Saarland People's Party

The Saarland People's Party (SVP) was a regional party in the Saarland . It emerged in 1960 as a new split from the Christian People's Party (CVP) , which had merged with the CDU Saar in the CDU of Germany in 1959 . The opposition of large parts of the two parties originated from the time of the campaign to vote on a European Saar statute in 1955, in which the CDU Saar had advocated the rejection of the status and the CVP the acceptance. The referendum campaign had been conducted with extraordinary severity and various personal attacks, an observer mission of the Western European Union (WEU)it was difficult to maintain an orderly voting campaign. After the vote, the WEU had set up an extraordinary court of justice on the Saar, which the former opponents made several claims.

With the October referendum, the Saarland population spoke out against the European Saar Statute. On the night of October 23, 1955, the previous CVP-dominated Hoffmann government resigned. Shortly thereafter, Hubert Ney (CDU Saar) became Prime Minister .

After several unsuccessful mediation efforts by the federal CDU, the CVP merged with the CDU Saar in 1959, which had already declared itself in a first step as a state association of the CSU . Opponents of this merger were u. a. on the part of the CVP the former finance minister of the Saarland, Erwin Müller , who founded the SVP with some loyal supporters, and on the part of the CDU-Saar the former prime minister of the Saarland, Hubert Ney, who together with some former CDU-Saar supporters the Christian- National Community (CNG) founded. The SVP was in the local elections in May 1960, almost a quarter of votes unite to himself and reached even at the state election in 1960 with 11.4% of votes and 6 mandates the entry into the state parliament , while the CNG failed with 2.6% at the Five percent hurdle and remained meaningless. The SVP became an opposition party, with Erwin Müller as chairman.

In July 1965, the SVP merged with the Center Party to form the CVP and ran under this name in the 1965 federal election , but only achieved 0.1% of the votes nationwide (1.4 in Saarland), whereupon the Center left the joint party. In the state elections in 1965 , the party appearing as SVP / CVP in Saarland only received 5.2% of the votes and two seats; the two remaining members of the state parliament, including Erwin Müller, joined the CDU. In 1968 Müller died, and the MP who replaced him first joined the SPD and then the FDP / DPS parliamentary group. The SVP / CVP dropped to 0.9% of the vote in the 1970 state election and then disappeared completely. A dissolution date is not known.

See also : Elections in Saarland

literature

• Parties: Three tall C . Der Spiegel 46/1960, November 9, 1960, pp. 43–45 (pdf; 569 kB)
• Saar: No partying . Der Spiegel 43/1965, October 20, 1965, pp. 64–65 (pdf; 352 kB)