Editing German Democratic Party (section)

===Decline===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S81877, Marie-Elisabeth Lüders (cropped).jpg|thumb|222x222px|[[Marie-Elisabeth Lüders]]]]

20,000 people attended the first national convention of the Young Democratic Organization, but active membership declined to a few thousand members as the 1920s continued and 2,000 people attended the 1929 convention.{{sfn|Frye|1985|p=94}}

The party's membership fell from around 800,000 one year after its foundation to 117,000 by 1927.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Die Deutsche Demokratische Partei |url=https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/weimarer-republik/innenpolitik/ddp.html |access-date=2022-11-19 |website=Deutsches Historisches Museum www.dhm.de |language=de}}</ref> In spite its steadily dwindling size, the DDP played an important political role in the early years of the Republic. For one, its position between the SPD and the Centre Party helped stabilize the Weimar Coalition nationwide and especially in [[Free State of Prussia|Prussia]]. Wilhelm Abegg, for example, the state secretary in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, reorganized and modernized the Prussian police. In addition, members of the DDP formed an important reservoir of personnel for high positions in public administration. No other party was able to provide to a similar extent civil servants who both possessed the professional training and were loyal to the democratic system of the Weimar Republic, something that was not the case with the mostly monarchist and anti-democratic civil servants inherited from the Empire.

In 1920, the DDP had already lost votes, in large measure to the German People's Party, German National People's Party, and to parties focused on single issues. This was due to disagreements within the DDP over how to deal with the Versailles Peace Treaty, of which some deputies approved. The loss of votes was accompanied by a simultaneous loss of members, finances and journalistic support. Important newspapers such as the ''Vossische Zeitung'' and the ''[[Frankfurter Zeitung]]'' held views that were close to those of the DDP, but the party was never able to establish an important party paper of its own such as the SPD's ''[[Vorwärts]]'' or later the Nazis' ''[[Völkischer Beobachter]]''. The prejudice that the DDP was the 'party of big capital' held credence among part of the public, a prejudice that was factually false and charged with anti-Semitism. In later years, the Nazi Party exploited this by defaming the DDP as 'the Jewish party'.

Another reason for the decline was their program of 'social capitalism' in which workers and owners mutually recognized "duty, right, performance and profit"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schneider |first=Werner |title=Die Deutsche Demokratische Partei in der Weimarer Republik 1924–1930 |publisher=Fink |year=1978 |isbn=3-7705-1549-8 |location=Munich |pages=58 |language=de |trans-title=The German Democratic Party in the Weimar Republic 1924–1930}}</ref> and where solidarity was to prevail between employees, workers and owners. This visionary idea was out of touch with the reality of rising unemployment and economic difficulties under the pressure of the Treaty of Versailles.