that had come to replace the precapitalist 'Estate' structure of Prussian society".

[2] The German Conservative Party was generally seen as representing the interests of the German nobility, the Junker landowners living east of the Elbe and the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union and had its political stronghold in the Prussian Diet, where the three-class franchise gave rural elites and the wealthy disproportionate representation.

Though predominantly Protestant, the DKP opposed the Kulturkampf, but supported Bismarck when during the Long Depression he began to implement protectionist policies by restricting grain imports from Russia and the United States.

[4] The party supported Kaiser Wilhelm II's naval policies and Germany's arms race with the United Kingdom but initially kept its distance towards colonialism and the activists of the Pan-German League.