CDU Brandenburg

	CDU Brandenburg
; Michael Stübgen
Chairman	Michael Stübgen
Deputy	Barbara Richstein ; Frank Bommert ; Karina Dörk ; Roswitha Schier
Secretary General	Gordon Hoffmann
Treasurer	Christian Ehler
executive Director	Gordon Hoffmann
Honorary Chairman	Jörg Schönbohm (†)
Establishment date	October 16, 1945
Place of foundation	Potsdam
Headquarters	Gregor-Mendel-Strasse 3 ; 14469 Potsdam
Landtag mandates	15/88
Number of members	5,792 (as of end of 2016)
Website	cdu-brandenburg.de

The CDU Brandenburg is a people's party in Brandenburg and with 5,792 members at the end of 2016 the third smallest regional association of the CDU . Michael Stübgen has been the chairman since November 16, 2019 , and Gordon Hoffmann is the general secretary . The association is based in Potsdam .

organization

The CDU Brandenburg is divided into 18 district associations, which in turn are divided into 220 local associations.

program

The current basic program of the CDU Brandenburg was adopted on November 3, 2007 in Potsdam and is entitled "Responsibility for today - visions for tomorrow".

history

founding

The CDU Brandenburg was founded on October 16, 1945. The first chairman was Wilhelm Wolf . From April 27 to 28, 1946, the first state party conference took place at which Wolf was confirmed in office. Ingrid Biermann , Hermann Gerigk , Karl Grobbel , Willy Heller , Erwin Köhler , Gerhard Schütze , Erich Schmelz , Germanus Theiß and Ms. Steinfurth were deputy chairmen .

From the beginning there was a "left" wing within the regional association led by Hennigsdorf party co-founder Otto Nuschke, which included the first CDU district chairman in Zauche / Belzig, Erich Tschetschog, the Potsdam city councilor Hans-Paul Ganter-Gilmans, Hermann Gerigk and Karl Grobbel belonged to. They and others ensured that the CDU regional association supported the land reform and approved the Brandenburg aid program for new farmers.

From the outset, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) tried to secure a majority for a communist regime by clearly giving preference to the KPD and later the SED . In 1946 the CDU Brandenburg received only 10 out of 70 seats in the appointed Consultative Assembly . Since the SED had most of the members of the mass organizations in addition to its 10 seats , the SED majority was secured.

Despite the restrictions, the number of members rose from 4,900 (December 1945) in the first year to 24,424 (December 1946). The 166 local groups in January 1946 grew to well over 600 in December 1946.

The state elections on October 20, 1946 were free to run, but the democratic parties were subject to massive restrictions in advance. The SMAD massively obstructed the establishment of the party organization and in many cases refused the admission of local CDU associations and candidates. The CDU also only received significantly lower allocations of paper and printing capacities than the SED. Nevertheless, with 43.9% in Brandenburg, the SED achieved the worst result in the Soviet Zone. The CDU with 30.6% and the LDP (20.6%) had a majority in the Brandenburg state parliament .

The prerequisite for the approval of the party by the SMAD was the consent of the CDU to be integrated into the bloc . This bond quickly became an effective means of controlling the opposition parties.

Since February 3, 1948, the Märkische Union has appeared as a party newspaper of the CDU Brandenburg under editor -in- chief Hans-Werner Gyßling .

Resistance and synchronization

The dismissal of Jakob Kaiser also led to a wave of “ cleansing ” in the CDU Brandenburg . The SMAD arrested a number of leading CDU members such as the mayor of Liebenwalde , Otto Kinzel , or the Potsdam district chairman and state board member Hans Egidi . The third state party conference from May 7th to 9th, 1948 in Brandenburg / Havel confirmed Wilhelm Wolf in office with an overwhelming majority. Wilhelm Wolf's warning that the SED was striving for a totalitarian state contributed to this. A few days after the party congress, on May 14, 1948, Wilhelm Wolf was killed in a car accident under unknown circumstances.

Wolf's successor as party chairman, Ernst Zborowski , continued the policy of his predecessor. With the rejection of the first two-year plan on September 8, 1948 in the state parliament with a majority of votes from the democratic parties, the CDU set one last major sign of parliamentary resistance. The SED and SMAD increased the pressure on the MPs and forced Ernst Zborowski to flee to the West. The synchronization of the CDU continued. The CDU approved the plan in the state parliament on October 7, and Karl Grobbel was appointed Zborowski's successor as state chairman on November 1.

Even if the realities of the emerging SED state were taken into account under Karl Grobbel, the resistance in the CDU was not yet broken. In order to stage the 1950 state parliament election, which was carried out as a sham election , without contradiction, another wave of purges took place in early 1950.

The previous CDU mayor of Potsdam, Erwin Köhler , was arrested in March 1950 after being denounced by Hermann Gerigk . With him, a number of CDU city councilors were arrested, including Franz Schleusener . Schleusener died in the " Lindenhotel " in GDR custody. Erwin Köhler and his wife Charlotte sentenced a Soviet military tribunal to death. Both were shot in Moscow in 1951.

On May 24, 1950, Hermann Gerigk replaced Karl Grobbel as state chairman of the Brandenburg CDU. The synchronization was complete. With the dissolution of the states in the GDR in 1952, the history of the CDU Brandenburg ended for the time being.

After the turn

The first free state election after the fall of the Wall was disappointing for the Brandenburg Union. While the CDU was able to provide the head of government in all other new federal states, top candidate Peter-Michael Diestel missed his goal of taking over government: with 29.45%, the CDU was only the second largest force after the SPD. Even together with the FDP , it was nowhere near enough for a majority. Even red-green had not achieved a majority. Manfred Stolpe (SPD) became Prime Minister of a traffic light coalition , the CDU went into opposition.

The first election period of the state parliament was characterized by recurring internal party disputes, which among other things led to five party leaders serving within 4 years. In the state elections in Brandenburg in 1994 , the CDU, headed by Peter Wagner , slumped to 18.72% of the vote and ended up just 0.01 percent ahead of the PDS. The SPD won the election and achieved an absolute majority.

In the 1999 state elections , the party ran with Berlin’s former Interior Senator Jörg Schönbohm as the top candidate. The CDU improved with 26.55%, but remained clearly the second strongest party after the SPD. Since, in addition to the CDU and SPD, only the PDS and DVU had reached the state parliament, a grand coalition was formed . The red-black coalition was confirmed in the state elections in 2004 , but again led to a defeat for the Christian Democrats, who lost 19.43% of the vote and this time fell well behind the PDS in third place.

The Brandenburg CDU continued to be at odds. This became visible through the candidacy for the state chairmanship at the CDU state party conference on January 27, 2007, when Ulrich Junghanns won with only two votes ahead of Sven Petke , who left office on September 15, 2006 after the "e-mail affair" of the Secretary General of the CDU Brandenburg had to resign. Because of the tight result, there was no calm in the party, rather there were constant confrontations between Junghanns and Petke supporters within the CDU Brandenburg. After poor local election results, Junghanns finally resigned his post as state chairman in 2008 and proposed state culture minister Johanna Wanka as his successor. Wanka, who is well respected by the population, returned to the party as calm as possible, but the CDU did not benefit from it in surveys.

In the 2009 state elections , the Union again missed the 20% mark despite slight gains and only received 19.8% of the vote. It remained in third place behind the SPD and the Left Party. After the election, Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck (SPD) decided against a continuation of the red-black coalition and for the formation of a red-red coalition with the party Die Linke ; the CDU switched to the opposition. After Wanka's move to the Lower Saxony state cabinet, Saskia Ludwig led the party and parliamentary group of the Brandenburg CDU until September 2012. After internal criticism of her tough opposition to the state government and two publications in the right-wing weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit , Ludwig resigned from both offices on September 11, 2012 back. After the state chairmanship was temporarily vacant, CDU General Secretary Dieter Dombrowski agreed to take over the CDU parliamentary group chairmanship. Since 1989, Dombrowski has been the eleventh chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Brandenburg state parliament. At a party congress on November 17, 2012, Michael Schierack was elected as Ludwig's successor as state chairman. In April 2014, Schierack also took over the chairmanship of the CDU parliamentary group from Dieter Dombrowski.

In the state elections in 2014 , the CDU was able to achieve second place after the SPD with a share of 23 percent of the vote. Negotiations to form a coalition with the SPD failed, however, due to the alleged refusal of leading candidate Schierack to join the state cabinet as a minister. As a result, Schierack came under pressure within the party and initially resigned from the parliamentary group's chairmanship in favor of Ingo Senftleben on November 18, 2014. On April 25, 2015, Schierack finally handed over the state chairmanship to Senftleben.

Ingo Senftleben also entered the 2019 state election as the top candidate for the CDU Brandenburg and achieved a disastrous and historically poor result with 15.6 percent. Although he led his party in exploratory talks with the SPD and the Greens to form a so-called Kenya coalition , resistance against Senftleben arose within the parliamentary group, which had been reduced to 15 seats. In order not to endanger the exploration, he resigned from all offices on September 10, 2019 and proposed Michael Stübgen , member of the Bundestag, as CDU interim chairman and new exploratory leader. In addition, the parliamentary group agreed to elect Jan Redmann as its new chairman and to involve the Senftleben critics more closely in the party leadership. On September 18, 2019, the SPD decided to start coalition talks with the CDU and the Greens, which resulted in a coalition agreement on October 25, 2019. On November 16, 2019, Stübgen was officially elected as the new CDU state chairman with 71.1 percent at a state party congress, and since November 20, 2019, as Minister of the Interior and Local Affairs, he has occupied one of three CDU departments in the state government under Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke .

people

Party leader

Years	Chairman
1945 - May 1948	Wilhelm Wolf
May 1948 - November 1948	Ernst Zborowski
November 1948 - June 1950	Karl Grobbel
June 1950 - April 1952	Hermann Gerigk
April 1952 - June 1952	Hans-Paul Ganter-Gilmans (acting)
June 1952 - August 1952	Heinz Sauer
From 1952 to 1990 there was no state of Brandenburg
- August 1990	Herbert Schirmer
August 1990 - October 1990	Wolfgang Haupt (acting)
October 1990 - September 1991	Lothar de Maizière
September 1991 - November 1991	Peter Wagner (acting)
November 1991-1993	Ulf Fink
1993 - June 1996	Carola Hartfelder
June 1996 - October 1998	Peter Wagner
1998-2007	Jörg Schönbohm
2007 - October 2008	Ulrich Junghanns
October 2008 - May 2010	Johanna Wanka
May 2010 - September 2012	Saskia Ludwig
November 2012-April 2015	Michael Schierack
April 25, 2015 - September 10, 2019	Ingo Senftleben
September 10, 2019 - November 16, 2019	Michael Stübgen (Interim)
since November 16, 2019	Michael Stübgen

Group leaders

Term of office	Group leader
1946 - from April 1950	Gerhard Schütze
April 1950 - 1952	Germanus Theiss
Between 1952 and 1990 there was no state of Brandenburg
October 26, 1990 - May 8, 1992	Peter-Michael Diestel
May 24, 1992 - October 11, 1994	Dieter Helm
October 11, 1994 - September 7, 1997	Peter Wagner
September 23, 1997 - September 15, 1999	Wolfgang Hackel
September 29, 1999 - October 12, 1999	Jörg Schönbohm
October 13, 1999 - October 13, 2004	Beate Blechinger
October 13, 2004 - January 20, 2009	Thomas Lunacek
January 27, 2009 - October 21, 2009	Saskia Funck
October 21, 2009 - May 2010	Johanna Wanka
May 2010 - September 11, 2012	Saskia Ludwig
September 18, 2012 - February 18, 2014	Dieter Dombrowski
February 18, 2014 - November 18, 2014	Michael Schierack
November 18, 2014 - September 10, 2019	Ingo Senftleben
since September 10, 2019	Jan Redmann

Results in the state elections

Election results

CDU Brandenburg

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

'90

'94

'99

'04

'09

'14

'19

Results of the state elections
year	Leading candidate	be right	Seats
1990	Peter-Michael Diestel	29.4%	27
1994	Peter Wagner	18.7%	18th
1999	Jörg Schönbohm	26.6%	25th
2004	Jörg Schönbohm	19.4%	20th
2009	Johanna Wanka	19.8%	19th
2014	Michael Schierack	23.0%	21st
2019	Ingo Senftleben	15.6%	15th

literature

Stephan Dreischer: The CDU in Brandenburg . In: Jakob Lempp : (Ed.): Parties in Brandenburg . be.bra Wissenschaft verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-937233-48-2 , pp. 91–123.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Oskar Niedermayer : Party members according to federal states. Federal Agency for Civic Education , July 8, 2017, accessed on August 25, 2017 .

↑ Basic program “Responsibility for today - visions for tomorrow”. ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2

↑ SBZ Handbook , p. 535

↑ Cf. u. a. Historical guide. Sites and monuments in the districts of Potsdam, Frankfurt (Oder) . Urania Verlag, Berlin 1987, p. 162.

↑ Michael Richter, pp. 48–49

↑ Arsenij Roginski, Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Anne Kaminsky (eds.): Shot in Moscow ... The German victims of Stalinism in the Moscow Donskoye cemetery 1950–1953 . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 230

^ Results of the state elections in Brandenburg

[bpb-1] A ^b Oskar Niedermayer : Party members according to federal states. Federal Agency for Civic Education , July 8, 2017, accessed on August 25, 2017 .