The Bavarian People's Party (German: ; BVP) was a principally Catholic Christian democratic political party in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic. After the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, it split away from the federal Centre Party and formed the BVP in order to pursue a conservative and regionalist stance. It dominated in state politics; all Ministers-President from 1920 onwards were from the BVP. In the national Reichstag it remained a minor player with only about three percent of total votes in all elections. The BVP disbanded shortly after the Nazi seizure of power in early 1933. It was not reformed after the war; much of its electorate was absorbed by the new centre-right regionalist Christian Social Union in Bavaria.
Founding
There had been a Bavarian wing of the Centre Party throughout the years of the German Empire. After Germany's defeat in World War I and the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, leading Bavarian members of the Centre Party around Georg Heim founded the Bavarian People's Party in Regensburg on 12 November 1918 as the Catholic political agent in Bavaria. Two main factors drove the split from the Centre Party. The first was the Bavarian representatives' strong federalism, in contrast to the national Centre Party under Matthias Erzberger, which tended towards centralization. The second factor was the Bavarians' more conservative stance and negative assessment of the then-proceeding revolution guided (at least initially) by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The BVP's programme called for a decentralized federal parliamentary system, the abolition of "Prussian supremacy", women's suffrage and the introduction of plebiscites. At the party level it strove for a corporative structure, with a "farmers' chamber" () as the first step. Half of all committee members and parliamentary candidates at both the national and local level had to be members of BVP-affiliated professional organizations. Party leadership was drawn mostly from clerics, the former nobility and the middle class. (1920–1921), Hugo Graf von Lerchenfeld (1921–1922), Eugen von Knilling (1922–1924) and Heinrich Held (1924–1933). Kahr and Lerchenfeld had only loose ties to party.<br />
<small>(blank = did not participate; dash = won 0 or 1 seat)</small>
!Party
!1919
!1920
!1924
!1928
!1932
|-
|Bavarian People's Party (BVP)
|35.0
|39.4
|32.8
|31.6
|32.6
|-
|Social Democratic Party (SPD)
|33.0
|16.4
|17.2
|24.2
|15.5
|-
|German Democratic Party (DDP)
|14.0
| 8.1
| 3.2
|–
|
|-
|Bavarian Peasants' League (BB)
| 9.1
| 7.9
| 7.1
|11.5
| 6.5
|-
|German People's Party (DVP)
|5.8
|13.5
|9.7
|3.3
|–
|-
|Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD)
| 2.5
|12.9
|–
|–
|
|-
|Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
|
| 1.7
| 8.3
| 3.8
| 6.6
|-
|Völkischer Block (VSB)
|
|
|17.1
|–
|
|-
|German National People's Party (DNVP)
|
|
|<small>see DVP</small>
| 9.3
| 3.3
|-
|Nazi Party (NSDAP)
|
|
|
| 6.1
|32.5
|}
At the national level, the BVP and the Centre formed an electoral alliance for the January 1919 election to the Weimar National Assembly that drew up the Weimar Constitution and served as Germany's interim parliament until the new constitution went into effect. The two parties also had a joint parliamentary group until 1920. After that the relationship between the sister parties deteriorated and led to competitive candidacies in some elections, although from 1927 on there was again a rapprochement. In 1923 Minister President Knilling appointed Kahr state commissioner general () with dictatorial powers. After Kahr immediately imposed a state of emergency in Bavaria, the government in Berlin did the same for all of Germany. Kahr then stopped enforcing the Law for the Protection of the Republic, which increased the punishments for politically motivated acts of violence and banned organizations that opposed the "constitutional republican form of government" along with their printed matter and meetings. In spite of his right-wing stances, he helped put down Adolf Hitler's November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
The (Bavaria Watch), the uniformed paramilitary unit of the Bavarian People's Party, was formed in 1925. It disbanded itself in April 1933.
After the stabilization of the political situation in Germany, the BVP pursued a more moderate course under the leadership of Minister President Heinrich Held (1924–1933) and party president Fritz Schäffer. Under Held, the Bavarian conflicts with the Reich government ended, the economy stabilized, the state administration was reformed and infrastructure expanded.
After the Nazi Party seized power in January 1933, all 19 BVP deputies in the Reichstag voted for the Enabling Act of 1933 that gave Hitler as chancellor the power to make and enforce laws without involving the Reichstag. The Bavarian government underwent Gleichschaltung () – essentially Nazification – on 10 April 1933. On the same day, Reich Interior Minister Wilhem Frick named General Franz Ritter von Epp as Reichsstatthalter (Reich governor) of Bavaria, and Minister President Held was forced out of office.