Tuesday, August 29, 2017

The Only German Political Party to Advocate a Kingdom

You could make a 500-page book out of this but I'll try to limit this story to forty lines.

Around 1869....a Prussian (before we use the term German) political party came to exist which was named the German-Hanoverian Party or the Guelph Party.  It existed for roughly sixty-five-odd years out of the Hanover region of northwest Germany.

Oddly, it's a conservative political party, and definitely right-wing.

They come together in the 1860s period to complain over the way that Hanover was annexed into the Prussian empire (a result of the Austria-Prussian War....a rather short event).

The Kingdom of Hanover ceased to exist in this new situation. The party worked for decades to reverse this situation.  As the Kaiser was sent off in 1919....there was this brief time where some folks thought that the Kingdom could be revived.  With the Weimar Republic....that wasn't going to happen.  The 'kingdom' party made a decision in the 1933 period to dissolve, rather than have the Nazi Party control them.

As for the big long era of the Kingdom to actually exist prior to 1869?  Well, that gets into another interesting story.

After the Napoleon era, there's a meeting in Austria to sort out dozens of issues.  This region around Hanover is eventually determined by the Congress of Vienna (1814) to become a kingdom....out of thin air.

George III....already king of England....was determined to be the king of Hanover as well.

Now, you might add a footnote here, that while in his youth....George III was a thoughtful and logical kind of guy....eventually over the years, he was affected by mental disease, and this is argued to a great extent.  Most historians will say that George III was never truly in charge and that his son....George IV....was the actual King.

In the 1860s.....the Kingdom of Hanover attempted to stay neutral and avoided the discussion of joining the Prussian Empire that was moving in and taking over numerous smaller Germanic states.  This attempt was a failure.

Most people will say that the period of roughly fifty-two years were the most productive of the region and the connection to the Kingdom of Hanover was the reason for that.  The Kingdom of Hanover Party?  Their objective was to revive the Kingdom and exit out of Germany.

Is there a king to the Kingdom of Hanover existing today?  No....although there is a Prince (Ernst August).

It's one of those odd political stories within German history....a political party with the stance of bringing back a Kingdom, and a King.

No comments: