Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin

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The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin ( SEW ) was a communist party in West Berlin closely linked to the SED and the DKP and led and financed by the SED . It emerged from the district organizations of the SED in the twelve western districts of Berlin. Its membership ranged between 3,000 and (depending on the source) 8,000 to 11,000 members. The SEW election results in the Berlin House of Representatives were between 2.7 percent (1954) and 0.6 percent (1989).

history

The forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED was also to be carried out in Greater Berlin , but initially only affected the Soviet sector . At the end of May 1946, the Four Powers came to an agreement and the SED was allowed into the three western sectors, in return the SMAD allowed the SPD to be allowed again in East Berlin . The KPD was absorbed into the SED in both the western and eastern parts of Berlin.

The so-called three-state theory arose from the development of the thesis of the development of a socialist German nation in the GDR . It has been followed by the Soviet Union since the Khrushchev ultimatum of 1958, along with the GDR and the parties in the West that are close to the Eastern Bloc . That is why the DKP, established in 1968, did not set up its own regional association in West Berlin. From the point of view of the SED and the DKP, SEW was thus the communist party in the “special” or “independent political unit of West Berlin”.

Until 1961 the SED-W belonged to the party organization of the SED. The party called itself from November 12, 1962 to 1969 SED West Berlin , from then on SEW , from April 1990 to its dissolution on June 30, 1991, a Socialist Initiative . Overall, the SEW was a Marxist-Leninist party and its principles were very similar to the SED and the DKP (which did not exist in West Berlin until the 1990s). SEW was secretly financed by the SED with 12 to 15 million  DM annually until the fall of the Wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , which the SEW always denied. The same applies to the daily newspaper Die Truth and the theoretical organ Konsequent published by SEW . The party work of SEW was partly intertwined with the Deutsche Reichsbahn , because the railway was also under GDR control in West Berlin. For this reason there were many SEW operating groups at the Reichsbahn. The party boycotted the parliamentary elections in 1950 , and in the later elections the entry into the state parliament was clearly missed. In particular, the 1975 election result was a bitter defeat for the party as well as for its then chairman Danelius, since the conditions for SEW at that time had been assessed as very favorable and a significant increase in votes was expected.

In the 1970s, SEW was part of the GEW trade union , IG Metall , the peace movement , the Chile movement, the tenant movement and in some university departments such as the Psychological Institute of the Free University of Berlin , in the theater and culture industry at times an influential position. The Interior Senate of West Berlin responded with a regular request to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , as a result of which in the years 1976 to 1981 more than 100 suspected or actual SEW members (graduates of educational and other universities) through the radical decree of access to the public service because of anti-constitutionality was denied.

Protests from SEW-members against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the arrest of Rudolf Bahro in East Germany were immediately suppressed. In 1986, the party chairman ordered that in reality no letters to the editor could be published on the Chernobyl disaster .

In 1980, the leaders of a Marxist reform movement around the circular Die Klarheit, inspired by Eurocommunism and initially largely conspiratorial after the Biermann expatriation, were excluded from the party; other supporters of clarity left the party at the same time; First the dissidents founded the “Socialist Initiative” (SI), then they joined part of the alternative list , among them Annette Schwarzenau (later City Councilor for Health for the AL), Hannelore May, Wolfgang Gukelberger and Edwin Massalsky. He later ran for Alliance 90 / The Greens for the House of Representatives. With the exclusion of the so-called Clarity Group from the SEW, a democratization and change in the party's strategy was prevented. Since 1975 the number of members has decreased continuously. At its 16th meeting in 1989, the party executive passed a resolution with a narrow majority that criticized the crackdown on the Chinese reform movement on Tian'anmen Square . This was the first time that SEW officially deviated from the course of the SED. After pressure from the SED, however, the SEW office presented an “oral supplement” at the 13th meeting of the executive committee, in which the events in China were again assessed in terms of the SED. As a result, the dissatisfaction and disorientation of the party members grew.

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As a result of the turning point in the GDR, the strict secrecy of the party's funding by the SED ceased to exist from the beginning of 1990, which ultimately resulted in an accrual of around 12 to 15 million DM. The approximately 70 employees were laid off. At an extraordinary party congress on April 29, 1990, the party was renamed the Socialist Initiative . The party or its successor organization dissolved in June 1991. The Truth was renamed Neue Zeitung at the end of November 1989 and was discontinued in December 1989 after five issues. Some of the members of the SEW switched to the PDS , among them Ernst Welters and Uwe Doering .

Youth organization

The SEW youth organization was initially called the Free German Youth West Berlin (FDJW) and in May 1980 it was renamed the Socialist Youth Association Karl Liebknecht . The youth association was formally independent, but committed itself to the policies of the SEW and was also guided by the party in terms of content.

Party influence at universities in the city

At the universities there was the organization Action Community of Democrats and Socialists (ADS) (more independent compared to the youth association ), which played an important role in the West Berlin universities in the 1970s with an estimated 900–1200 members (professors, junior staff, students) and as their “mass organization” closely with the SEW university groups, which at times comprised several hundred members, at the Free University of Berlin (FU) and the Technical University of Berlin (TU), the University of Education (PH) and the Technical University (TFH), the church University (KiHo), the University of Applied Sciences (FHW) and the University of Fine Arts (HfBK) worked together.

Election results in the Berlin House of Representatives elections

year Votes
(absolute)		 Votes
(relative)
1954 (as SED) 41,375 2.7%
1958 (as SED) 31,572 2.0%
1963 (as SED-W) 20,929 1.3%
1967 (as SED-W) 29,925 2.1%
1971 33,845 2.3%
1975 25.105 1.8%
1979 13,744 1.1%
1981 08,176 0.6%
1985 07,731 0.6%
1989 06,875 0.6%

Chairperson

From November 1962 until his death in 1978, Gerhard Danelius was chairman of SEW; his successor was Horst Schmitt until his death in 1989 . He was briefly followed by Dietmar Ahrens .

Known members

See: Category: SEW member

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hannes Schwenger : The willing helpers in West Berlin. tagesspiegel.de, October 5, 2009; Retrieved October 27, 2011.
  2. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  3. ^ Resolution of May 31, 1946 by the Allied City Command: The Social Democratic Party of Germany and the newly founded Socialist Unity Party of Germany are permitted in all four sectors of the former Reich capital.
  4. ↑ See Siegfried Heimann : East Berlin Social Democrats in the early 1950s
  5. ↑ Extremism Federal Agency for Civic Education
  6. ^ A b Olav Teichert: The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin. Investigation of the control of SEW by the SED . kassel university press, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89958-994-8 , p. 187
  7. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  8. ^ Olav Teichert: The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin. Investigation of the control of SEW by the SED . kassel university press, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89958-994-8 , p. 136
  9. ^ Olav Teichert: The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin. Investigation of the control of SEW by the SED . kassel university press, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89958-994-8 , p. 168
  10. ^ Olav Teichert: The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin. Investigation of the control of SEW by the SED . kassel university press, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89958-994-8 , p. 169
  11. ↑ Teichert, p. 188