In 1947, a year after the establishment of Lower Saxony as a state, the party reverted to its former name of the German Party. It soon expanded into neighbouring states under the chairmanship of Heinrich Hellwege and gained 27 seats (18.1 per cent of the total) in the first Lower Saxon Landtag election in 1947[4] It sent two delegates to Bonn to serve in the constitutional convention (Parlamentarischer Rat) of 1948/49. The German Party was among the parties that supported a market economy in the Bizonal Economic Council, thus laying the groundwork for the "bourgeois coalition" in power in Bonn between 1949 and 1956.