German Party (from 1993)

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German party
Party logo of the DP
Party leader Gerd-Uwe Dahlmann
vice-chairman Hans-Erich Freiherr von Bodenhausen, Dagmar Güldenpfennig
Federal Treasurer Peter Schlag
Honorary Chairwoman Johannes Freiherr von Campenhausen
founding May 9, 1993
Headquarters Hambühren
Alignment National
conservatism Right-wing populism
Nationalism
Government grants 0 € (as of 2013)
Number of members 250 (as of 2007)
Website deutsche-partei-dp.de

The German Party (short name: DP ) is a small German party . In its self-portrayal, it is oriented towards the national conservative , but is assigned by various observers to the right-wing populist spectrum of parties in the Federal Republic of Germany. The party was founded in 1993 and sees itself as the successor to the German party , which had its greatest influence in the late 1940s and 1950s and was part of the federal government from 1949 to 1960 .

history

The historic German party

The German party of the post-war period goes back to the German-Hanoverian Party (DHP), which was founded in 1866 as a protest against the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by the Kingdom of Prussia . The DHP was continuously represented in the Prussian state parliament and at times in the Reichstag of the German Empire and in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic . In 1933 the ban and the forced dissolution followed. In 1945 it was re-established as the Lower Saxony State Party (NLP) and later renamed the German Party. From 1949 to 1960 she was represented in the Bundestag and involved in the federal government. In 1961 it was effectively dissolved at the federal level. In 1980 the DP lost its legal status as a party. However, it continued to exist as an association.

Established in 1993

In 1993 the DP was re-established as a political party in Kassel . The previous chairman of the association, Wolf von Zworowsky , who had been a member of the Hessian state parliament for the CDU until 1979, became the first party chairman. Due to his age, he was replaced in 1994 by Johannes Freiherr von Campenhausen .

The party had its focus in Hesse and Lower Saxony. The DP entered the state election in Lower Saxony in 1990 , but only received 0.01% of the vote. In the Lower Saxony state election in 1994 , she did not succeed in getting the necessary supporters' signatures, so she only ran with candidates in individual constituencies. The local elections in 1996 were also unsuccessful. Participated in two out of six elective areas, the DP had its best result in the elective area Stade with 0.3%. In the Hamburg state election in 1997 , only 0.1% of the voters voted for the party. The same result was achieved in the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1998 .

Kappel era

In March 2000, the DP planned a merger with the Federation of Free Citizens (BFB) and the DSU . The DSU soon dropped out and the BFB disbanded in August 2000.

The former national chairman of the BFB, the national liberal politician Heiner Kappel , who left the FDP in 1998 , was elected national chairman of the DP in summer 2001.

In the state elections in Bremen on May 25, 2003 , the DP achieved a significant election result above the municipal level for the first time since it was founded with 0.5%.

German party - the Freedom Party

In October 2003, there was a merger with the Freedom German People's Party (FDVP), which was founded in June 2000 by renegade DVU members from the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt . Since the merger, the party name has been the German Party - the Freedom Party .

With the admission of this group there was a clear shift to the right of the party and it was classified and observed as right-wing extremist by several offices for the protection of the constitution in the federal states .

In the 2004 European elections , the DP achieved 0.2%.

In November 2004, the DP initially agreed to cooperate with the Republicans and the DSU. According to press reports, the DP also held talks with the NPD in 2004 in order to achieve political cooperation. In 2005, the DP to the Pact for Germany to be joined by the NPD and DVU. But there is no official evidence for this. Even the Office for the Protection of the Constitution could not confirm this in its 2005 report.

Since Kappel spoke out against cooperation with the NPD, he was removed from the federal executive committee on January 22, 2005 and a party expulsion procedure was initiated against him . The leadership of the party was provisionally taken over by the previous three deputies, Eberhard Lehmann, Claudia Wiechmann (former chairwoman of the FDVP ) and Ulrich Pätzold. Wiechmann and Pätzold were elected as new federal chairmen with equal rights a little later. In a legal dispute, however, Kappel was able to prevail, but then stopped his cooperation.

Since 2007

In July 2007, a party congress in Rommerz, East Hesse, elected Lower Saxony Alfred Kuhlemann as federal chairman and condemned the expulsion of former chairman Kappel from the party. Since this congress, the DP sees itself as a “democratic, conservative and patriotic party” and distanced itself from the NPD. The legality of the party congress, however, was disputed by the previous chairmen Claudia Wiechmann and Ulrich Pätzold. In autumn 2009 Gerd-Uwe Dahlmann took over the chairmanship. At the party congress, the addition to the name “die Freiheitlichen” was dropped again. Since the DP has not participated in any elections since 2010, it is no longer listed as a party by the Federal Returning Officer.

Structure of the DP

As of December 31, 2003, 604 people were members of the German party. The members still come mainly from northern Germany. Current or verifiable membership numbers are not available.

However, estimates speak of only around 200 members. According to the Federal Returning Officer, there were still state associations in Lower Saxony, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin-Brandenburg in 2007. The most recent publication was the re-establishment of the North Rhine-Westphalia regional association on January 31, 2010. Its first goal was to participate in the state election in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 9, 2010 . The required number of support signatures was not achieved for a state list, but in constituency 109 "Bochum III - Herne II" the DP ran with a direct candidate. The state chairman Michael Fischer got only 67 votes (0.11%) for the DP, but this was very important for the party as a whole, because it allowed the party status to be maintained for another six years.

Regional associations and their chairmen

Regional association Chairman
(as of February 12, 2012)
Berlin-Brandenburg Berlin-Brandenburg Eberhard Lehmann
Hesse Hesse Helmut Kirchner
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony Gerd-Uwe Dahlmann

Party finances and assets

The party is not entitled to funds from state party funding due to a lack of election success. The annual report for 2003 is listed in Bundestag printed paper 16/1252. Accordingly, the party received around 205,000 euros this year, including:

  • Membership fees 23 percent
  • Donate 75 percent

It closed the year 2003 with a surplus of 11,000 euros, in the previous year it was 35,500 euros. The party was not over-indebted, its net worth in 2003 was 17,000 euros. According to its own information, the party received four major donations of over 10,000 euros during this period. These large donations totaled over 100,000 euros.

Municipal mandates

Since it was re-established as a party in 1993, the DP has not won any seats in federal or state elections. However, it has occasionally won mandates in local elections. In the district of Harburg (Lower Saxony), the DP achieved a district council mandate in the local elections on September 9, 2001 with 1.0 percent of the votes. In Herbrechtingen, Baden-Württemberg, the DP achieved 6.4 percent of the vote in the local elections on June 13, 2004 and a seat in the local council, in which it was represented until 2009. In the district election on June 13, 2004, she achieved a seat with 1.2 percent of the votes in the district assembly of the Anhalt-Zerbst district (Saxony-Anhalt) in which she was represented until the district was dissolved in 2007.

In the district election in the district of Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt), she received 1.5 percent of the votes (2004: 0.3%) and a seat in the district assembly in the local election on April 22, 2007.

defense of Constitution

The party was observed by several state offices for the protection of the constitution. Even under the former federal chairman Heiner Kappel , the party had shown no fear of contact with right-wing extremists , according to information from the Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution . The observations only lasted until 2007 and ended after the end of the Pätzold / Wiechmann era. The German party is no longer mentioned in current reports on the protection of the constitution .

Federal Chairperson

Period Surname
1990-1994 Wolf von Zworowsky
1994-2001 Johannes Freiherr von Campenhausen
2001-2005 Heiner Kappel
2005-2007 Claudia Wiechmann and Ulrich Pätzold
2007-2009 Alfred Kuhlemann
since 2009 Gerd-Uwe Dahlmann

Election results at state level

State election in Lower Saxony in 1990 0.0%
State election in Lower Saxony in 1994 *
State election in Hamburg 1997 0.0%
State election in Lower Saxony 1998 0.1%
State election in Bremen 2003 0.5%
European elections in Germany 2004 0.2%
State election in Saarland 2004 0.1%
State election in North Rhine-Westphalia 2010 **

* direct candidates only ** one direct candidate with 67 votes

Individual evidence

  1. Federal Returning Officer Selected data from political associations (PDF; 1.2 MB) ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. Federal Returning Officer Information on the German Party (PDF; 219 kB) ( Memento from June 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Election archive of the Tagesschau ( Memento from January 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Thuringia 2005 ( Memento from October 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. Documentation archive ( Memento from March 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. Address directory of the parties , accessed on April 14, 2019
  7. Party information from the Federal Returning Officer ( Memento from June 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 219 kB)
  8. Election results of the state elections 2010 ( Memento from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 15 kB)
  9. Results of the state elections ( Memento of March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  10. Overview of the board members, statutes and program of the German party ( Memento from June 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 219 kB)
  11. Welcome! Retrieved April 14, 2019 .

Web links