of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew (collected writings of Henry Ford from The Dearborn Independent) as well as many of Fritsch's own works. An inflammatory article published in 1910 earned him a charge of defamation of religious societies and disturbing the public peace. Fritsch was sentenced to one week in prison, and received another ten-day term in 1911. Political activities In 1890, Fritsch became, along with Otto Böckel, a candidate of the German Reform Party, founded by Böckel and Oswald Zimmermann, to the German Reichstag. He was not elected. The party was renamed German Reform Party in 1893, achieving sixteen seats. The party failed, however, to achieve significant public recognition. One of Fritsch's major goals was to unite all antisemitic political parties under a single banner; he wished for antisemitism to permeate the agenda of every German social and political organization. This effort proved largely to be a failure, as by 1890 there were over 190 various antisemitic parties in Germany. He also had a powerful rival for the leadership of the antisemites in Otto Böckel, with whom he had a strong personal rivalry. In 1912 Fritsch founded the Reichshammerbund (Reich's Hammer League) as an antisemitic collective movement. He also established the secret Germanenorden in that year. Influenced by racist Ariosophic theories, it was one of the first political groups to adopt the swastika symbol. Members of these groups formed the Thule Society in 1918, which eventually sponsored the creation of the Nazi Party. The Reichshammerbund was eventually folded into the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation), on whose advisory board Fritsch sat. He later became a member of the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DFVP). In the general election of May 1924, Fritsch was elected to serve as a member of the National Socialist Freedom Movement, a party formed in alliance with the DFVP by the Nazis as a legal means to election after the Nazi Party had been banned in the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He only served until the next election in December, 1924. In February 1927, Fritsch left the Völkisch Freedom Party in protest. He died shortly after the 1933 Nazi seizure of power at the age of 80 in Gautzsch (today part of Markkleeberg). A memorial to Fritsch, described as "the first antisemitic memorial in Germany", was erected in Zehlendorf (Berlin) in 1935.