All-German People's Party

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Helene Wessel , chairwoman of the center until the beginning of the year, at the GVP founding meeting in 1952
Gustav Heinemann , CDU Federal Minister until 1950, at the EKD General Synod in 1949

The All-German People's Party (short name: GVP ) was a small party in the Federal Republic of Germany that rejected the integration into the West , as it had been striven for by Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer ( CDU ).

The party was founded in 1952, but dissolved again in 1957 due to a lack of election success. Many members joined the SPD , including the most influential spokesman, Gustav Heinemann , as well as Johannes Rau , both later federal presidents .

founding

The later founders of the GVP were often influenced by the Confessing Church , which was founded in 1934 to ward off the influence of the Nazi state on the Protestant Church. They turned against a connection between throne and altar , against front-line thinking and for a shared responsibility of Christians for the (entire) world. After the end of the war, this trend did not succeed in asserting its claim to leadership in the Evangelical Church in Germany over a more traditional Lutheranism . Outside of the church, too, these Christians saw little of their views represented and rejected, for example, the anti-communism of the CDU.

Currently politically, to the uneasiness of this direction in 1950, the question of the rearmament of Germany and the associated discussion (reinforced by the Korean War ). CDU Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann , who had belonged to the Confessing Church, was dissatisfied with a memorandum from Chancellor Adenauer and resigned. In his opinion, the Allies have been responsible for Germany's external security since the surrender. A West German defense contribution should not be offered to the Western Allies , as otherwise the division of Germany would be deepened. West German armament would have a provocative effect on the USSR.

On November 21, 1951, Heinemann and a group of friends founded the Emergency Community for Peace in Europe in Düsseldorf . It had ten founding members, including Gustav Heinemann (previously CDU), Helene Wessel (previously center ), Hans Bodensteiner (previously CSU ), Hermann Etzel (previously Bavaria party ) and Adolf Scheu and Diether Posser (both previously independent). According to the emergency community, not only the western but also the Soviet need for security must be recognized. A West German armament would " close the Iron Curtain more tightly" and reunification would become more hopeless. Germany as a whole should be neutralized.

The group tried to set up an organizational structure and, for example, collected signatures; it finally came to the conclusion that the best way to pursue its goals was as a party. The governing parties and also the opposition SPD are the main culprits for the wrong policy and it is not possible to work with them. On 29./30. November 1952 the establishment of the All-German People's Party in Frankfurt am Main.

program

In terms of foreign policy, the party demanded in its manifesto from the founding assembly the "immediate elimination of the rearmament of two German armies in West and East Germany (...) All-German stance requires independence from East and West".

Domestically, the party criticized the lack of a living bridge between the government or parliament and the people. Referenda should be introduced and racial, religious and ideological prejudices should be averted. Christianity should not be instrumentalized against communism, for example. In her dissertation, Barbara Jobke interprets it to mean that the foreign policy leitmotif of détente should also come into play in social policy. In terms of economic policy, the party was not interested in a more precise formulation of goals, also because of the great diversity of ideas among the supporters.

Political activity

Immediately after it was founded, the GVP was represented in the Bundestag in 1952/1953 by Helene Wessel and Thea Arnold (both formerly the center) and Hans Bodensteiner (previously CSU), who had left their respective parties and joined the GVP.

For the Bundestag election in 1953 , the GVP tried to form alliances with several other parties, such as the Bund der Deutschen . An electoral alliance with the Mitte / Freisoziale Union bloc broke up before the election. The GVP submitted state lists in all countries and nominated candidates in 232 out of 242 constituencies. On election day, however, it received only 286,465 of the first votes (1.0%) and 318,475 second votes (1.2%). It did best in Hesse with 1.7%. The GVP had the best individual result with 8.5% in Heinemann's constituency Siegen . This area had attracted attention for decades due to its rather atypical voting behavior and before 1933 it was the most important stronghold of the Christian Social People's Service (CSVD).

In 1955 the GVP took part in the Paulskirchen movement against rearmament.

In state elections, the GVP called for abstention or the election of the SPD. Because of the high proportion of Protestants in the population of Baden-Württemberg, she tried it in the local state election on March 4, 1956. She won 50,618 votes, that was 1.5%. In the NRW municipal elections in October of the same year, however, the GVP did quite well in some municipalities, especially in Siegen , Rheydt and the district of Siegen , and received a total of 78 seats.

Talks with the SPD about cooperation in the 1957 Bundestag elections revealed in February of that year that the SPD would only accept its own party members on its lists. Thereupon the GVP dissolved on May 19, 1957. Members were recommended to join the SPD, which Erhard Eppler had already made, and in which Heinemann and other GVP members also continued their political careers. The transition from the GVP helped the SPD to slowly open up to the bourgeoisie.

Former members of the party reached the Bundestag in 1957: Heinemann came to parliament for the first time and Wessel again as SPD members, via safe list places in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.

Members and Organization

The GVP was founded by 140 participants in the founding assembly and had a four-person presidium instead of a chairman. For this purpose, a larger federal board was elected at the founding assembly, initially with 28 members. In the spring of 1953 the party only had 53 district associations, mainly in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg. Regional associations were established there in the same year.

When the party dissolved in 1957, it had around a thousand members, said board member Adolf Scheu in 1968 to doctoral candidate Barbara Jobke. The party newspaper had 3,000 subscribers. Based on a group of sponsors who supported the party financially, it comes to a number of sympathizers of 300,000.

The educated citizens predominated at the management level; there were rather few pastors among them, as the party did not want to make politics with religion. Nevertheless, there were many pastors in the membership, the vast majority of whom were Protestant. The party leadership expressly did not want to create a Protestant counterpart to the CDU / CSU, which was perceived as rather Catholic. The Protestant Heinemann and the Catholic Wessel deliberately often appeared together in public. This separation of politics and religion, wanted from above, caused difficulties for those active who advertised locally and who themselves came from church circles.

Well-known members of the GVP were:

literature

  • Siegfried Heimann : The All-German People's Party. In: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980. Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, ISBN 3-531-11592-8 .
  • Barbara Jobke: The rise and fall of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party. Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974
  • Diether Koch: Heinemann and the German question. Kaiser, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-459-00813-X .
  • Josef Müller: The All-German People's Party. Formation and politics under the primacy of national reunification 1950-1957. Droste, Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-7700-5160-2 .
  • Herwart Vorländer: Oral History Project All-German People's Party (GVP). A report. In: Herwart Vorländer (Ed.): Oral History. Orally inquired about history. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1990, ISBN 3-525-33568-7 , pp. 83-104.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, pp. 31, 40, 43.
  2. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, pp. 57–59.
  3. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 72.
  4. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 79/80, quotation p. 80.
  5. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, pp. 115/117.
  6. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 127.
  7. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 129/130, quotation p. 130.
  8. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 138.
  9. ↑ Article Common election program in: GVP-Nachrichten , Volume 1, No. 15 (May 8, 1953), p. 2
  10. ↑ Siegfried Heimann: The All-German People's Party , in: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 , Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, pp. 1478–1508, here pp. 1493/1494.
  11. ^ Hans Jürgen Stock, Christian Social Continuity and Discontinuity, in: In pluribus unum, Festschrift for Oskar Reichmann on his 50th birthday, Heidelberg 1987, pp. 171–240.
  12. ↑ Siegfried Heimann: The All-German People's Party , in: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 , Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, pp. 1478–1508, here pp. 1494/1495.
  13. ↑ Siegfried Heimann: The All-German People's Party , in: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 , Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, pp. 1478–1508, here p. 1496.
  14. ↑ Siegfried Heimann: The All-German People's Party , in: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 , Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, pp. 1478–1508, here p. 1498.
  15. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, pp. 123/124.
  16. ↑ Siegfried Heimann: The All-German People's Party , in: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 , Volume 3, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1983, p. 1503/1504, here p. 1494/1495.
  17. ↑ Barbara Jobke: The rise and decline of a value-oriented movement. Shown using the example of the All-German People's Party , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 1974, p. 176.