Father City Association of Hamburg

Election poster for the 1949 state election

The Father City Bund Hamburg (short name: VBH ) was an independent party between 1946 and 1952 and at times also an amalgamation of the CDU , FDP and DKP (German Conservative Party).

Origin, idea and foundation

The VBH had the goal of establishing a joint liberal - conservative party as a third party in Hamburg alongside the social democratic and communist parties . The father of the idea was the former Hamburg Senator and DVP MP Paul de Chapeaurouge . As early as 1945, knowing that the Allies (in Hamburg the British) wanted to appoint a citizenry , Chapeaurouge tried to advance this project under the name of the Father City Association of Hamburg . After the Allies gave permission to form parties, the Bund was formed by 29 people. The most prominent member besides Chapeaurouge was former Senator Hermann Carl Vering , who was also coming from the DVP .

It quickly became clear that it would not be so easy to profile a unified, non- socialist party alongside the two workers' parties ( SPD and KPD ) . The PFD (later FDP) and the CDP (later CDU) received after their applications the license to give themselves as a "party within the meaning of regulation No. 12 of the military government ". The VBH tried to collect at least the remnants of the bourgeois and conservative forces alongside the two parties. The federal government submitted its application for licensing on November 22, 1945 . This was not granted immediately, even though the British occupiers gave Chapeaurouge a good certificate and classified him as unencumbered. Even if it was not an official party, the VBH was taken seriously by the Allies as a rallying party and viewed as a catchment point for right-wing splinter parties . The occupying power even successfully put pressure on the “Party of Civil Rights” and a little later on the “Hamburg Reconstruction Party” to join the VBH.

A collection movement alongside the SPD and KPD was not only pursued by the VBH. Mayor Rudolf Petersen also tried to promote a merger between the FDP and CDU. However, this merger ultimately failed.

On May 17, 1946, the Father City Association of Hamburg was officially founded with the approval of the Allies. The CDU-affiliated newspaper “ Hamburger Allgemeine ” commented on the event with a slight mockery: “You saw a lot of white hair, little youth and a richly booked parking lot in front of the door.” Representatives of the CDU, FDP and SPD were invited to this founding meeting, but not the KPD.

At the inaugural meeting, Chapeaurouge said in his address on the goals of the new covenant:

“[...] He [the Father City Association] wants to gather in his ranks all men, women and young people in Hamburg who do not see their political home in the four approved parties, but feel obliged to actively participate in building Hamburg. [...] "

"[...] The Father City Association of Hamburg deliberately wants to bring together all parties and groups right to social democracy in practical joint work for Hamburg through the approved parties, out of the conviction that such a combination, far from all avoidable party politics, is a political and paternal city necessity [ ...] "

"[...] The first immediate goal of the Father City Association of Hamburg is the creation of a 'election bloc 1946' for the autumn 1946 election for the citizenship, which includes all parties, groups and the broad strata of the population of Hamburg who are not left-wing parties to protect against the threat of being overrun by the left in the election [...] "

The 1946 state election

On July 25, 1946, Chapeaurouge presented his proposal to the boards of the CDU, FDP, Lower Saxony State Party (NLP) and German Conservative Party (DKP) to set up a list connection for the election in the autumn of that year. According to his idea, the CDU and the FDP should each receive a third of the seats and the rest should be divided between the other parties, including the VBH.

Chapeaurouge saw the majority suffrage imported by the British as a threat to the bourgeois camp, which had been split up until then. Due to the superior power of the SPD, the remaining smaller parties would only get a few seats. That is why he wrote in the VBH appeal that he signed:

"The broad sections of the population who are on the right of social democracy, who have been carriers of the best Hamburg tradition for generations in merchants, seafaring and handicrafts, in art, culture and science, have a right to share in responsibility for Hamburg and its leadership."

“Unfortunately today they are again split up into parties with barely recognizable program differences. In this fragmentation you have no chance of success with the now applicable electoral law. You only benefit the left. "

"Merely the amalgamation of all groups and parties standing on the right of social democracy can bring them such successes that they are taken into account in the Senate and the citizenship."

- Call printed by Tormin, p. 153.

The reaction of the parties was sobering for the VBH. Except for the DKP, which immediately wanted to join a list , all the others were waiting or even rejecting. On the one hand, the FDP stated that it did not want to enter into an electoral alliance with a markedly backward-looking party like the DKP . On the other hand, it seems that the FDP tried, as a liberal party, to build on the successes of the DDP in the Weimar Republic , and promised better success with its own profile. But she made an electoral alliance with the NLP. The CDU waited and after the foreseeable failure of a joint civic project offered the leaders Chapeaurouge, Vering and Frahm places on their list. Another reason for this offer was apparently that the Allies rejected eight CDU candidates and replacements were needed at short notice. Chapeaurouge and the CDU blamed the FDP in particular for the failure of an alliance to come about. During the election campaign there was a strong dispute between the bourgeois parties. The VBH urged its supporters and sympathizers to vote for the CDU.

In the state election of October 13, 1946 , it turned out as the VBH had suspected. Thanks to the electoral system, the SPD was able to win “only” 43.2% of the votes 83 (corresponding to 75.5%) of the seats. The bourgeois camp consisting of the CDU and FDP had to accept 23 seats.

Although the number of members of the VBH had doubled to 1,380 within two months at the end of October, its future and position in the party system were uncertain. Chapeaurouge saw the bourgeois parties that had existed up to then only as a transitional phenomenon and hoped for a real electoral alliance for the later elections. Nevertheless, the VBH, which came out of the election campaign with debts, was only able to maintain itself as an independent party until 1947.

The 1949 state election

Before the state elections in 1949 , the CDU, FDP and DKP agreed on a new edition of the VBH.

One of the triggers for the step to get serious about the alliance was the passing of the law on school reform on September 23, 1949. In this law, among other things, the four-year elementary school was extended to six years. The CDU and FDP parliamentary groups left the meeting room in protest that day. When the parliamentary groups re-entered the citizenship on September 28, 1949, they did so as the parliamentary group of the Father-City League. Chapeaurouge took over the chairmanship of the newly formed parliamentary group.

The DP was actually intended as a partner in the alliance. However, she was excluded from the partnership again, mainly at the insistence of the FDP. The DP, with its sometimes militant demeanor, was so shocking that the FDP spoke out against a connection with this party at a state committee meeting on September 20, 1949. This decision came as a bit of a surprise against the background of the coalition formation between the CDU, FDP and DP at the federal level after the 1949 federal election .

The three senators of the FDP were of course in a dilemma because of the joint coalition statement. Christian Koch preferred to remain in the Senate and thus reject the VBH to cooperate. He was expelled from the FDP. The two other Senators Johannes Büll and Ludwig Hartenfels resigned from their posts on November 1, 1949 and placed themselves in the service of the alliance.

In the election, the VBH, under the joint leadership of de Chapeaurouge and Edgar Engelhard (FDP), received a total of 34.5% of the votes and 40 seats. However, the electoral connection did not win against the SPD with 65 seats. In the gleanings, for example, “ Die Welt ” calculated that a joint alliance with the DP would have brought a majority. Already at the first meeting of the citizenship, the members of parliament refrained from appearing together as VBH.

End of the VBH

Chapeaurouge was of the opinion that “his” VBH would live on and that in the 1949 election only the bourgeois parties had the opportunity to campaign under one roof. With the death of the founder of the VBH on October 3, 1952, the final end of the party was sealed.

The Hamburg Block (HB) arose from this idea of ​​an alliance of bourgeois and conservative parties . The alliance of CDU, DP, FDP and BHE was founded for the Hamburg state election on September 28, 1953.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stubbe da Luz, p. 201.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Ahrens: Hamburg, pp. 58/59.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Stubbe da Luz, p. 202.
4. ↑ All parts of the address cited here from: Hamburger Bürgerschaft 1946–1971, p. 47.
5. ^ Forerunner of the "German Party" (DP)
6. ↑ ^{a b} Stubbe da Luz, pp. 203–208.
7. ↑ Ahrens, p. 120.
8. ↑ Ahrens, p. 122.
9. ↑ Stubbe da Luz, p. 211.
10. ↑ Christoph Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. Martin Meidenbauer Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89975-569-5 , page 415.
11. ↑ Hamburger Bürgerschaft 1946–1971, pp. 48/49 and pp. 183–186.
12. ↑ Civic Alliances with Moderate Success, article in Die Welt (September 25, 2001).

Literature and Sources

• Michael Ahrens : Hamburg from a British Perspective (1945–1949). Master's thesis at the University of Hamburg, Hamburg 1999.
• Helmut Stubbe da Luz : Bourgeois bloc politics in Hamburg 1945 to 1949. Paul de Chapeaurouges “Father Towns League Hamburg”. In: State Center for Political Education Hamburg: Hamburg after the end of the Third Reich: Political Reconstruction 1945/46 to 1949. pp. 189–216.
• Walter Tormin : The difficult road to democracy. Political rebuilding in Hamburg 1945/46. Hamburg 1995 (especially pages 152/153).
• The Hamburg citizenship 1946–1971. Reconstruction and new construction. Represented by Erich Lüth , Hamburg 1971 on behalf of the Hamburg Parliament .

Web links

Commons : Vaterstädtischer Bund Hamburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• History of the CDU on the CDU Hamburg website
• 60 years of political liberalism in Hamburg Festschrift of the FDP-Hamburg (PDF file; 126 kB)