Alfred Hugenberg worked for several major coal and steel companies, holding - for example - the post of chief financial officer at Krupp. He was also a co-founder of the nationalistic Pan-German League. In 1916, he acquired the publishing company Scherl-Verlag, which he built up over the years, making it a major media group. He was politically active in the right wing of the DNVP from 1918. When he became the party’s chairman in 1928, he terminated the phase of willingness to cooperate with the left wing and made a pact with the Nazi party, which was still insignificant at the time. With the help of his media empire, the party became respectable and well-known. Overestimating his own power, he thought he could use Hitler as a tool. As it turned out, just the opposite occurred. Although appointed Superminister for Economic and Agricultural Affairs in January 1933, he was pushed out of office just a few months later. He had to sell his company. Still, he kept his post as a Member of the Reichstag up to 1945, as a “guest of the Nazi party”.

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Westarp helped found the conservative DNVP party in the fall of 1918. From 1920, he represented the DNVP in the Reichstag. In the early days of the republic, he was a harsh critic of the Weimar democracy and maintained close contact with the conspirators of the Kapp Putsch. After that, he increasingly pushed for the DNVP’s integration into the government. From 1925 to 1929, he was the DNVP’s Reichstag group’s chair and from 1926 to 1928, the party’s chair. Hugenberg was elected party chair in 1928. He wanted the party to strongly oppose the government and tried to thwart Westarp’s plans to support the Brüning cabinet. Together with another member in the top echelons of the DNVP, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, Westarp founded the Conservative People’s Party, having left the DNVP in 1930.

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Oskar Hergt, while not affiliated with any party during the Kaiserreich, helped found the DNVP in November 1918. In December, he was elected the party’s first chairman. Hergt was considered a monarchist and opponent of the republic. At the same time, as a moderate conservative, he was critical of attempts to overthrow it. He allowed DNVP Reichstag members to vote on the Dawes Plan as they wished and a large part of the party voted for the plan. He then had to step down under pressure from the party’s right wing. He served as Justice Minister and Vice Chancellor in Marx’s cabinet from 1927 to 1928. Hergt stayed in the party even after he lost to Hugenberg in the fight to chair it in 1928. He withdrew from the political arena in 1933.

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Helfferich was one of the strongest opponents of the Weimar democracy and its representatives, having served in several cabinets during the final days of the Kaiserreich. He was a DNVP member of the Reichstag from 1920. He openly attacked Erzberger, Rathenau, Wirth, and other politicians in his vitriolic publications. He is considered to have been responsible in large part for the prevailing climate of political discord during the first years of the republic, and thereby also for the so-called Feme murders. In November 1923, the new Rentenmark was backed with tangible assets. Helfferich had proposed a similar solution. Despite his fame, Helfferich was not chosen to head the Reichsbank, as the government and the Reichspräsident voted against him because of his radically anti-democratic views.

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Tirpitz was and is known in Germany first and foremost for his role in building up the German navy’s fleet under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Together with the Kaiser, he pushed through the armament of the fleet from the turn of the century, alienating the United Kingdom more and more. In the end, he resigned in 1916 because he, the Kaiser, and the Chancellor could not find common ground regarding unrestricted submarine warfare. Together with Wolfgang Kapp, he founded the nationalist and völkisch German Fatherland Party in 1917, reacting to the Reichstag’s peace resolution. After the war, he founded the DNVP with other conservatives. From 1924 to 1928, he was a DNVP member of the Reichstag.

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