German Labour Party of Poland

The German Labour Party of Poland (German: Deutsche Arbeitspartei Polen, abbreviated DAP) was a German social democratic party in Poland.

Party

DAP was founded in Łodz on 19 January 1922 at the office of the Vereins deutschsprecheder Meister und Arbeiter.[1][2][3] The party gathered former members of SDKPiL in Łodz and Middle Poland.[2] The founders of DAP, Emil Zerbe and Artur Kronig, had refused to join the rest of the SDKPiL in forming the Communist Workers Party of Poland.[4] DAP was the first German socialist party in independent Poland.[5] DAP won three seats in the Sejm in the 1922 Polish legislative election.[1] Zerbe was elected on the state-wide list.[1] Kronig was elected from the Łodz City constituency.[1] August Utta, leader of the rightist trend inside DAP, was elected from the Łodz County constituency with the support of Jewish voters.[6][1] The main press organ of DAP was the weekly Arbeit (published 1920-1923) and from 1924 onwards the daily newspaper Lodzer Volkszeitung.[7]

DAP fielded its own list for the 1923 Łodz City Council election, albeit whilst maintaining alliance with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland.[5][7] The DAP list obtained 11,421 votes and won five seats in the City Council, far more than the German bourgeois nationalist BDP (which obtained 5,581 votes and 2 seats).[5] The collaboration with PPS and Bund left to the departure of the Utta-led faction.[7] Utta joined the German nationalist-conservative camp.[5]

On 9 August 1925 DAP merged with the German Social Democratic Party (DSPP), forming the German Socialist Labour Party in Poland (DSAP). The merger was however only nominal, in reality DSPP and DAP continued to exist as separate parties until October 1929. On 6–7 October 1929 DSAP became a consolidated united political party.[2]

References
  1. Veröffentlichungen der Ostdeutschen Forschungsstelle im Lande Nord-Westfalen. Ostdeutsche Forschungsstelle im Lande Nordrhein-Westfalen. 1969. pp. 80, 82.
  2. Petra Blachetta-Madajczyk (1997). Klassenkampf oder Nation?: deutsche Sozialdemokratie in Polen 1918-1939. Droste. pp. 117, 291. ISBN 978-3-7700-1602-0.
  3. Polish Western Affairs. Instytut Zachodni. 1991. p. 22.
  4. Elvira Grözinger; Andreas Lawaty (1986). Suche die Meinung: Karl Dedecius, dem Übersetzer und Mittler zum 65. Geburtstag. O. Harrassowitz. p. 218. ISBN 978-3-447-02630-7.
  5. Winson Chu (25 June 2012). The German Minority in Interwar Poland. Cambridge University Press. pp. 127–129. ISBN 978-1-107-00830-4.
  6. Winson W. Chu (2006). German Political Organizations and Regional Particularisms in Interwar Poland (1918-1939). University of California, Berkeley. p. 215.
  7. Beata Dorota Lakeberg (2010). Die deutsche Minderheitenpresse in Polen 1918-1939 und ihr Polen- und Judenbild. Peter Lang. p. 42. ISBN 978-3-631-60048-1.
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