Instead of party

Instead of party
Party leader	Robert W. Hugo
Deputy Chairman	Dieter God
Federal Treasurer	Rainer Pfannenschmidt
founding	1993
Place of foundation	Hamburg
Number of members	200 (as of March 2001)
Website	Archive version of the website www.statt-partei.de (April 16, 2015) ( Memento from April 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive )

The Instead of Party (own spelling: STATT Party - DIE INABHÄNGIGEN, short description: STATT Party ) is a small German party . It was founded in 1993 as an electoral association and became part of the Hamburg city council that same year . It was involved in the Hamburg Senate through a cooperation with the SPD . Your attempt to extend this election success to other federal states as well as to European and federal elections failed. Since the re-entry into the Hamburg state parliament, which was missed in 1997, it has no parliamentary significance above the municipal level. A personnel and programmatic renewal of the party led from 2005 to a bourgeois-liberal realignment, after it had taken right-wing populist positions in the meantime.

history

Background: Dispute in the Hamburg CDU

Instead of the founding of the party were intra-party differences in the Hamburg regional association of the CDU headed. A group around Winfried Steffani , Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider , Leonhard Hoffmann and the later founder of the Statt Party, Markus Wegner , had repeatedly criticized the political culture and the decision-making structures within the regional association. At the center of this criticism were the then state chairmen Jürgen Echternach and Dirk Fischer , whom the group accused of defeating the election of electoral lists. The list of candidates for the 1990 Bundestag election and the 1991 state election finally led to a scandal between the party leadership and the group known as the “CDU rebels”. Wegner filed a lawsuit against the Bundestag election with the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) and against the state election with the Hamburg Constitutional Court (HVerfG). Wegner argued that the party leadership had not given the delegates to the state party congress the opportunity to discuss the composition of the electoral lists, but only submitted them to the vote as a whole, which in his view violated electoral laws. In its verdict of May 4, 1993, the HVerfG recognized serious deficiencies in this voting practice, judged them to be serious violations of the internal party principle of democracy and declared the elections to the district assemblies in Altona , Eimsbüttel , Hamburg-Nord , Wandsbek and Hamburg-Mitte as well as the 1991 state election for invalid and ruled new elections . The Hamburg citizenship then decided almost unanimously on June 22, 1993 to dissolve it.

Foundation in Hamburg (1993)

Election results of the Statt Party

80 days before the general election, Markus Wegner initiated the public founding of the voter initiative “Instead of Party - The Independents”. With this new election on September 19, 1993 , the electoral association made it into the Hamburg parliament with 5.6% . She entered into a coalition-like alliance ( cooperation ) with the SPD , in which the Hamburg Senate included two non-party senators who were nominated by the Statt Party : Erhard Rittershaus (Economy and 2nd Mayor), Klaus Hardraht (Justice, until August 1995) and Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem (Justice, from September 1995). In the Hamburg district elections that took place at the same time, she also entered all district assemblies.

For the Statt Party sat in the Hamburg citizenship :

• Georg Berg
• Christian Bölckow
• Gundi Hauptmüller (left parliamentary group at the beginning of the electoral term)
• Dieter Obermeier (deputy parliamentary group leader until November 1994)
• Achim Reichert (parliamentary group leader November 1994 to June 1995, then spokesman for the Statt party group with the five remaining MPs)
• Klaus Scheelhaase (left the parliamentary group in June 1995)
• Rotraut Meyer-Verheyen (until January 1997; resigned from the party and citizenship)
• Markus Wegner (parliamentary group leader until November 1994; left the parliamentary group in June 1995)
• Fabian von Borcke (moved up to Rotraut Meyer-Verheyen in January 1997)

Program and demands

The Statt Party had at short notice got involved in the government in Hamburg. It failed to “work out a program and a sharper political profile before its nationwide expansion. In the end it failed because of its lack of conception and a high degree of self-overestimation. ”So it remained with a bundle of demands that one knew or hoped that they were popular, among other things. a .:

• The instruments of direct democracy (popular initiatives, referendums and referendums) should be used more than before, and referendums should be mandatory on certain issues.
• Politics and administration are to be strictly separated from each other.
• The number of representatives in parliaments should be reduced.
• The reimbursement of election campaign costs must be drastically reduced.

Nationwide appearance (1994)

After heated internal debates, the electoral association decided in January 1994 - now as a party - to run nationwide. However, outside of Hamburg, it remained meaningless above the municipal level. Because already in the first state election outside of Hamburg, which took place in Lower Saxony in 1994 , it reached only 1.3% (at the same time another group called Instead of Party had been approved by the state returning officer) and received in all other state elections outside of Hamburg which she took on, even worse results. In 1994 it reached only 0.5% in the European elections and only 0.1% in the Bundestag election in the same year.

Outside of Hamburg she won numerous mandates at the municipal level; in particular in the local elections in Schleswig-Holstein in the spring of 1994, up to 16% of the votes were won in some municipalities, towns and districts.

Further course and decline (1995-2004)

In the course of the electoral period, increasing rifts arose between the officials, which culminated in the fall of the parliamentary group chairman and former top candidate Markus Wegner in December 1994. Markus Wegner, who, from his point of view, did not want to pursue the cooperation with the SPD Hamburg originally agreed with Henning Voscherau at any price for the self-abandonment of the Statt Party and its original goals of civic responsibility and more open democracy, resigned in the summer of 1995, as did the MP Klaus Scheelhaase from the party instead.

In 1997 it failed in Hamburg with 3.8% of the five percent hurdle, so it was no longer represented in the citizenry and also left all district assemblies.

As a result, the party was infiltrated by right-wing extremists . In this phase in particular, the party was classified as right-wing populist .

In the meantime it has vanished into insignificance even in Hamburg, which is particularly evident from the fact that it only achieved 0.4% in Hamburg in 2001, despite an elaborate and expensive election campaign presumably financed by Jürgen Hunke . In this election, many former members and voters had migrated mainly to the Schill party . In the 2004 general election she did not run due to internal party quarrels and a clear lack of opportunities. Not least because of this, Jürgen Hunke, the then state chairman, prevented the planned participation in this election. His successor Lothar Löser first tried to find an amicable solution with the federal executive committee, which was headed by the former NPD member Gerhard Sundmacher . Since this was unsuccessful, there was a scandal in Gronau in November 2004 when the Hamburg regional association tried to overthrow what it saw as untenable federal executive board. In return, a "party exclusion procedure" was initiated against the Hamburg regional executive committee, which, however, could not be carried out in accordance with the statutes or the provisions of the party law due to the lack of an arbitration tribunal. As a result, the only larger Hamburg regional association of the Statt party dissolved, and almost all of its members resigned.

Attempt at resuscitation (since 2005)

After this bloodletting, the party went through a process of programmatic renewal. At the party congress in October 2005, the liberal “wing” prevailed in the federal party. The new federal chairman was Robert W. Hugo from Hamburg and former federal treasurer. He tried to close ranks with other small parties. A cooperation agreement was concluded with the Liberal Democrats (LD), which they terminated at their federal party conference in October 2006. For the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2006 , the Statt party appeared for the first time on a state list with Offensive D and the DSU . The list association was called "Alliance Offensive for Saxony-Anhalt".

The Statt party joined the “ Alliance of Democratic Parties and Organizations ” (ADPO) in 2006 . In 2011, the Statt party only had three state associations.

Representation in local parliaments

The instead of party provided two district councils in the Merseburg-Querfurt district until the district was dissolved . In 2007, the Statt party in the newly founded Saalekreis ( Saxony-Anhalt ) took part in the district election and received 7.5% of the votes, which corresponds to four mandates. The candidate of the Statt Party for the office of District Administrator , Dr. Günther Scholz, received over 10% of the vote. In the 2014 district elections for the Saalekreis district, the result was even higher. The 9.65% of the vote led to 5 mandates. In the Burgenlandkreis (Saxony-Anhalt), the Statt party closed a list connection with a list of citizens in the 2007 election, which sends a representative to the new district assembly.

In the Unna district in North Rhine-Westphalia , the party was represented by a district council from 2004 to 2009. In 2004 she won a seat in the city ​​council of Siegen with 1.9 percent of the vote, which she lost in 2009 with 0.6 percent. She had at least one city council member in the city council of Lünen from 1999 to 2014, but was not admitted to the 2014 municipal council election due to doubts about party status, against which no complaint was filed.

Since the municipal elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2014, the Statt party has been represented by five members of the Saalekreis district council and two members of the Leuna city ​​council .

Since the local elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2019, the Statt party has been represented with three members in the district assembly of the Saalekreis . She is represented in the city council of Merseburg with 3 representatives, in the city council of Leuna with one representative.

literature

• Frank Decker : The Hamburg STATT party - origins and development of a bourgeois electoral movement. In: Yearbook for Politics. 2nd volume. Baden-Baden 1994.
• Frank Decker: INSTEAD of reform: Protest PARTY. Rise and fall of the Hamburg STATT party. In: Journal for Parliamentary Issues . 1996.
• Jürgen Hoffmann : INSTEAD of a party. The failure of a civil protest party. In: Winand Gellner, Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.): Upheaval and change in Western European party systems. Frankfurt am Main 1995.
• Adriana Wipperling: Protest parties in government responsibility. The Greens, the Alternative List, the STATT Party and the Schill Party in their first legislative period as small coalition partners. University of Potsdam, Potsdam 2006 ( online , PDF; 1.28 MB).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adriana Wipperling: Protest parties in government responsibility. The Greens, the Alternative List, the STATT Party and the Schill Party in their first legislative period as small coalition partners. University of Potsdam 2006, pp. 159–160.
2. ^ "Hamburg elects protest", Hamburger Abendblatt, September 20, 1993 ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ "Voscherau and Wegner agree - alliance of the SPD with STATT party", Hamburger Abendblatt, December 8, 1993 ( Memento of July 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ "Rousing leadership nature - Former BAT manager to become Senator for Economics", Hamburger Abendblatt, December 10, 1993  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ "Heitmann's" right hand "Justice Senator in Hamburg", Hamburger Abendblatt, December 10, 1993 ( Memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
6. ^ "Rise of an Independent - Hoffmann-Riem becomes Hamburg's new Justice Senator", Hamburger Abendblatt, August 31, 1995 ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
7. ^ Achim Reichert: Wegner's contrast program . In: Die Welt from November 22, 1994.
8. ↑ "STATT MPs had to go - felt?", Hamburger Abendblatt, January 18, 1997 STATT MPs had to go - felt? ( Memento from July 5, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
9. ^ "Wegner overthrown - parliamentary group disempowered founder of the STATT party", Hamburger Abendblatt, November 19, 1994 ( Memento of December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
10. ^ Adriana Wipperling: Protest parties in government responsibility. The Greens, the Alternative List, the STATT Party and the Schill Party in their first legislative period as small coalition partners. University of Potsdam 2006, p. 199.
11. ↑ Hartwig Jürs, Thomas Wolgast: Only arguments instead of politics. The Hamburger Statt party before the end . In: Rheinischer Merkur of August 18, 1995, p. 2.
12. ↑ René Wagner: Forward with the Instead of Party, forward with Germany! In the Hamburg electoral association, advocates of nationwide expansion win . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 24, 1994, p. 4.
13. ↑ Frank Decker: Perspectives of right-wing populism in Germany using the example of the "Schill Party". From politics and contemporary history , B 21/2002.
14. ↑ Florian Hartleb: Populism - a central characteristic of party politics in turbulent times? In: Friso Wielenga , Florian Hartleb (ed.): Populism in modern democracy. The Netherlands and Germany in comparison. Waxmann, Münster 2011. ISBN 3-8309-2444-5 , p. 119.
15. ^ Jürgen Hoffmann: Splinter parties (left and bourgeois) . In: Uwe Andersen, Wichard Woyke (ed.): Concise dictionary of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany . Springer VS, Heidelberg, 7th, updated edition 2013 ( online on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , accessed on September 2, 2016).
16. ^ "Statt-Party waives a complaint", Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, April 13, 2014
17. ^ "Declaration on the 2014 local elections" Statt-Lünen party, April 12, 2014
18. ↑ Landkreis Saalekreis: distribution of seats in the district council , accessed on September 2, 2016.
19. ^ City of Leuna: City Council , accessed on September 2, 2016.
20. ↑ https://wahlresults.sachsen-anhalt.de/wahlen/kw19/erg/kreis/kw.15088.ergtab.frametab.html
21. ↑ https://wahlresults.sachsen-anhalt.de/wahlen/gw19/erg/gem/gw.15088220.ergtab.frametab.html
22. ↑ https://wahlresults.sachsen-anhalt.de/wahlen/gw19/erg/gem/gw.15088205.ergtab.frametab.html