The grays - gray panthers
The gray - gray panthers (short name: GRAUE ) were a small German party that existed from 1989 to 2008. It was founded by Trude Unruh (* 1925), a member of the Bundestag at the time , who had previously been a non-party member of the Greens in the Bundestag. The party emerged from the Senior Citizens Protection Association founded by Trude Unruh in 1975 . It saw itself primarily as representing the interests of senior citizens . The successor party are the gray panthers of the same name , which emerged from various splinter groups. The gray - gray panthers are not to be confused with the small party founded in 2017, the gray - for all generations .
Unruh was federal chairwoman until September 2007, her successor was Norbert Raeder , who, however, resigned in January 2008. In 2006, the Grays achieved 3.8% in the election in Berlin, the best result in their history in a state election. A year later, the party got into a donation affair, as a result of which the dissolution proceedings were initiated at a special party conference on March 1, 2008. The resulting ballot ended on March 17th with a confirmation of the dissolution resolution of the party congress. Officially, the party has been dissolved since March 29, 2008.
Content profile and structure
The Grays saw themselves as a generation party. Their motto was “young and old together”. They stand up for the interests of young and older people. They demanded a minimum pension from 65, which should no longer be financed from the personal wages of dependent employees, but from the income of all taxable persons and companies and should be paid from a self-administered fund that was not accessible to the state and which should have replaced the previous pension and unemployment funds .
Further demands were the promotion of alternative energies and measures for the maintenance of farms. The party also advocated increased protection of the environment .
Likewise, according to their will, the possibility of referendums and referendums should also be created at the federal level .
It was more important that the grays are against any political extremism. Since 2007 there has been a separate working group against the right, which carried out educational work with lectures. At the federal party conference in October 2007, the delegates unanimously decided to join the association “Bunt statt Braun e. V. “to become a member.
The party also had a youth organization called Jung und Grau (short name: JunG ), which was founded on July 19, 1998 in Ludwigsburg. Anyone between the ages of 12 and 35 could become a member.
history
Foundation and further development
The party was founded on July 12, 1989 as the political arm of the 1975 existing Senior Citizens Protection Association Gray Panther . “The gray ones” was initially chosen as the short name. The founder of the party and the association was Trude Unruh from Wuppertal , born in 1925 , who was previously a party member a. a. was with the SPD and FDP and in 1987 became a member of the German Bundestag for the Greens as a non-party member . It remained in parliament until 1990. She had turned her back on the Greens parliamentary group due to internal and substantive differences. Because Trude Unruh was well known, the founding of the party received a great deal of media attention. In the public eye she was also the dominant person within the party; so she appeared regularly on talk shows in the following years.
On May 22, 1993, the party abbreviation was changed to "gray". A youth organization of the party was founded on 19 July 1998 under the name Jung und Grau (short name JunG ) . Membership was limited to those between the ages of 12 and 35.
In 2004, the Grays, together with the Ecological Democratic Party (ödp), successfully sued the Federal Constitutional Court against the law to renew party funding. This law, which would have come into force on January 1, 2005, stipulated that only parties that ran in at least three federal states and received at least one percent of the votes there would benefit from election funding. The Federal Constitutional Court finally declared the law unconstitutional.
In the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2006 , the Grays ran together for the first time through a list association with the animal protection party , the ödp and various groups of voters. This alliance received 0.8% of the vote.
Stronghold Berlin
Since the mid-1990s, the Grays in Berlin have always achieved election results that have been over one percent in parliamentary elections. In the 2004 European elections , the Grays won 1.2% of the votes nationwide; In this election, the Berlin regional association was able to unite 3.9% of the voters in Berlin. Thus they achieved the best national result of any other party in this election.
In the parliamentary elections in Berlin in 2006 , in which the Grays advertised with the slogan “Poppen for a safe pension?” , They had a realistic chance of entering a parliament for the first time. They achieved 3.8% of the vote, the highest number of votes among all parties that failed to make it into the House of Representatives. So they were ahead of the NPD , the Republicans and the WASG . However, in all eight district council elections for which they ran, the grays made the leap over the 3% hurdle and thus entered the district parliaments. They achieved the best result in the Reinickendorf district with 7.0% of the vote.
Trude Unruh resigned as federal chairwoman a year later in September 2007 and was appointed honorary chairwoman of the party. Her successor was the Berlin state chairman Norbert Raeder, who has since held both offices in personal union.
State Party Funding Fraud and Consequences
In autumn 2007 the party got into a donation affair; For years she had reported non-existent donations from alleged seminar leaders to the administration of the German Bundestag by means of so-called “dummy seminars” and received funds from party financing for them. This became public after party members reported anonymously.
In early October 2007, Party offices and private apartments of leading party members were raided. On October 24, 2007, board member Otto Wolfshohl was arrested on suspicion of fraud. On January 12, 2008, it was announced that the party would repay 8.5 million euros in financial aid within two months. 1.5 million have already been secured through seizures. The remaining claim led to the party's bankruptcy.
The party executive announced on January 23, 2008 that it would convene a special party congress to resolve the dissolution of the party, which took place on March 1. Raeder then resigned from his position as federal chairman in January 2008 after only four months. In a ballot that ran until March 17, 2008, the majority of the party's members approved the dissolution.
Election results
Bundestag and European elections
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Bundestag elections
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European elections
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State elections
| year | BW | BY | BE | BB | HB | HH | HE | MV | NI | NW | RP | SL | SN | ST | SH | TH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | n / A | n / A | n / A | n / A | n / A. | n / A | n / A | n / A | n / A | n / A | ||||||
| 1991 | 1.7 | 0.9 | 0.6 | n / A | ||||||||||||
| 1992 | 0.6 | n / A | ||||||||||||||
| 1993 | 1.6 | |||||||||||||||
| 1994 | n / A | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.6 | n / A | 0.5 | 0.4 | ||||||||
| 1995 | 1.7 | 0.7 | 0.4 | 0.7 | ||||||||||||
| 1996 | 0.3 | 0.7 | n / A | |||||||||||||
| 1997 | 0.7 | |||||||||||||||
| 1998 | n / A | 0.2 | n / A | n / A | ||||||||||||
| 1999 | 1.1 | n / A | n / A | n / A | n / A | 0.3 | n / A | |||||||||
| 2000 | n / A | 0.3 | ||||||||||||||
| 2001 | 0.0 | 1.4 | 0.3 | n / A | ||||||||||||
| 2002 | 0.2 | n / A | ||||||||||||||
| 2003 | n / A | 0.9 | n / A | 0.3 | ||||||||||||
| 2004 | 0.9 | 1.1 | 1.4 | 0.9 | 0.8 | |||||||||||
| 2005 | 0.2 | 0.5 | ||||||||||||||
| 2006 | 0.2 | 3.8 | 0.7 | 0.3 | n / A | |||||||||||
| 2007 | n / A | |||||||||||||||
| 2008 | n / A | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
| highest result in the individual federal states |
| na : not started |
Finances and wealth
Cash flows
The gray party reported in 2005 revenues of around 4.6 million euros. Donations of 3.4 million euros (72%) and government funds with 1.2 million euros (26%) made up the largest share. Membership fees were only 52,000 euros (1.1%) and thus make up less of the total income than any other party. While a slight deficit was generated in 2004, the party closed 2005 with a profit of around € 850,000. These numbers are the result of massive fraud. The party only achieved real income without state subsidies of around 100,000 euros. According to the Wuppertal public prosecutor's office, the amount of donations was artificially increased and money was wrongly collected from state party funding .
Net worth
The net worth of the Grays (money and valuables against liabilities, loans, etc.) was around one million euros at the time of their dissolution.
Corporate investments
The gray - Graue Panther Vermögensverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH with 100% of the shares
property
The party did not own any real estate. The asset company was provided with a loan of 370,000 euros for the acquisition of a property in Wuppertal.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The "Gray Panthers" are back! ( Memento from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Allianz Graue Panther Germany
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Selected data from political associations (page 14) - Information from the Federal Returning Officer - (Status: December 31, 2014)
- ↑ a b One end of gray in gray, Frankfurter Rundschau, March 1, 2008
- ↑ a b Der Tagesspiegel: The horrors carry on - the federal association dissolves because of debts in the millions, but a successor party is founded in Berlin on February 28, 2008
- ↑ Monitor article from October 25, 2007
- ↑ Suspected fraud at Seniorenpartei - board member of the gray arrested spiegel.de, on October 25, 2007
- ↑ dpa, Graue overindebted and before the dissolution , January 23, 2008 17:42 CET
- ↑ Gray panthers want to disband in February. Die Welt, January 23, 2008, accessed December 27, 2009 .
