Communist Party of Germany (1990)
| Communist Party of Germany | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Party leader | Torsten Schöwitz |
| Deputy Chairman | Jürgen Geppert |
| founding | January 31, 1990 |
| Place of foundation | East Berlin , GDR |
| Headquarters |
Franz-Mehring-Platz 1 10243 Berlin |
| Youth organization | Communist Youth Association Germany (KJVD) |
| newspaper | The Red flag |
| Alignment |
Marxism-Leninism , Communism |
| Number of members | 165 (as of December 31, 2013) |
| Minimum age | 16 years |
| Website | www.kpd-online.de |
The Communist Party of Germany (short name: KPD ) is a communist party founded in East Berlin in January 1990 , which is also referred to as "KPD East" in order to distinguish it from other parties of the same name. The Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the small party as left-wing extremist .
The party is not represented in parliament at the state or federal level; it held a mandate at the local level from 2004 to 2014 .
As the central organ, the KPD publishes the monthly newspaper Die Rote Fahne and the KPD series of publications in brochure form .
founding
The party was founded by former members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) who did not agree with the programmatic and personnel changes of the SED when it became the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in December 1989 / January 1990. The new party was named after the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which was founded in 1918 and was incorporated into the SED in 1946 in the areas of the Soviet occupation zone and Berlin. To underline its claim as the successor party, the re-establishment made use of the symbols of the historical KPD and continued to count its party congresses, the last of which, the 15th, took place on the eve of the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED in April 1946. Chairman was Klaus Sbrzesny, later Werner Schleese. In the Volkskammer election in 1990 , she failed to make it into the first freely elected parliament of the GDR with 0.08 percent of the vote.
In the western zones and the Federal Republic of Germany, the KPD continued to exist until it was banned in August 1956. The name “Communist Party of Germany”, which was released by the ban, was occasionally adopted by a few K groups in the 1970s . Because none of these existed in 1990, the party was able to run as the “KPD” without competition in the first all-German federal election in 1990 .
Political positions
She was against the monetary union of the GDR with the Federal Republic of Germany and invoked the political positions of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht .
The KPD is committed to the existence of socialism in the GDR and the other former people 's democracies in Europe and refers to the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev as well as the GDR under Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker . Your current orientation is Marxist-Leninist , after 1999 on the XX. It was decided at the Congress to develop it into a Bolshevik party.
The KPD is one of the political organizations in Germany that assess Stalin's work as largely positive and assess the political changes under Nikita Khrushchev as "revisionist". She also rates North Korea positively , whether under Kim Il-sung , Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un .
classification
The Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution assesses the party as left-wing extremist . Their positions in relation to Stalin and North Korea also isolate them from the majority of other left, socialist and communist parties in Germany.
structure
The KPD is divided into party cells, regional and state organizations. The highest organ of the party is the party congress . Between the party congresses this is the central committee (ZK) elected by the party congress delegates . It implements the party congress resolutions, represents the party externally, convenes internal party commissions (e.g. a commission for international cooperation ) and is supported by the secretariat of the Central Committee in organizing and coordinating party work. The secretariat also takes over the tasks of the Central Committee between the plenary sessions.
Regional associations
There are ten state organizations of the KPD: in Berlin, in Brandenburg, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in Hesse, in Saxony, in Saxony-Anhalt, in Thuringia, in Lower Saxony, in North Rhine-Westphalia and on the waterfront .
Youth association
On April 27, 2002, the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) was formed in Berlin as a youth organization of this KPD. The organ of the KJVD was Der Jungkommunist , which now appears as a column in the newspaper Die Rote Fahne .
elections
The KPD participated in the following elections:
| year | choice | be right | % | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Volkskammer election | 8,819 | 0.1% | |
| 1990 | City council of (East) Berlin | 3,255 | 0.2% | |
| 1990 | Bundestag election | 1,630 | 0.0% | Second votes, state lists in Berlin and Saxony |
| 1994 | State election in Brandenburg | 174 | 0.0% | only first votes |
| 1994 | Bundestag election | 426 | 0.0% | only first votes (candidates in Berlin and Thuringia) |
| 1999 | State election in Saxony | 1,814 | 0.1% | |
| 2002 | Bundestag election | 1,624 | 0.0% | 686 first votes |
| 2002 | State election in Saxony-Anhalt | 1,054 | 0.1% | List connection with the DKP |
| 2004 | State election in Thuringia | 1,842 | 0.2% | |
| 2006 | State election in Saxony-Anhalt | 957 | 0.1% | List connection with the DKP , 757 first votes |
| 2011 | State election in Saxony-Anhalt | 1,653 | 0.2% | |
| 2014 | State election in Thuringia | 1,177 | 0.1% | |
| 2019 | State election in Saxony | 1,955 | 0.1% | |
| 2019 | State election in Thuringia | 724 | 0.1% |
In the 1994 German election of party chairman Werner Schleese received (* 1937) in the Bundestag constituency Erfurt 160 votes (0.1 percent) and in the federal constituency of Lichtenberg scored Irma Fork Thalmann 266 votes (0.17 percent).
From 2004 to 2014, the state chairman Siegfried Kutschik represented the KPD on the city council of Zeitz .
Before the 2013 federal election , the party did not get the 2,000 signatures required to draw up a state list in Berlin.
In 2019, the KPD ran for state elections in Saxony and Thuringia.
Party finances and assets
Due to its low number of votes in European, Bundestag and Landtag elections, the party is not entitled to state party funding . The annual report for 2012 is listed in Bundestag printed paper 18/1080. Accordingly, the party received around 17,000 euros this year, including
- Membership fees: 63.66%
- Donations: 15.04%
- Income from events and sales of pamphlets: 21.30%
The net worth for 2012 was given at around 5600 euros.
Party congresses since 1990
| Party congresses since 1990 | Party congresses of the KPD before 1946 counted | date | place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | XVI. | 29./30. September 1990 & December 15, 1990 | Ziegenhals & Berlin |
| 2. | XVII. | October 24, 1992 | Berlin |
| 3. | XVIII. | 17./18. December 1994 | Berlin |
| 4th | XIX. | 25./26. January 1997 | Berlin |
| 5. | XX. | 27./28. March 1999 | Rudersdorf |
| 6th | XXI. | March 24, 2001 | Klosterfelde |
| 7th | XXII. | December 15, 2001 | Strausberg |
| 8th. | XXIII. | March 29, 2003 | Strausberg |
| 9. | XXIV. | June 11, 2005 | Berlin |
| 10. | XXV. | April 21, 2007 | Berlin |
| 11. | XXVI. | December 12, 2009 | Berlin |
| 12. | XXVII. | November 26, 2011 | Berlin |
| 13. | XXVIII. | November 30, 2013 | Berlin |
| 14th | XXIX. | November 22, 2015 | Berlin |
| 15th | XXX. | 3rd February 2018 | Berlin |
Cooperations and spin-offs
After attempting an electoral alliance with Linkspartei.PDS and WASG in 2005, some of the KPD members left the party and founded the Communist Party of Germany (Bolsheviks) (KPD (B)) in May of the same year .
In 2006 the KPD and the German Communist Party (DKP) ran together for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt against the resistance of the DKP party leadership. In 2008 efforts to reunite the KPD and KPD (B) failed. At the instigation of the former DKP members Frank Flegel and Michael Opperskalski , the Communist Initiative was founded in autumn 2008 in order to initiate a process of unification with the long-term goal of forming a unified Marxist-Leninist communist party. This group was initially joined by numerous members of the KPD and KPD (B) as well as individual DKP members, people from the successor organizations of the KPD / ML and non-party communists. In 2010 the Communist Initiative - Gera 2010 split off, which many of the KPD members joined.
The KPD (B) disbanded in 2011 and called on its members to join the communist initiative . You worked there in the Unity Working Group, but broke away from the Communist Initiative in April 2012 and are now working independently under the Unity Working Group .
Known members
After his expulsion from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Erich Honecker was a member of the KPD, his wife Margot was an honorary member. Irma Gabel-Thälmann resigned from the PDS and joined the KPD in 1990 out of disappointment at the reassessment of her father's role . At times, the philosopher Eike Kopf , who wrote brochures about China for the KPD series, was a member of the KPD. The Dresden city original Hans-Jürgen Westphal has been a member of the party again since 2018.
Web links
- www.kpd-online.de, website of the KPD
- Tim Niendorf: Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In: bpb.de . September 25, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Peter Schindler (Bundestag. Scientific Services): Data Handbook on the History of the German Bundestag 1983 to 1991, Nomos, 1994. P. 66 ( Online ).
- ^ German Bundestag: Accountability report of the party (PDF; 16.9 MB).
- ^ Andreas Schulze: Small parties in Germany. The rise and fall of non-established political associations . Deutscher Univiversitäts-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 978-3-8244-4558-5 , p. 133 f., There also the following.
- ↑ Steffen Kailitz: Political Extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany. An introduction . Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 978-3-322-80547-8 , p. 63.
- ↑ The services of President Kim Il Sung for building the state on the KPD website.
- ^ State Office for the Protection of the Constitution Brandenburg Glossary: Communist Party of Germany (KPD) , accessed on July 7, 2014.
- ↑ Cheers from far left and far right: Kim and his German friends , taz.de, April 14, 2013.
- ^ Statute of the KPD .
- ↑ State capital Erfurt. City administration. Statistical and Electoral Office: Results of the Bundestag and Landtag elections in October 1994 in the city of Erfurt (municipal statistics booklet 18; PDF; 899.06 kB ).
- ↑ Constitutional Protection Report 2009 (PDF; 664.28 kB).
- ↑ State Statistical Office of Saxony-Anhalt ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press release of the Federal Returning Officer : Bundestag election 2013 - approval of the state lists , accessed on May 30, 2015.
- ↑ Bundestag printed matter 18/1080.
- ↑ Thomas Kunze: former head of state: the last years of Erich Honecker. Links-Verlag, 2001, p. 159.
- ^ Letter of thanks and greetings from Comrade Margot Honecker , Die Rote Fahne. June 2012, p. 2.
