Otto Böckel

Otto Böckel (2 July 1859, Free City of Frankfurt – 17 September 1923, Michendorf) was a German populist politician who became one of the first to successfully exploit antisemitism as a political issue in the country.

A native of the Free City of Frankfurt and a librarian by profession, he initially studied law at the University of Marburg but dropped it for Volkskunde and became a noted folklorist.

This had several causes, such as falling agrarian prices due to international competition, backward production methods, uneconomic division of farmland and the rural depopulation because of industrialization.

[3] He presented a populist appeal to the peasantry, which along with his natural charisma and good looks, made him very popular and saw him dubbed the "Hessian peasant-king" by his supporters.

[9] The youngest member of the Reichstag, he continued his populist appeals, holding mass torch-lit rallies of his followers, a technique later favoured by the Nazi Party.

[2] Having become reconciled to the more traditional right he occasionally spoke for the Conservatives and the Agrarian League but a failed attempt to return to the Reichstag in 1912 was to be his last political activity.