Progressive People's Party (Germany)

Its membership was largely middle class, including merchants, mid-level civil servants, salaried employees and academics.

Although initially in favour of a wartime policy of annexations, it later supported the 1917 Reichstag Peace Resolution and the constitutional reforms of October 1918.

[1] Because of the FVG's cooperation with the conservatives in the Bülow bloc, Theodor Barth and his supporters split away from the party in the spring of 1908 and formed the Democratic Union (Demokratische Vereinigung, DV).

The party also sought a fair division of electoral districts, which had become heavily unbalanced in favour of rural regions due to the lack of reapportionments during a period when urban industrial centres were growing rapidly.

[5] The Progressives furthermore supported a consistent separation of church and state and a modification of the Reich constitution that would make the Empire a parliamentary monarchy.

[6] Economically and socially, the party advocated a gradual reduction of food and industrial tariffs; progressive taxation of Income, wealth and inheritance; the safeguarding and expansion of the right of workers to form and join trade unions; the improvement of occupational safety; and the introduction of measures to protect the unemployed.

The national and state parliaments and governments were to be encouraged to work with self-help organizations to improve the economic and social situation of wage and salary earners.

[8] Historian Dieter Langewiesche wrote that the party program showed the momentum of a newly invigorated left-wing liberalism.

Naumann's idea was supported by the Hansa Federation, which wanted to create a reform bloc separate from the conservative-agrarian interests, but it caused considerable controversy in the Progressive Party.

[17] (The discrepancy between the loss of seats and the gain in the percentage of votes was likely due to the large differences in the number of voters in electoral districts.)

In 1913 the FVP and the SPD pushed through a capital gains tax against the opposition of the conservatives in order to finance an increase in the size of the army.

Some in the FVP, including Friedrich Naumann, assumed a victory which would allow Germany to establish a "Central Europe" (Mitteleuropa) that it would dominate.

Conflicts arose between FVP members who held different positions, although overall the party kept to the middle on the issue of war aims.

[8] The FVP also backed the October 1918 constitutional reforms, which transformed the German Empire into a parliamentary monarchy during the government of Max von Baden.