German Parliamentary Society

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The Berlin Reichstag President's Palace as the seat of the DPG

The German Parliamentary Society e. V. (DPG) is a non-partisan association of members of the German Bundestag , the German state parliaments and the European Parliament . Since September 14, 1999, the seat has been in the former Reichstag presidential palace on Friedrich-Ebert-Platz in Berlin opposite the east entrance of the Reichstag building . With this, the DPG wanted to underline the parliamentary practice of the Weimar Republic , during which the building had already served as a meeting place for the MPs.

history

The DPG was founded on April 1, 1951 by members of the Bundestag Karl Georg Pfleiderer ( FDP / DVP ), Gerhard Lütkens ( SPD ), Paul Bausch ( CDU ) and Josef-Ernst Fürst Fugger von Glött ( CSU ). The Hansard Society, founded by Stephen King-Hall in Great Britain in 1944 and visited by some German MPs, including Carlo Schmid , served as a model . A red salon set up in the Pedagogical Academy in Bonn from 1949 was considered a forerunner of the DPG . In its early years, the DPG met in rented rooms in the Bergischer Hof Hotel in Bonn . From 1955 to 1999 the company was based in Villa Dahm , which it initially shared with the German Press Agency for a few years . When the Bundestag moved in the summer of 1999, the DPG also moved to Berlin. With the move, the Villa Dahm was left to the city of Bonn, which had it demolished in 2006 for the new extension of the World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB) despite protests by the DPG .

Villa Dahm in Bonn (demolished in 2006), former seat of the DPG from 1955 to 1999

The space that the company has since used in the Berlin Reichstag Presidential Palace is many times larger than that of the Villa Dahm in Bonn. At the end of the 1990s, around 6,500 people annually used the DPG's workrooms in Bonn; In 2012 there were over 52,000 a year in Berlin. The DPG offices are on the third floor (attic) of the Reichstag President's Palace; on the first floor there are club rooms, splendid salons, smaller fireplace rooms and the Kaisersaal (large hall), which is also used by the Bundestag for protocol events. The building also has a dining room, a pub where you can smoke, a loggia and a garden on the basement floor . An underground tunnel leads from the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus to the Reichstag building directly opposite.

Area of ​​responsibility

The purpose and aim of the DPG is to promote the personal relationships of the members of the various parliaments across parliamentary and party boundaries and thus also to ensure a better understanding of the different political positions. According to the formulation of the former Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse, the "basic consensus of the democrats in the German Bundestag" should be strengthened in the personal encounter in a familiar atmosphere. In the history of German parliamentarism, the German Parliamentary Society has always been viewed by MPs as a place of relaxation from everyday political life and personal reconciliation after violent political exchanges in plenary. Society describes itself as the "daughter of the Bundestag".

The society also uses its buildings for cultural events such as exhibitions by visual artists and book presentations. On March 29, 1976, an exhibition of works by the poster artist Klaus Staeck in the Villa Dahm caused a nationwide excitement when CDU / CSU MPs led by Philipp Jenninger tore some of these posters from the walls. This scandal , also called "Bonn's iconoclasm" in the media, was viewed by the supporters of the exhibition around Holger Börner (SPD) as an "attack on the freedom of art".

After the Bundestag elections in 2005 , the DPG came into the public eye, as the exploratory talks between potential coalition partners took place in its rooms, true to the DPG tradition of intergroup exchanges. CDU / CSU and SPD as well as CDU / CSU and Greens met there for exploratory talks after the 2013 federal election . Even after the 2017 federal election, the CDU / CSU, FDP and the Greens met on the DPG premises for the first exploratory talks to form a Jamaica coalition .

Composition and funding

At the beginning of the 2010s, the DPG had around 1400 members, including around 600 active MPs and former members of the Bundestag. Members of the DPG can become MPs and diplomats; Journalists are generally not admitted. The membership fee for active MPs is 300 euros per year. In 2011, the budget was subsidized with around 1.4 million euros from the federal budget . The DPG workforce comprises around 40 full-time employees.

Chairpersons / Presidents

The right to propose the president of the DPG lies with the strongest parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The vice-presidents, including Susanne Kastner (SPD), Eckart von Klaeden (CDU / CSU), Jürgen Koppelin (FDP) and Petra Pau ( Die Linke ) in the 2010s , are provided by all parliamentary groups.

Managing Director of the DPG

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Parliamentary collegiality instead of party disputes . At: bundestag.de , 2010
  2. ↑ Parliamentary collegiality instead of party disputes. In: German Bundestag . October 11, 2010, accessed July 24, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The German Parliamentary Society - Interior views from the Club of Members . At: via issuu.com , 2010
  4. ↑ Jakob-Kaiser-Haus . At: bund.de , accessed: October 20, 2017
  5. ↑ Reichstag President's Palace . At: pgd-berlin.de , accessed on October 20, 2017
  6. ↑ Former Reichstag Presidential Palace . At: german-architects.com , accessed: October 20, 2017
  7. ↑ Berlin MPs want to save Bonn villa . In: general-anzeiger-bonn.de , October 26, 2014
  8. ^ The German Parliamentary Society. At: sz-online.de , October 8, 2010
  9. ^ Magnificent parliamentary society. At: wiwo.de , November 20, 2011
  10. ↑ Helmut Herles: Parliamentary collegiality instead of party disputes. German Bundestag, October 11, 2010, accessed on October 18, 2017-

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '7.27 "  N , 13 ° 22' 39.9"  E