Lusatian Alliance

Lusatian Alliance
Party leader	Hannes Wilhelm-Kell
vice-chairman	Peter Hadank
founding	March 26, 2005
Place of foundation	cottbus
Colours)	blue-red-white
Bundestag seats	no
Minimum age	16 years
European party	European Free Alliance
Website	www.lausitzer-allianz.org

The Lusatian Alliance ( Upper Sorbian Łužiska Alianca , Lower Sorbian Łužyska Alianca ) is a minority and regional party active in Lusatia . Its aim is to represent the political interests of the Lower and Upper Lusatian population as well as the Sorbian / Wendish people at parliamentary level; however, it has so far not had any parliamentary mandates. It was founded on March 26, 2005 in Cottbus as Serbska Ludowa Strona (SLS, Wendish People's Party ). On her III. Congress on April 26, 2010 in Cottbus, it was renamed Lausitzer Allianz.

Content profile

The current basic program was adopted on June 1, 2005 in Hoyerswerda . It emphasizes that you don't want to locate yourself on the left or on the right. The party wants to be effective both as an ideologically open collection movement of the Sorbs / Wends and as an independent regional political association of Lusatia. The Lusatian Alliance strives for a decentralized policy that is as close to the people as possible. The one with the III. Congress started on April 26, 2010 reform process, which includes the change of the name as well as essential changes in the statute, is to be continued with the fundamental revision of the basic program.

Minority policy

The Lausitzer Allianz advocates the inclusion of a minority article in accordance with the European Convention on the Protection of Minorities in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. She wants existing legal regulations for the protection of minorities to be made more binding. The Lusatian Alliance strives to provide an offer for a comprehensive bilingual educational path from kindergarten to vocational training for the entire Lusatia. The Sorbian (Wendish) language should have the same status and legal status as the German language in the Sorbian settlement area . This should also affect all public and private institutions that are responsible for or active in the Sorbian settlement area.

Educational policy

According to a liberal understanding, the Lusatian Alliance advocates strong autonomy for schools. It supports the expansion of a technically broad-based Lausitz University in Cottbus , to which the Sorbian Institute and the Carl Thiem Clinic are to be affiliated.

Administrative reorganization of Upper and Lower Lusatia

The Lusatian Alliance is committed to strengthening federalism . The rights of the states (including their own tax sovereignty and the educational sovereignty of the states ) should be expanded in order to achieve competent regional decision-making authority in politics. Another focus is local politics, where the Lusatian Alliance calls for a strengthening of the municipalities and districts. It aims to create regional authorities for Upper and Lower Lusatia within their historically grown borders, each with their own parliaments based on the example of the Stuttgart region . A merger of the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg is rejected.

The Lusatian Alliance supports the initiative to create a Sorbian parliament.

economy

The Lusatian Alliance wants the mining of lignite in the form of opencast mines in Lower and Upper Lusatia to be gradually stopped. The re-opening of further opencast mines is absolutely rejected. The electricity should be generated by decentralized regenerative systems. Politics, especially spatial and regional planning, should be geared towards ensuring that the economy acts sustainably and conserves resources. Spatial and regional planning should consider Lower and Upper Lusatia as a single economic area. The focus of economic policy should be the development of regional economic cycles within the Lausitz region and the preferential promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises.

organization structure

The organs of the Lusatian Alliance are the Congress, the General Board and the Convention. As the general assembly, the congress is the supreme decision-making body, which usually meets every two years. The General Board is elected every two years by the Congress and is responsible for the administration of the political association. The convention consists of regular members and is responsible for the creation and further development of the program. He also develops the party's policies.

The Lausitz Alliance is divided into the two regional associations Upper Lusatia and Lower Lusatia.

General Board

Chairman	vice-chairman	Treasurer	Secretary General	Assessor	choice
Hannes Wilhelm-Kell	Peter Hadank			Andreas Mroß	April 7, 2012
Hannes Wilhelm-Kell	Ralf Thomas Kapler; Peter Hadank		Henryk Matuš	Andreas Mroß	September 2013

Political activity

Party logo from 2005 to 2010

The party took part in the popular initiative "No new opencast mines - for a sustainable energy policy" launched in the state of Brandenburg on October 8, 2007, which on January 15, 2008 had the minimum number of 20,000 support signatures required. This opened up the possibility of carrying out a referendum, which began on October 10, 2008 and ended on February 9, 2009. According to the final result, 25,633 people from Brandenburg took part in the referendum. 24,501 entries were valid. However, 80,000 votes were required for the referendum to be successful.

At the beginning of 2013, the Lausitzer Allianz started a campaign to amend the German mining law.

On March 27, 2009, the Wendish People's Party was admitted to the European Free Alliance (EFA) as a member with observer status. After being renamed the Lausitzer Allianz, on February 15, 2014, the company was accepted as a full member of the EFA. From April 16 to 18, 2015, she hosted the EFA General Assembly in Bautzen.

Relationship with Sorbian associations

There is a distant relationship between the Sorbian umbrella organization Domowina and the Lusatian Alliance. Although there have so far been two consultations between the two organizations, there is no cooperation. There is a cooperation between the initiative group of the Serbski Sejmik and the Lusatian Alliance.

elections

Bundestag elections

The Federal Electoral Committee has refused to allow the Wendish People's Party to participate in the early federal elections on September 18, 2005 for formal reasons. The party did not run for the Bundestag election on September 27, 2009.

State elections

The party also did not run for the state elections on September 27, 2009 in Brandenburg and August 30, 2009 in Saxony .

Local elections

In the local elections in Brandenburg on September 28, 2008 and May 25, 2014, she ran in the Spree-Neisse district on the election proposal of the Klinger Runde citizens' initiative as "Citizens for the Lausitz - Klinger Runde". The Klinger Runde won two mandates for the district council in the Spree-Neisse district. In some parishes in the same county, the party participated with a few candidates in local council elections. In the local election on May 25, 2014, the LA in Rohne achieved 19.6%, whereby one candidate (out of two) was elected to the 5-member local council.

Elections for Sorbian / Wendish bodies

The Lusatian Alliance did not participate in the elections for the Council for Sorbs / Wends Affairs at the Landtag of Brandenburg in 2015; on the other hand, it participated in the first elections for the “Serbski Sejm” (“Sorbian Parliament”) in autumn 2018 , of which she was one of the initiators.

history

The founders of today's Lausitz Alliance referred to the tradition of the Wendish People's Party, which existed between 1919 and 1933 . Even after the Second World War, there were brief plans to found a Sorbian party again. When the Domowina regional association Niederlausitz was founded on September 8, 1946 in Werben, a resolution was passed in which, under point 3, the foundation of a Wendish (Sorbian) party was demanded. This decision could not be implemented due to the prevailing political conditions in the Soviet Zone and then in the GDR (from October 7, 1949). This attempt to bring about a new beginning in the immediate post-war period failed because of the communist claim to power.

The idea of ​​founding today's party came about in 2001, but it first needed public attention to the South Schleswig voters' association in the context of the election of the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein in 2005 in order to finally put the idea into practice, even if it was emphasized by individual members that one does not want to swim in the wake of events. The founding party conference took place on March 26, 2005 in Cottbus .

Similar to the Südschleswigschen voter association, the party of the Danish and Frisian ethnic groups in Schleswig-Holstein , the Lausitz Alliance would like to be exempted from the five percent hurdle as part of a special regulation . This is provided by the Brandenburg, but not the Saxon electoral law. The main argument for the foundation was that the democratic system in Germany was based on the participation of parties and that the Domowina, as the previous representative of the Sorbs' interests at the political level, could not do justice to its role.

See also

• Political parties in Germany

literature

• Jakub Jarosław Sokół: Serbołużyckie Stronnictwo Narodowe / Łużycki Alians jako partia narodu i regionu (Translated Title: Sorbian National Party / Lusatian Alliance as a national minority and regional party), in: Nationalities Affairs (38/2011), pp. 145–162.

Web links

• Homepage

swell

1. ↑ Mining law initiative ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Agreement on the funding of the foundation has been secured ( Memento from July 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), in: MAZ, July 11, 2009.
3. ↑ Sorbs want to join the Spree-Neisse district council , in: Lausitzer Rundschau, August 8, 2008.
4. ↑ Election results for the European elections, district council and local elections in Vetschau ( Memento from May 6, 2016 in the web archive archive.today )
5. ↑ Local council election 2014
6. ^ Anne wooden shoe, Christian Matthée: Direct democracy in Sorbian. ( Memento from April 15, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ), rbb-online.de, May 23, 2015.
7. ↑ http://serbski-sejm.de/de/news-reader/kandidatenliste-2018.html
8. ↑ http://serbski-sejm.de/de/news-reader/wahl-des-ersten-parlaments-der-wend-und-sorben-ervielreich-ablossen.html