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<p>Björn Hofmeister’s biography of Heinrich Claß examines one of the most influential representatives of Imperial Germany’s so-called "national opposition" to the Third Reich. Claß, who chaired the Pan-German League between 1908 and 1939, was a lawyer by profession and became active in the antisemitic, <em>völkisch</em> movement around the turn of the century. Claß was demanding the implementation of dictatorship long before World War I and became a major player in the networks of the Weimar Republic’s early radical right wing. In a long-running campaign, he helped to get his friend, chairman of the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and founding member of the Pan-German League, Alfred Hugenberg, appointed as chairman of the DNVP in 1928. Following Hugenberg’s takeover of what was Germany’s largest conservative party at the time, Claß turned the Pan-German League into a propaganda agency promoting Hugenberg as a candidate for the office of Reich Chancellor and, subsequently, as the head of a future cabinet in a bourgeois dictatorship. The DNVP’s following cooperation with the Nazis, however, shifted the power balance within the radical right wing in times of massive political change and, in January 1933, ultimately led to an alliance between the German Nationals and Hitler’s cabinet, which implemented some of the major program points that Claß had been demanding for decades. </p>
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<p>For the first time, Björn Hofmeister explains Claß’s role within the radical right wing in full detail, from Imperial to Nazi Germany, embedding his biography within the complex context of his social background, ideological socialization, academic training, professional practice, and legal thought, which shaped the political concepts that he used to order a potential bourgeois dictatorship government. </p>