All-German bloc / union of expellees and disenfranchised
The All-German Bloc / Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised ( GB / BHE for short ) was a political party active in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1950 to 1961 . It was directed at the Germans who were expelled from their homeland after the end of the Second World War and pursued a corresponding clientele policy .
history
The Block of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) was founded in January 1950 by Waldemar Kraft as a political party in Schleswig-Holstein . Schleswig-Holstein was the federal state with the highest proportion of the population of displaced persons and refugees in West Germany, which is why the party won 23.4 percent in the 1950 state elections six months later . The BHE was the second strongest party after the SPD and formed a coalition with the CDU , FDP and DP . Although the CDU had fewer votes, it received more mandates and provided the prime minister. Waldemar Kraft became Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister.
In November 1952, the BHE renamed itself the All-German Block / Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised and tried to appeal to broader groups of voters. In the Bundestag election in 1953 he received 5.9 percent of the second vote , entered the German Bundestag and was part of the government by Konrad Adenauer .
In the Adenauer II cabinet , Kraft was at times one of the federal ministers for special tasks, while his party colleague Theodor Oberländer was federal minister for displaced persons, refugees and war victims . After internal disputes, which were ostensibly carried out over the Saar question and which escalated at the federal party congress in Bielefeld in 1954 , Kraft, his confidante Eva Finckenstein , Theodor Oberländer and other supporters of the civic block wing (the so-called KO group) left the party in 1955 from and in 1956 with the CDU. With this split, the GB / BHE began to decline. Before the Bundestag election in 1961 , the party merged at the federal level with the German Party (DP) to form the All-German Party (GDP). In the federal states of Hesse and Lower Saxony, where the GB / BHE worked together with different coalitionaries, the merger was not completed.
politics
The BHE was a clientele of the political center , which primarily represented the interests of the displaced. At the state level, the party was involved in coalition governments with both the CDU and the SPD. It contributed to the integration of the displaced into the bourgeois party spectrum of the Federal Republic and prevented a political radicalization of this population group.
The party program initially focused mainly on two demands: right to life in the west and right of home in the east . The first term meant fair burden sharing and housing subsidies for displaced persons. Under the “ right of home ” one understood the restoration of the empire within the borders of 1937 by peaceful means. The party conjured up the image of the Christian West and took a clear position against communism .
The BHE also turned to the victims of the bombing war , victims of the currency reform and former civil servants who had been dismissed after 1945 as part of the denazification process . The BHE played a central role in ending denazification and the professional reintegration of former National Socialists who had had professional problems due to their past. It was a reservoir for anti-communist and revanchist forces in the young Federal Republic. There were many former NSDAP members in its ranks , including Kraft and Oberlanders. For this reason, as early as 1952, Kraft attached importance to the statement that the BHE was the party “also of the former Nazis, but not of those who are still Nazis today”.
Results of the federal elections
| Bundestag election results | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| year | Number of votes | Share of votes | Seats |
| 1953 | 1,616,953 | 5.9% | 27 |
| 1957 | 1,374,066 | 4.6% | - |
Results of the elections to state parliaments
| Baden-Württemberg | ||
|---|---|---|
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1952 | 6.3% | 6th |
| 1956 | 6.3% | 7th |
| 1960 | 6.6% | 7th |
| Bavaria | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1950 | 12.3% 1 | 26th |
| 1954 | 10.2% | 19th |
| 1958 | 8.6% | 17th |
| Berlin | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1950 | 2.2% | - |
| 1954 | 2.6% | - |
| Bremen | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1951 | 5.6% | 2 |
| 1955 | 2.9% | - |
| 1959 | 1.9% | - |
| Hesse | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1950 | 31.8% 2 | 21st |
| 1954 | 7.7% | 7th |
| 1958 | 7.4% | 7th |
| Lower Saxony | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1951 | 14.9% | 21st |
| 1955 | 11.0% | 17th |
| 1959 | 8.3% | 13 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1954 | 4.6% | - |
| Schleswig-Holstein | ||
| year | be right | Seats |
| 1950 | 23.4% | 15th |
| 1954 | 14.0% | 10 |
| 1958 | 6.9% | 5 |
1) in list connection with the German community
2) in list connection with the FDP
Government holdings
- Federal Government: October 20, 1953 to November 11, 2012 July 1955 in coalition with CDU / CSU, DP and FDP in the Adenauer II cabinet . As Federal Minister for the Affairs of the Displaced (from February 1, 1954: Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims ) Theodor Oberländer (left the BHE in July 1955, then a guest and from March 20, 1956 member of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group ; held the office also in the Adenauer III cabinet until his resignation). As one of four federal ministers for special tasks : Waldemar Kraft (left the BHE in July 1955, then a guest and from March 20, 1956 a member of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group; on October 16, 1956, resigned from office due to a cabinet reshuffle)
- Baden-Württemberg: April 25, 1952 to September 30, 1953 (in coalition with FDP / DVP and SPD) and October 7, 1953 to June 23, 1960 (in coalition with CDU, SPD and FDP / DVP) as Minister of Expellees Eduard Fiedler . July 7, 1960 to January 18, 1964 as State Secretary for Refugees with cabinet rank Josef "Sepp" Schwarz (January 1964 transfer to CDU)
- Bavaria: December 14, 1954 to October 8, 1957 (in coalition with the SPD, Bavarian Party and FDP) as Labor Minister: Walter Stain , October 26, 1957 to December 11, 1962 (in coalition with CSU and FDP) as Labor Minister Walter Stain
- Hesse: January 19, 1955 to November 29, 1966 (in coalition with the SPD) as Minister of Agriculture Gustav Hacker , as Minister of Economics (until December 19, 1962) Gotthard Franke
- Lower Saxony: June 18, 1951 to May 26, 1955 (in coalition with the SPD and the center) as Minister of Economic Affairs Hermann Ahrens , Minister of Agriculture Friedrich von Kessel , Minister of Expellees Erich Schellhaus ; May 26, 1955 to November 19, 1957 (in coalition with DP , CDU and FDP); May 12, 1959 to June 12, 1963 (in coalition with the SPD and FDP) as Erich Schellhaus, Minister of Expellees
- Schleswig-Holstein: September 5, 1950 to June 23, 1951 (in coalition with CDU, FDP and DP ) as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance: Waldemar Kraft , as Minister for Social Affairs, Labor and Refugee Affairs, Hans-Adolf Asbach ; July 28, 1951 to January 7, 1963 (in coalition with CDU and FDP) as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Waldemar Kraft (until October 30, 1953), Finance Minister Carl-Anton Schaefer (1958 transfer to CDU), for Social Affairs and Refugee Affairs (until October 21, 1957) Hans-Adolf Asbach
Federal chairwoman of the GB / BHE
| Period | Surname |
| January 1950 - May 1954 | Waldemar Kraft |
| May 1954 - February 1955 | Theodor Oberländer |
| February 1955 - 1958 | Friedrich von Kessel |
| 1958-1961 | Frank Seiboth |
After the merger, Seiboth became chairman of GDP with equal rights together with Herbert Schneider .
Group leader in the Bundestag
| Period | Surname |
| 1953-1955 | Horst Haasler |
| 1955-1956 | Karl Mocker |
| 1956-1957 | Erwin Feller |
Among the members of the party were also numerous former members of the NSDAP , including convicted war criminals .
literature
- Frank Bösch : The political integration of refugees and displaced persons and their integration into the CDU . In: Rainer Schulze (ed.): Between home and home. German refugees and displaced persons in (West) Germany 1945–2000 . Secolo-Verlag, Osnabrück 2001, ISBN 3-929979-62-4 , pp. 107–125. (To integrate the GB / BHE into the Union parties.)
- Franz Neumann: The block of expellees and disenfranchised 1950-1960. A contribution to the history and structure of a political interest party (Marburg treatises on political science, vol. 5). Hain-Verlag, Meisenheim am Glan 1968 (plus dissertation, University of Marburg 1966).
- Matthias Stickler : "East German means all German". Organization, self-image and political objectives of the German expellee associations 1949–1972 (research and sources on contemporary history; vol. 46). Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-1896-6 , p. 280 ff.
- Richard Stöss : The All-German Block / BHE . In: Derselbe (Ed.): Party Handbook. The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1980 . Vol. 3. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1986, ISBN 3-531-11838-2 , pp. 1424-1459.
- Martin Virchow: The GB / BHE, a new type of party? In: Max Gustav Lange, Gerhard Schulz, Klaus Schütz (ed.): Parties in the Federal Republic (writings of the Institute for Political Science, Vol. 6). Ring-Verlag, Stuttgart 1955, pp. 450-467.
- York R. Winkler: Refugee Organizations in Hesse 1945-1954. BHE - refugee associations - country teams. Historical commission for Nassau : Wiesbaden 1998. ISBN 978-3-930221-04-2 .
Web links
- Daniel Schönwald: Block of the expellees and disenfranchised (BHE) . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
Individual evidence
- ^ Sven Leunig: The government systems of the German states. 2nd edition, Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-93304-7 , p. 86.
- ^ Richard Stöss : Party Handbook: The parties of the Federal Republic of Germany 1945-1980 . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-663-14349-9 , p. 281
- ↑ a b Matthias Stickler: Block of the expellees and disenfranchised (BHE). In: Online encyclopedia on the culture and history of Germans in Eastern Europe , 2013, accessed on January 7, 2013.
- ↑ Michael Schwartz : Functionaries with a past. The founding board of the Federal Association of Expellees and the "Third Reich". (In collaboration with Michael Buddrus ) Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71626-9 .
- ^ The Federal Returning Officer : Bundestag election 1953 - The Federal Returning Officer. Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
- ^ The Federal Returning Officer : Bundestag election 1957 - The Federal Returning Officer. Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
- ↑ apabiz.de
- ↑ Final report (PDF) of the working group on the preliminary study "Nazi past of former Hessian state parliament member" of the commission of the Hessian state parliament for the research project "Political and parliamentary history of the State of Hesse"
- ↑ rothenburg-unterm-hakenkreuz.de
- ↑ I have less ammunition than prisoners . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 1, 2008
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