Federation of Germans, party for unity, peace and freedom

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The Federation of Germans, Party for Unity, Peace and Freedom (short name: BdD ) was a party in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Development and program up to the foundation of the DFU

The BdD emerged from the movement against the federal government's policy of ties to the West . After the general contract had been signed , the German Collection was founded in Dortmund on June 26, 1952 . Members of the Presidium were the former Chancellor Joseph Wirth , Katharina von Kardorff-Oheimb and Wilhelm Elfes . The German Collection called for resistance to the general treaty that stipulated ties to the West and demanded that all possibilities of reunification be exhausted.

The BdD was founded in 1953. Wirth and Elfes led the party, but there was also a strong influence of communist forces. The SED saw an opportunity in the BdD to win bourgeois and “nationally-minded” forces as allies , similar to the concept of the National Front in the GDR .

The core program of the BdD was a policy of neutrality, which turned against rearmament and the integration of Germany into the West. In contrast to the federal government, the aim was to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union .

Although the BdD also took into account economic and socio-political demands of the middle class and the farmers, it also advocated the socialization of large-scale industry.

The BdD as part of the DFU

With the establishment of the German Peace Union in 1961 , in which numerous BdD politicians were involved, the BdD no longer appeared as an independent political force, but was essentially limited to the publication of the Deutsche Volkszeitung . He also no longer ran for elections, but sent candidates to the list of the DFU. Double membership in BdD and DFU was expressly permitted. The constitutional protection of North Rhine-Westphalia observing the BdD classified the BdD in 1964 as an upstream cadre organization of the DFU.

On November 2, 1968, the DKP , DFU, BdD and other left-wing groups decided to run for the 1969 Bundestag election with the joint list of Aktion Demokratischer Progress (ADF) . According to a note to the Ulbricht office in 1965 , the number of members, which Helmut Bausch had put at around 12,000 for the years 1953 to 1955, was only 2,000 to 3,000.

The BdD was never officially dissolved, but de facto merged with the DFU at its last party congress in 1968. The last party chairman of the BdD since 1964 was the former general secretary of the BdD and the later DFU and ADF functionary Josef Weber .

Press

The Deutsche Volkszeitung was founded in 1953 as an organ closely related to the BdD . The political weekly Friday became its successor after German reunification .

elections

The BdD ran for the following Bundestag and Landtag elections:

literature

  • Heike Amos: The Western Policy of the SED 1948 / 49-1961. “Work to West Germany” by the National Front, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for State Security. Berlin 1999, pp. 99-106. ISBN 3-05-003446-7 .
  • Reinhard Hübsch: “Hear the signals!”: The German policy of the KPD / SED and SPD 1945–1970 . Academy, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-05-003648-9 .
  • Michael Lemke: The Infiltrated Collection. Aims, methods and instruments of the SED for the formation of a bourgeois opposition in the Federal Republic 1949-1957 . In: Tilman Mayer (Ed.): Open the gate! Jakob Kaiser Studies, Berlin 1996, pp. 171–234. ISBN 3-87061-529-X .
  • Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1953–1973 . Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 40–51, ISBN 3-631-55825-2 .
  • Michael Werner: The “Without Me” movement. The West German peace movement in the German-German Cold War (1949–1955) . Verlagshaus Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster 2006, ISBN 3-86582-325-4 .

Web links

Commons : Bund der Deutschen, Party for Unity, Peace and Freedom  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1953–1973. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-631-55825-2 (European university publications . Series 3: History and their auxiliary sciences, 1039), p. 41ff. See also Udo Baron: Cold War and Hot Peace. The influence of the SED and its West German allies on the party 'The Greens'. Lit, Münster 2003, p. 37f.
  2. ^ Rolf Schönfeldt: The German Peace Union. In: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Parties Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980. Volume 1: AUD-EFP. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, ISBN 3-531-11570-7 , pp. 848-876 (publications of the Central Institute for Social Science Research of the Free University of Berlin, 38). Cf. also Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1953–1973. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-631-55825-2 (European university publications . Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences, 1039).
  3. ↑ Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1953–1973. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-631-55825-2 (European university publications . Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences, 1039), p. 45.
  4. ↑ Red and Pink . In: Der Spiegel 35/1961, pp. 20-29, here: p. 20. Online .