Parti Démocrate Populaire

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Parti Démocrate Populaire (PDP; "Democratic People's Party") was a Catholic social party of the political center in the Third French Republic , which existed from 1924 to 1940. She can be seen as the first representative of Christian Democracy in French party history.

A forerunner of the PDP was the Le Sillon movement (“The Furrow”), founded in 1894 by the then still young Marc Sangnier , which wanted to offer Christian workers an alternative to the materialism and anti-clericalism of the socialists. Many later PDP politicians were politically socialized in this current. A group of members of the Bloc national , which had formed in 1919 as a broad bourgeois alliance of the center and right, founded the Parti Démocrate Populaire in 1924. Unlike its indirect predecessor Action Libérale Populaire (1902-19), this dealt increasingly with social problems and was based on Catholic social teaching , as it was described in the encyclical Rerum Novarum Pope Leos XIII. had been established. The Partito Popolare Italiano, founded by Don Luigi Sturzo in Rome in 1919, served as a model . Nevertheless, its members were predominantly members of the liberal professions, the middle and upper middle classes, while white-collar workers or even workers and farmers were hardly represented.

The PDP only achieved election results of around 3% and never had more than 20 parliamentary seats. She only had some successes in areas of eastern and western France with high church ties.

The PDP was chaired by Georges Thibout from 1924 to 1929 , followed by Auguste Champetier de Ribes . Jean Raymond-Laurent held the position of general secretary throughout its existence . The PDP was particularly committed to international cooperation between Christian Democratic parties and was one of the founding members of the Secrétariat International des Partis Démocrates d'Inspiration Chrétienne (SIPDIC; International Secretariat of Democratic Parties with Christian Character), which had its headquarters in Paris.

After the French surrender in June 1940, the PDP disbanded like all other parties. Some of its previous members sympathized with the Vichy regime , which in some cases also included Catholic social elements in its program, a small minority even collaborated with the German occupying forces, while others joined the Resistance at an early stage . As the successor to the PDP, the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP) was founded in 1944 , but it was many times more successful and became the strongest bourgeois party in the country. Prominent Christian Democratic politicians of the post-war period such as Robert Schuman and Georges Bidault had previously been members of the PDP.

literature

  • Jean-Claude Delbreil: Centrisme et démocratie-chétienne en France. Le parti democrate populaire des origines au MRP, 1919–1944. Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris 1990.
  • Jean-Claude Delbreil: Le parti démocrate populaire. Un parti démocrate chrétien français de l'entre-deux-guerres. In: Christian Democracy in Europe in the 20th Century. Böhlau, Vienna 2001, pp. 77–97.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Jean-Claude Delbreil: Le parti démocrate populaire. 2001, p. 77.
  2. ↑ a b Dirk Zadra: The change in the French party system: The “présidentiables” in the fifth republic. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1997, p. 29.
  3. ^ A b Jean-Claude Delbreil: Le parti démocrate populaire. 2001, p. 78.
  4. ↑ Manfred Kittel: Province between Empire and Republic. Political mentalities in Germany and France, 1918–1933 / 36. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, p. 686.
  5. ↑ Guido Müller: The “Secrétariat International des Partis Démocrates d'Inspiration Chrétienne” 1925–1939 - an anticipated exile of Catholic democrats in the interwar period. In: Christian Democracy in Europe in the 20th Century. Böhlau, Wien 2001, pp. 559-573, on p. 563.
  6. ↑ Jean-Claude Delbreil: Le parti démocrate populaire. 2001, p. 96.