German Freedom Party (1962)

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The German Freedom Party (DFP) was a small German party that was founded in early 1962 by the former national-neutralist wing of the German Reich Party (DRP) and was involved in the founding of the Action Group of Independent Germans .

The DFP was on 13./14. Founded January 1962. Founding members were members of the national neutralist wing of the DRP, which tried to reorient itself after the poor performance in the 1961 federal election . The two opposing camps of the DRP were, on the one hand, the pro-western camp, which also wanted to appeal to national-conservative voters and, as a bourgeois gathering movement, not only supported its own members, but also for former members of the German Party (DP) and the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) saw and on the other hand the national-neutralist camp. The latter came under pressure in the course of the anti-Semitic riots in 1959/1960, as DRP members were also involved, which led to the ban on the DRP state association in Rhineland-Palatinate and the loss of the state parliament mandate of the state spokesman of the DRP and former board member of the Socialist Reich Party (SRP ) Hans Schikora led - on the grounds that the DRP was a successor organization to the SRP, which was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1952.

In this area of ​​tension it came to the party congress of the DRP on 2/3. December 1961 in Northeim on the open break between the two camps, when the candidate and previous party chairman Heinrich Kunstmann (251 votes), proposed by the national-neutralist camp in the election for party chairman, lost to the later NPD founder Adolf von Thadden (277 votes), who belonged to the pro-western camp. As a consequence, the majority of the national-neutralist camp left the DRP and founded on 13/14. January 1962 the DFP.

The founding board consisted of the following members:

  • Heinrich Kunstmann (1900–1964), doctor and internist, former member of the NSDAP and DRP - party chairman
  • Oskar Lutz (1902–1975), lawyer and notary, former member of NSDAP, GB / BHE and DRP - deputy party chairman
  • Hans Jähde (1922–1983), sales manager, former member of the DRP, after DFP membership NPD, MdL Lower Saxony - deputy party chairman
  • Günter Demolsky (* 1920), accountant, former member of SRP and DRP, managing director
  • Werner Gebhardt (1919–1993), master plumber, former member of SRP and DRP
  • Hans-Heinrich Scheffer (1903–1981), professional soldier, former member of the DRP, MdL Lower Saxony
  • Hans Schikora (1912–2005), baker, professional soldier, former member of SRP and DRP, MdL Rhineland-Palatinate
  • Gerhard Krüger (1908–1994), NS functionary, former member of NSDAP, SRP (co-founder, board member, managing director) and DRP

Politically, the DFP represented a national-neutralist course that rejected the new “bourgeois” swing of the DRP, but Thadden's personal opponents as well as representatives of a “German socialism” found themselves in the DFP. This tendency was mainly represented by the former SRP members Demolsky, Gebhardt, Krüger and Schikora, who also had a significant influence on the direction of the party, such as the goal of a non-aligned Europe, the detachment of the Federal Republic from its Western ties - in contrast to Thadden and the NPD - and a social component based on Otto Strasser's policy , which, however, failed in the course of 1961/1962 because a cooperation between Strasser and the DFP did not materialize.

In addition to the goal of "German socialism", Krüger, Gebhardt (who had been a member of the DRP board since 1957 and was deputy party chairman since 1960) and Demolsky also advocated strict anti-Bolshevism . Gebhardt and Demolsky were already political companions from SRP times, because Günter Demolsky from Wanne-Eickel was state chairman of the SRP in North Rhine-Westphalia from 1951 until the ban in 1952 and quasi the superior of Gebhardt, the managing director of the SRP district association Ruhr-Niederrhein with headquarters in Oberhausen. In the DRP, Gebhardt, together with Lutz, was deputy party chairman from July 1960 to December 1961, while Kunstmann headed the DRP during this period. In the DFP, Demolsky was again the state chairman of North Rhine-Westphalia. The former SRP members Demolsky and Krüger also linked their origins from Danzig and the fate of those who were expelled from their homes , who hoped that a neutral Germany could be the first step towards reunification - similar to Stalin's proposals in the Stalin Notes to the Western Powers in 1952 - and to open up the possibility of regaining the lost eastern territories.

However, the goal of a “neutralist, national collection” aimed at addressing former members of the BHE, DP , DRP and SRP failed. The same applied to the National Politics Working Group (ANP) initiated by Herbert Beer , which formed the DFP with other parties and groups such as DRP, German Block , Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Bauern , All-German University Ring and East German student group at Kiel University, as well as the BHE youth organization, the Block Young German belonged to and was founded in December 1964 in Düsseldorf at the federal level. The ANP, which was planned as a "big" AUD, ultimately failed and an erosion of the DFP membership (1962-1964: 1000, 1965: 200) and the inability to the decision to participate in the state elections in Saarland in 1965 to implement, did a Incidentally, and prompted the party leadership to join forces with other associations from the same electoral spectrum as the German Association (DG), former DRP members as well as members and leadership cadres of the "Association of German National Assembly" (VDNV) to form the Association of Independent Germans (AUD).

The election of Günther Demolsky as the first managing director of the AUD on July 4, 1965 in Bad Homburg shows that the old clans from the SRP and the DRP were only partially saved by the DFP . However, as a former DFP member, Gerhard Krüger was also significantly involved in the failure of the AUD. Krüger was against the merger of the DFP to form the AUD and therefore left the party in 1964. In an open letter to all former DFP members, Krüger also opposed not agreeing to the AUD “six-step plan” presented on August 5, 1965, as it played into the hands of the SED regime under Ulbricht . The letter was a hidden support for the NPD, which won 2% (approx. 660,000) of all votes in the 1965 federal election, while the AUD gained only 0.2% with around 50,000. Krüger did not appear as a politician after his engagement in the DFP. Demolsky and Gebhard, however, remained members of the AUD until its "left shift" in 1969 - after that, however, they were only active in right-wing extremist associations such as the "Freedom for Germany Circle of Friends", which was banned by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior in 1993, or the congruent "Independent Circle of Friends", who is still responsible for spreading the Independent News today.

Oskar Lutz, on the other hand, left the AUD earlier (1967), also because of the shift to the left, and continued his political path in the CDU . Jähde joined the NPD and was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament, as was Scheffer. Kunstmann had died in 1964 and Hans Schikora no longer appeared politically after the DFP.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Desecration of synagogues - The night of Cologne . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1960 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Hand files of the Landvorstizenden Demolsky BArch B 104/288, fol. 33 (15202), confirmation by the SRP Federal Executive Board of July 12, 1951 in Hanover, retrieved on October 26, 2017
  3. ↑ Hand files from Erich Hinz, Oberhausen, vice chairman of the regional association BArch B 104/287, fol. 30 (10053) Retrieved October 26, 2017
  4. ^ DRP - Whistles at the forest hangover . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1960 ( online ).
  5. ↑ a b "Bubi's" competition . (PDF) In: Union in Germany - Information Service of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union , Volume 19, January 7, 1965, p. 4; kas.de; Retrieved November 4, 2017
  6. ↑ National Collection - Through the Back Door . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1964 ( online ).
  7. ^ Prohibition of the Freedom Association for Germany (FFD), Bochum. In: Applicable decrees (SMBl. NRW.). Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, November 11, 1998, accessed on October 27, 2017 .