Rule of Law Offensive Party

Rule of Law Offensive Party
founding	July 13, 2000
Place of foundation	Hamburg
resolution	October 29, 2007
Alignment	Right-wing conservatism , right-wing populism

The Rule of Law Party, often referred to as the Schill Party for short , was a right-wing conservative or right-wing populist small party in Germany that existed from 2000 to 2007. She was involved in the government in Hamburg from October 2001 to March 2004 . Its history has two clearly separated phases: The first phase - the Schill era - lasted from the founding of the party in July 2000 to December 2003 and was largely shaped by the work of its founder and first chairman Ronald Schill , who was considered the party's figurehead during this time . The second phase of the party's history began after the separation from Schill and was characterized by a gradual decline into insignificance, which ultimately led to its dissolution in October 2007.

It used three abbreviations in succession: was initially PRO the official abbreviation, it had to do without it after a lawsuit by the Pro DM party in 2001 and then named itself after its founder Schill - then mostly referred to in public as the "Schill Party". After separating from this, Offensive D was the official abbreviation until the dissolution .

Content profile

In its self-portrayal, the party emphasized that it could not be described in terms of right and left . In the public discussion, however, the party was partly perceived as right-wing bourgeois, but above all as a right-wing populist protest party . From the beginning of 2004 she tried harder to build up a liberal profile. From that time on, the party oriented itself towards Jörg Haider . Before that, she saw herself largely as a right-wing conservative appendage of the CDU .

In its program, the Rule of Law Party pleaded, among other things, for what it considered to be a necessary strengthening of internal security. Fighting terror should be done through "security". In general, this should be achieved through rigorous law enforcement and law enforcement, with the rights of victims clearly taking precedence over the rights of perpetrators. She took liberal positions in economic policy, and social issues were emphasized in social policy. So she rejected Hartz IV .

In her opinion, the freedom of the citizens was no longer guaranteed in Germany because of massive advance of the state, represented by the established parties. In addition, the party sought a more restrictive policy on foreigners. Immigration should be strictly controlled and asylum abuse should be combated more intensely than before. The right of asylum should be taken out of the constitution and dealt with through a simple law. The multicultural society was rejected, as was Turkey's planned accession to the EU.

Finances and wealth

According to Bundestag printed paper 16/5230, the party achieved income of around 350,000 euros in 2005, including 64,000 euros in contributions and 112,000 euros in donations. Around 170,000 euros flowed from government sources. In 2005 the party generated a surplus of around 20,000 euros. In the previous year she had lost about half a million euros. The party did not receive any major donations over 10,000 euros in 2005.

Due to credits and loans, the party recently had debts of around 1.2 million euros. The largest lender was the former Schill party politician Ulrich Marseille with around 880,000 euros. He waived interest of around 53,000 euros, which was credited to him as a donation. According to its own statements, the party did not maintain any real estate assets and no company investments.

structure

The party was divided into 15 regional associations. The states of Saxony and Thuringia formed a regional association. There were also numerous district and district associations. The party's youth organization was the Junge Offensive Deutschland e. V. (JO) . Another sub-organization of the party was the Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung der Offensive D (KVO), to which all municipal elected officials of the party belonged. On the other hand, the attempt to establish a further apron organization with the so-called sports offensive was only short-lived .

In urban and rural districts , the party won a total of 15 seats in local elections between 2003 and 2007: In Brandenburg , it achieved ten seats under the abbreviation Schill in 2003 , including four in the Märkisch-Oderland district and three in the Barnim district . From 2004 onwards, she hired four district council members in Saxony-Anhalt and one member of the Dortmund city council as Offensive D , which, however, left the party at the end of 2004.

history

Prehistory and foundation

The focal point for the formation of the Rule of Law Offensive party was Ronald Schill , who, as a district judge in Hamburg , had publicly drawn attention to himself through sentences with high penalties, which some observers criticized as excessively high, and who repeated the red-green Senate's handling of criminals as too lenient designated. Since Schill's lectures, for example at the invitation of local CDU associations, were getting more and more popular, the “I want Schill!” Initiative was founded in autumn 1999 by the insurance broker Peggy Rasch with the help of Brigitte Dettmer and Andrea Timpe was significantly advanced.

Logo from 2000 to 2001

From this initiative, the Rule of Law Offensive party was founded on July 13, 2000 in Hamburg as a party at state level. PRO was initially chosen as the short name . The most prominent member and first chairman was Ronald Schill; the party focused entirely on himself. Franz Joseph Underberg from the spirits dynasty, Rainer Koppke, long-time sports journalist for NDR radio, as press spokesman and Björn J. Neumann, a long-time CDU member who became Schill's personal advisor, and Peggy Rasch also belonged to the inner circle. Numerous former rebels from the ranks of the Hamburg CDU and the SPD and former activists of the Statt Party joined in the run-up to the 2001 general election.

Because of a lawsuit by the Pro DM party , the abbreviation PRO had to be abandoned, which is why the abbreviation was changed to Schill . The party then officially referred to itself as the Schill Party and was known by this name.

Entry into government in Hamburg 2001

In the Hamburg citizenship elections on September 23, 2001 , the Schill party became the third strongest force with 19.4 percent of the vote and moved into the Hamburg citizenship with 25 members . This meant that the previously ruling red-green Senate under Ortwin Runde lost its majority. The result, which was perceived as sensational, was attributed to several causes: to the dissatisfaction of many Hamburgers with the long-term policy of the SPD in the city, to the long-term, fundamental mood of change, to the focus on internal security, which was also fueled by the terrorist attacks of September 11th the lack of official bonuses of the mayor Runde and the dissatisfaction with the opposition, especially the CDU, which was often not expected to make a significant improvement. The Rule of Law Party had attracted voters from all social groups and circles and had become a “mini-people's party”.

In a coalition with the CDU and FDP , in the Senate of Beust I , the party gained government participation and thus achieved its first electoral goal, the end of the decades-long SPD rule in Hamburg. Ronald Schill became Senator for the Interior and Second Mayor, a position equivalent to the Deputy Prime Minister in other federal states . Mario Mettbach became Senator for Construction, Peter Rehaag Senator for Environment and Health.

Internal party difficulties and splits

Due to differences in the party leadership, there were several changes in the party's executive committee in early 2002. In the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on April 21, 2002 , the entrepreneur Ulrich Marseille was the top candidate. Since many of the party did not accept him as such, they founded the Rule of Law Citizens' Party (RBP), which also ran for election. While the RBP only achieved 0.1% in this election, the Rule of Law Offensive party only narrowly failed to reach the 5% hurdle with 4.5% despite the quarrels.

New members had to declare on their membership application that they had not yet been a member of a radical party. Members of the NPD who tried to infiltrate the party in Lübeck were immediately expelled when they were exposed. The Schleswig-Holstein Constitutional Protection Agency admitted that one of these NPD members was registered as a so-called V-man , but rejected the suspicion of deliberate infiltration.

The district chairman of the party in Dusseldorf , Frederick Schulze , a former member of parliament for the CDU, who shouted at an event in the presence of Ronald Schill counter-demonstrators on 11 October 2002 that they "are looking better work, because work makes you free ", was on Schill's initiative also ruled out immediately. During the nationwide expansion, Schill was repeatedly challenged by other party members for leadership role in the party, including René Schneider. Schneider and Schulze then founded the Pro-Citizen Party (PBP), which dissolved in 2005 and did not get beyond individual municipal mandates.

Nationwide expansion

Logo from 2001 to 2004

Ronald Schill campaigned for a slow and stable build-up of the party. He spoke out firmly against the party running for the 2002 Bundestag election, but had to bow to the vote of the party base on June 22, 2002.

Public campaign appearances and party meetings of the Schill party were regularly severely obstructed by counter-demonstrators and in some cases were blown up. In individual cases, Ronald Schill suspected that the interior ministers of the respective countries had deliberately not provided enough police to protect the events. However, this suspicion could never be proven.

In a speech by Ronald Schill in the Bundestag on August 29, 2002 on the subject of the Elbe flood , there was a scandal when he was cut off the microphone because, in the opinion of Bundestag Vice President Anke Fuchs, he had exceeded his speaking time. In the speech, Schill attributed the lack of funds for flood relief, among other things, to an immigration and development aid policy that was too friendly, whereupon he was heavily criticized in the media. While the party leadership began to criticize Schill's demeanor, his speech was defended and disseminated at official party events and on the Internet. The party saw a surge in membership.

For the federal election on September 22, 2002, the Schill party ran in 15 federal states. It received 0.8 percent of the vote nationwide and 4.2 percent in Hamburg. In February 2003 the Federal Association of the Schill Party was founded in Bremen. Mario Mettbach became chairman, Ronald Schill was elected honorary chairman, who was by far the most prominent and most publicly perceived representative in the federal party. In further state elections, the party was also unable to cross the five percent hurdle , but in the spring of 2003 it was briefly represented in the Bremen parliament by the MP Mathias Henkel . A few weeks before the 2003 mayor elections, Henkel had converted from the CDU to the Schill party because , in his opinion, it represented a more Christian position than the CDU with its focus on the Bremen election campaign, the rejection of animal experiments .

Increasing internal party conflicts

In the summer of 2003, the State Councilor of the Interior Authority and Schill confidante Walter Wellinghausen hit the headlines because, in addition to his office, he also worked as a lawyer and as a board member of a clinic. When the First Mayor Ole von Beust (CDU) wanted to fire Wellinghausen without consulting Ronald Schill, there was a personal dispute with Schill on August 19, 2003 and, as a result, a government crisis in Hamburg.

Subsequently, von Beust dismissed Schill on the accusation that he wanted to blackmail him by threatening to bring an alleged love affair between him and Justice Senator Roger Kusch (CDU) to the public. Schill, on the other hand, stated that he had “only appealed to Ole von Beust not to use double standards” . He had mentioned the case of his party colleague, the building senator Mario Mettbach, who had forced von Beust to cancel the appointment of his partner as a speaker. On September 3, 2003, the government crisis was temporarily resolved when Schill's office manager Dirk Nockemann became the new interior senator. In addition to his senatorial post, Mario Mettbach took over the post of Second Mayor, which Schill had also held.

On December 6, shortly after Schill was re-elected as chairman of the Hamburg regional association, he gave two interviews to the regional broadcaster Hamburg 1 on the occasion. He apologized to von Beust for his choice of words on the day of his dismissal and offered Nockemann his help in exercising the senatorial office. However, the latter was seen by leading politicians in the Hamburg coalition as evidence of a lack of expertise, whereupon von Beust called on the federal executive committee of the Rule of Law Party to prevent Schill from making cross shots in the future. The federal chairman Mettbach sharply criticized Schill in the following and asked him to express his opinion publicly only after consultation with the federal executive committee, which Schill rejected as “mafia methods” . Thereupon the federal executive committee of the party withdrew the office of the state chairman and pronounced a two-year ban against Schill to hold offices in the party. According to Schill, this was done against the party's statutes.

Over the next few days, the internal party dispute escalated, and on December 9, 2003, the governing coalition finally broke up, as Schill had announced that he would also vote against government decisions on individual points together with parliamentarians who supported him and thus endanger the government majority. Since the Prime Minister Ole von Beust did not want to tolerate this, new elections were scheduled for the citizenship .

Detachment from Schill and decline in the new election

On December 16, 2003, the party's federal executive board decided to expel Schill from the party and parliamentary group. The form of exclusion used here by the federal executive board without a clearly defined reason and without a party arbitration tribunal was heavily criticized by constitutional lawyers. It was made possible by an amendment to the party statutes that had been introduced by Mettbach a month earlier.

Numerous state associations that supported Schill said after the meeting that they had been taken by surprise by the hamburgers. Since a legal clarification of the proceedings could only have been achieved after the new elections in Hamburg, Schill founded the Ronald Schill faction on December 18, together with five former members of the faction of the party who showed solidarity with Schill .

Schill also united with Bolko Hoffmann's Pro DM party to form the Pro-DM / Schill list . Before the election, Schill reached a court ruling that forbade his former party to use the term “Schill Party” or the abbreviation “Schill” . The party therefore tried at short notice to build up an image as a PaRO and offensive .

In the citizenship election on February 29, 2004 , both the Pro DM / Schill list with 3.1 percent and the Rule of Law Offensive party with 0.4 percent of the votes remained below the five percent threshold . This was followed by a mass resignation among the party's top staff. Of the leading figures, only Norbert Frühauf , who was chairman of the parliamentary group from 2001 to 2004, remained in the party. The former Senators Mario Mettbach, Peter Rehaag and Dirk Nockemann then joined the CDU.

Period after Schill (2004-2007)

Logo from 2004

After the party came into office in Hamburg state election of 2004 without shortcuts, she changed her statutory abbreviation of Schill to offensive D . Markus Wagner became the new federal chairman of the party . Just a few days after his election as federal chairman, he signaled a rapprochement with the well-known right-wing populist and Carinthian governor Jörg Haider by congratulating him on his victory in the Carinthian state elections on March 7, 2004. Such a party-official rapprochement had always been rejected in the Schill era. He also criticized the image as a “better CDU” that the party maintained in his opinion during the Schill period, which he - in addition to the self-dismantling carried out by the person Schill - was the decisive reason for the decline of the party at the beginning 2004 saw. However, the party has not received as much public attention since then.

In the course of the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein on February 20, 2005 , her top candidate Folker Küster hit the headlines because he is the father of Estefania Küster , the then girlfriend of the music producer Dieter Bohlen . This, however, had not given the party any tailwind either, as it only got 0.1 percent in the corresponding state elections.

On February 22, 2005, the Hamburg regional association announced its dissolution. The state chairman Hagen Riemann justified this with the right shift of the federal party carried out under Wagner, which now also offers people from the right-wing extremist environment a political home. Wagner replied that the dissolution would not be legally valid without a party conference resolution. According to Riemann, 233 members (of the approximately 270 remaining in Hamburg) had resigned or resigned the day before, including some state board members and district and local boards. The Hamburg regional association was in fact never dissolved and was active again from mid-2005. Among other things, some founding members returned to the party in the period that followed.

In April 2005 the party agreed to cooperate with the DSU . Like other small parties, she sued the Federal Constitutional Court against the more difficult conditions for small parties to participate in the early federal election on September 18, 2005. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the action was inadmissible. The party received only 0.1 percent of the second vote in the early general election in 2005. In Saxony-Anhalt she had collected enough support signatures to be able to compete with her own list. In November 2005, the party lodged an objection under the Federal Election Examination Act, since, according to Offensive D, the incorrect distribution of mandates made it necessary to repeat the election. According to the provisions of the Basic Law, Art. 41, Paragraph 1, Clause 1 and the Election Examination Act, the electoral appeal of November 15, 2005 is now recorded in the Bundestag under the file number WP 158/05.

For the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on March 26, 2006, Offensive D took part on a state list with the Statt party and the DSU. The list association was called "Alliance Offensive for Saxony-Anhalt" and reached 0.3%. In 2006, Offensive D started in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and achieved 0.1% in both countries.

From November 2006 to January 2007, the Hamburg regional associations of Offensive D, Center Party and Graue Panther organized a total of three joint panel discussions under the motto “Don't destroy Germany”. In December 2006, three board members and 24 other members of the Berlin regional association left Offensive D and joined the German party (DP). As early as the Berlin election on September 17, 2006, some members of Offensive D and the German party ran on joint lists.

At the federal party conference in Bad Harzburg in early December 2006 , federal chairman Markus Wagner announced his resignation from the party chairmanship for personal reasons. Peter-Alexander von der Marwitz took over the office provisionally until the planned new election of the federal executive, which took place at the next federal party conference on March 31, 2007. Wolfgang Jabbusch was elected as the new federal chairman after the Hamburg regional association under the leadership of von der Marwitz 'with around 30 members left the party to change to the Center Party. Two members of the newly elected federal executive board resigned within a month.

The party wanted to convert von der Marwitz into a registered association on March 31, 2007, but the request did not find a majority at the party congress. In the following months, two default judgments with provisional enforceability were issued against the party, which among other things resulted in the attachment of accounts . At the following party congress on September 29, 2007 - as planned six months earlier - it was decided to transform the party into an association. The federal executive resigned. Martin Schleifenbaum was appointed as liquidator. The dissolution as a party became legally effective on October 29 of the same year.

State election results of the party

Election results of the rule of law offensive party

in percent

15%

10%

5%

0%

HH
'01

ST
'02

BTW
'02

MV
'02

HE
'03

NI
'03

HB
'03

HH
'04

BB
'04

SH
'05

NW
'05

BTW
'05

ST
'06

BE
'06

MV
'06

	BW	BY	BE	BB	HB	HH	HE	MV	NI	NW	RP	SL	SN	ST	SH	TH
2001	n / A.		n / A.			19.4%					n / A.
2002								1.7%						4.5%
2003		n / A.			4.4%		0.5%		1.0%
2004				0.3%		0.4%						n / A.	n / A.			n / A.
2005										0.0%					0.1%
2006	n / A.		0.1%					0.1%			n / A.			0.3% ¹
2007					n / A.

¹ “Alliance Offensive for Saxony-Anhalt” alliance with STATT party and DSU

n / A. - not started

Federal Chairperson

Period	Surname	Specialty
2000-2003	Ronald Schill	Party founder; left the party in January 2004
2003-2004	Mario Mettbach
2004-2006	Markus Wagner
2006-2007	Peter-Alexander von der Marwitz
2007	Wolfgang Jabbusch	last chairman

literature

• Frank Decker : Right-wing populism in the Federal Republic of Germany: The Schill Party . In: Nikolaus Werz (Ed.): Populism: Populists in Übersee und Europa (= Analyzes. Vol. 79). Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2003, ISBN 3-8100-3727-3 , pp. 223-242.
• Florian Hartleb : rise and fall of the Hamburg Schill party. In: Hans Zehetmair (Hrsg.): The German party system. Perspectives for the 21st Century. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-531-14477-4 , pp. 213-227.
• Florian Hartleb: Party of Rule of Law Offensive [Schill Party]. In: Frank Decker, Viola Neu (Ed.): Handbook of German political parties. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-15189-2 , pp. 371–381.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Posted by Ronald Schill: "We are a CSU of the North" .
2. ↑ Schill becomes the front man of the Pro DM party, January 4, 2004.
3. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel, Article Hamburg: Changing mood from August 27, 2001
4. ↑ Spiegel Online, article The voters are enormously ready to hike from September 23, 2001.
5. ^ Schill party split in Saxony-Anhalt, December 4, 2001.
6. ↑ Determination of the state funds for the year 2007 (PDF; Status: January 28, 2008; 1.7 MB) on bundestag.de.