unable to compete in elections for a time. The DVU membership declined and it lost its seats in the Bremen election of 1995, despite spending DM 2 million on the campaign. After losing its seats in Schleswig-Holstein the following year it achieved a better result in Hamburg in 1997, gaining 4,97 percent of the votes, just 190 votes short of earning seats in the state parliament. Frey attempted to form alliances with the other two major far-right and right-wing parties in Germany but was rebuffed by the REP as being to extremist and by the NPD as being too moderate and business-orientated. In 1998 the DVU achieved its greatest election success, winning 12.8 percent, 16 seats, in Saxony-Anhalt, and a quarter of all votes of the young voters aged 18 to 25. However, by the following year, the DVU fraction was split by infighting and a number of the party's members of parliament left the DVU. The final years of the party saw it lose a substantial number of members and the aging of the remainder. By the time of its merger with the NPD in 2010 the party had just 3,000 members, half the number the NPD had. In 2004, the DVU entered a non-competition agreement with the NPD for the state elections in Brandenburg and Saxony. Both parties passed the five-percent threshold in their respective states. The DVU reached 6.1 percent in the Brandenburg state elections, and the NPD won 9.2 percent in the Saxony state elections. After this relatively successful election, the parties formed an electoral alliance for the 2005 federal elections. The joint NPD-DVU slate, which ran under the NPD's ballot line, won 1.6 percent of the total votes nationally. In 2009, party founder Frey did not run for reelection as chairman and was replaced by Matthias Faust. In 2010, a referendum of party members approved a merger of the DVU and the NPD. Several state sections of the DVU objected to the merger and achieved a preliminary injunction from the Landgericht Munich based on irregularities during the referendum. On May 26, 2012, these objections were withdrawn and the DVU was declared defunct. Several branches and individuals objected to the perceived links between the NPD and Nazism and instead joined with the smaller party the Republicans, who were considered more moderate. This was especially true in North Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria, where the Republicans were traditionally