Liberal Democrats

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Liberal Democrats
- the Social Liberals -
Logo of the LD
Bernd Grothkopp
Party leader Bernd Grothkopp
vice-chairman Michael Kaiser
Michael Dycker
Christiane Pröhl
Federal Treasurer Ingo Grothkopp
founding November 28, 1982
Place of foundation Bochum
Headquarters Leonberg
Alignment Social Liberalism
Progressivism
Colours) orange
Bundestag seats
0/709
Seats in state parliaments
0/1821
Government grants no
Number of members 60
Minimum age 16 years
MEPs
0/96
Website liberale-demokrats.de

Liberal Democrats - die Sozialliberalen - (short name: LD ) is a small social liberal party in Germany , which was founded in November 1982 as a reaction to the Bonn turnaround .

Content profile

Historically, the party sees itself as "heir to the bourgeois revolutions and their demand for freedom, equality and fraternity" and places itself in the "tradition of democratic and social liberalism". Among other things, they take sides for “human dignity through self-determination”, “safeguarding and extending civil rights”, “democratizing the economy” and “reforming capitalism ”. In their principles, they initially referred to the Freiburg theses , which were developed in the FDP in 1971 . Among the most important results of her own program work are the papers The New Democracy (1985) and Work for All (1986). In 1991, the LD expanded its name by adding the social liberals to clarify its programmatic profile. Today's political work focuses on human rights , environmental protection and social justice . They regard the market economy and property as a means to the “end of preserving and increasing human freedom” and not as an end in themselves. In addition, the LD are calling for the five percent hurdle to be abolished . They are currently discussing the issue of unconditional basic income in various contexts . In the course of the 40th federal party conference in March 2012, an extensive program package for a nationwide uniform social-liberal education policy was adopted. Since the federal party congress on the occasion of their 30th anniversary at the end of November 2012, they have been publicly campaigning for the decriminalization of drugs and a more liberal social treatment of addicts and have adopted a corresponding program package. At their 41st federal party conference, they adopted a program paper in which they advocate that in future the policy fields of youth, family and senior citizens should only be considered in a joint, holistic association. The Liberal Democrats call for a comprehensive improvement in the supply options and models for the relevant groups. At the same time, they advocate equating same-sex partnerships or other forms of cohabitation with a traditional marriage between men and women socially and legally. On November 21, 2015, the LD adopted an updated and supplemented version of its basic program as part of its 43rd federal party conference.

history

When the social-liberal coalition broke up in 1982 , many social-liberal-minded liberals left the FDP. Some of them switched to the SPD or the Greens , others founded the Liberal Democrats on November 28, 1982 in Bochum . The party had around 1100 members when it was founded. First chairman of the party was the former Hessian FDP member of the state parliament, Ulrich Krüger .

In the early parliamentary elections in 1983 , the LD did not yet stand in order not to weaken stronger parties in the left camp through their own hopeless candidacy. In the state elections in the autumn of the same year ( Bremen and Hesse ), they clearly missed their goals with 0.4 percent of the vote. In the 1984 European elections , after an internal ballot, they decided not to participate. Ulrich Krüger subsequently resigned his office and Ralf Bartz , the then Chancellor of the FernUniversität in Hagen , was elected as the new chairman . In the 1987 Bundestag elections , the LD again waived the election, but called for votes for the SPD. On the occasion of the European elections in 1989, they wanted to “show the flag” and run again, but could not get the necessary number of supporters' signatures. When the party was then to be dissolved on the recommendation of the federal executive committee, the Freiburg cultural anthropologist Gabriele Safai stood for election as the new federal chairman and thus enabled the LD to survive. Her first term of office lasted until March 4, 1995 (federal party conference in Kassel). On November 16, 1996 she was re-elected chairman in Heidelberg and led the party until the federal party conference on November 8, 2008 in Cologne. Her successor in office was the previous treasurer Bernd Grothkopp from Leonberg . At the federal party conference on May 22, 2011, Rainer Schlitt from Kirtorf was elected as the new chairman, who was succeeded by his predecessor Grothkopp on August 16, 2014.

Logo of the Liberal Democrats until 2007

The party could only win mandates at the local level; until 1999 she was represented by a member of the Heidelberg municipal council. For a time she had a member of the state parliament in Berlin when Hans Schwenke transferred from the New Forum to the LD in 1992 . But this left the party quickly and switched to the FDP. The last joint candidacy for a Green / LD list came in 1997 in Dieburg . In the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005 on May 22, they ran in the constituency of Cologne VII , which is the first time in a long time to run again in a state election and secure their party status for the next few years.

In 2004 and 2009, the party took part in the local elections in Cologne and achieved 58 and 63 votes (0.0%), respectively.

In the run-up to the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2010 , the state list of the LD failed due to an insufficient number of supporting signatures, only a renewed direct candidacy in the constituency of Cologne VII was allowed. According to the official final result, the constituency candidate received 95 votes (= 0.2%). In the early state elections in May 2012 , the party waived a state list in view of the short lead time; the state chairman Günter Pröhl, who was again a direct candidate in Cologne-Mülheim , received 120 first votes (= 0.2%).

On November 24, 2012, the LD celebrated the 30th anniversary of its founding at an extraordinary federal party conference in Bad Rothenfelde , making it one of the longest-lived small parties in Germany.

On January 6, 2015, the LD federal chairman Bernd Grothkopp, together with Najib Karim from the New Liberals and Alexander Drews, the chairman of the consumer protection party, announced the start of talks about cooperation between the three organizations and a possible merger. After these discussions had stalled in the meantime, they were resumed in an extended group at the end of 2016. At a press conference on March 21, 2017, a joint "Social Liberal Declaration" was published, in which, in addition to the Liberal Democrats and the New Liberals, the Pirate Party , the Transhuman Party , the Humanist Party and the now disbanded left-liberal state working group YourTurn of Left -wing Youth participated were. Further organizations are to join in the future in order to enter into a social-liberal cooperation and to establish a united social-liberal force in Germany.

Party leader

Bernd Grothkopp Rainer Schlitt Bernd Grothkopp Gabriele Safai Karl-Oskar Riemer Gabriele Safai Ralf Bartz Ulrich Krüger
Surname Period
Ulrich Kruger 1982-1984
Ralf Bartz 1984-1989
Gabriele Safai 1989-1995
Karl-Oskar Riemer 1995-1996
Gabriele Safai 1996-2008
Bernd Grothkopp 2008-2011
Rainer Schlitt 2011-2014
Bernd Grothkopp 2014 – current

Party structure

Federal Executive

The currently (2019-2021) incumbent federal executive was elected at the 46th federal party conference in Frankfurt am Main on September 21, 2019.

Chairman Bernd Grothkopp
Deputy Chairman Michael Dycker
Deputy Chairman Michael Kaiser
vice-chairman Christiane Pröhl
Treasurer Ingo Grothkopp

Regional associations

Regional association Chairperson Past election participation
Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg Bernd Grothkopp no
North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia Michael Kaiser State election in North Rhine-Westphalia 2017

Results of state elections

Worth mentioning

The writer Ingeborg Drewitz supported the Liberal Democrats at times and in 1986 wrote an article for the magazine liberale drucksachen . The LD posthumously revoked this title from its honorary chairman William Borm in 1993 when his previous connections with the Ministry of State Security became known.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the LD. Retrieved May 17, 2020 .
  2. ^ "Preamble", decided at the federal party conference on 15./16. January 1983 in Bonn. In: The resolutions of the Liberal Democrats , Bonn 1983, p. 4. ( PDF document at the LD Oberhausen )
  3. ^ The resolutions of the Liberal Democrats , Bonn 1983, p. 6.
  4. Printed in: Ralf Bartz, Hanno Jochimsen, Hans-Herbert Wilhelmi (eds.): Freisinnig against the restoration. Values ​​and ways of radical democratic politics , Bonn 1988, pp. 146–174.
  5. Basic program in the version from 2005 ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 78 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.liberale-demokrats.de
  6. Cf. Renewing Democracy - An Appeal of the Liberal Democrats , in: Ralf Bartz, Hanno Jochimsen, Hans-Herbert Wilhelmi (eds.): Freethinking against the restoration. Values ​​and ways of radical democratic politics , Bonn 1988, p. 153.
  7. Social-liberal education policy - concept for a reorganization of the education system ( PDF document at the LD-Bundesverband ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link accordingly Instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / liberale-demokrats.de
  8. Social liberal reform of the state and societal handling of drugs ( PDF document at the LD Federal Association ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link accordingly Instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / liberale-demokrats.de
  9. Family - the foundation of the future ( PDF document at the LD Federal Association ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and remove then this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / liberale-demokrats.de
  10. Basic program 2015 ( Memento of the original of December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 405 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.liberale-demokrats.de
  11. ^ Social Democratic Press Service , Volume 42, No. 2, January 5, 1987, p. 6 ( PDF document from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation )
  12. Minutes of the federal party congresses of March 5, 1995 and November 16, 1996.
  13. The deputy state chairman of the LD Baden-Württemberg, Arnulf Weiler-Lorentz, is still a member of the council today as a representative of the Colorful Left .
  14. election result
  15. ^ The regional returning officer of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia - local elections on August 30, 2009: Cologne, district-free city
  16. Press release of the NRW regional return officer of March 30, 2010 ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mik.nrw.de
  17. ^ Social liberals gather published on January 6, 2015
  18. Joint press conference of left-liberal organizations in Berlin , press release by Bernd Grothkopp, as seen on January 24, 2020.
  19. [1]
  20. https://liberale-demokrats.de/landesverbaende/baden-wuerttemberg/
  21. ^ Liberal Democrats North Rhine-Westphalia: [2]
  22. Thinking about possible perspectives of a new liberal politics . In: liberale Drucksachen April 1986, p. 9. ( PDF document from the LD Bundesverband )

literature

Web links

Commons : Liberal Democrats  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files