party and the founding of the People's Conservative Association, out of which grew the short-lived Conservative People's Party and the Christian Social People's Service. In the Reichstag election of 1930, the Protestant conservative right was fragmented, and the DNVP received only 7% of the vote. The party's closeness to the NSDAP, which had been emphasized during the campaign, made the formation of a middle-class bloc including the DNVP impossible. It marked the beginning of a development that contributed to the decline of the middle-class parties as a whole. In retrospect the NSDAP appears to have been the real winner. At the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930, it made gains in the state parliamentary elections in Baden and Thuringia as well as in the civic elections in Lübeck. In January 1930 Wilhelm Frick in Thuringia became Germany's first NSDAP minister. In the 1930 Reichstag election, the party's representation increased from 2.6% to 18.3%. With its participation in the Reich Committee, the NSDAP succeeded in breaking its previous political isolation. For the first time since 1923 Hitler played a significant role in German politics. A considerable body of research argues that Hitler's participation made him a potential alliance partner for the middle class political right. During the campaign and afterwards, the NSDAP received large amounts of money from industry, and that, the research says, played a significant role in the party's success in the Reichstag elections of 1930. In addition, the Hugenberg press was from then on at Hitler's disposal. The direct effect of the campaign on the rise of the NSDAP is, however, disputed. Historian Otmar Jung in particular warned against overestimating it. According to his view, participation in the referendum in itself played only a minor role in the rise of the NSDAP. Participation in the Reich Committee was associated with little money or additional propaganda opportunities for the party. Others do not see this so conclusively. According to Eberhard Kolb, the NSDAP was certainly able to draw on the financial resources of the Reich Committee. That made it possible for them, in the midst of the anti-Young Plan campaign, to organize the largest party congress to date with 200,000 participants and to uniform 20,000 SA men in September 1929. Historian Gerhard Schulz early on emphasized that Hitler had succeeded in shaping his cooperation in such a way that he did not come across as an opportunist