Formation[edit]The DRP was established in 1950 when the majority of the Deutsche Rechtspartei members of the Bundestag decided to establish a more formal party network under the DRP name.[1] The new party absorbed the "National Democrats", a splinter group from Hesse.[2] The party took its name from an earlier group of the same name that had existed during the German Empire period.[3] The initial three deputy chairmen, Wilhelm Meinberg, Otto Hess and Heinrich Kunstmann, had all been members of the Nazi Party from which Adolf Hitler rose to power.[3] From 1951 the group published its own newspaper Reichsruf ("Call of the Reich").[4]