Fourth party
Discussions about a nationwide expansion of the CSU were held in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s under the catchphrase Fourth Party . The term is basically wrong because the Bavarian Christian-Social Union was always an independent party and thus at least four parties (in three parliamentary groups ) were always represented in the German Bundestag ; but it was in common use at the time of the discussions. The catchphrase was also used for the Greens .
Nationwide CSU
The SPD and FDP formed a social-liberal coalition from 1969 onwards and emerged from the 1972 Bundestag election significantly stronger . As a result, the opposition of the CDU and CSU came to consider how an absolute majority of the CDU and CSU could be achieved in the medium term. Among them was the idea of turning the CSU , which was previously limited to Bavaria , into a fourth party running nationwide . Above all, this should sharpen the conservative profile and bind voters from the right wing to itself. The CDU would then have the opportunity to cover the spectrum of the middle and also to address liberal voters. This idea was particularly popular in the CSU, which hoped to gain significance by appearing nationwide. The idea found less approval in the more liberal circles of the CDU, who feared losses from competition from a fourth party.
As early as 1970, so-called CSU circles of friends were formed outside of Bavaria, in which, among other things, national-conservative opponents of the New Ostpolitik (including Jürgen Rieger ) were involved and which, if a corresponding decision had been made, could have quickly set up local associations. In 1975 - without the participation of the CSU - the VIERTE PARTTEI action group was founded , which wanted to put the plans into practice, but failed due to the lack of cooperation between the CSU and the “Friends”.
After the CDU / CSU, led by CDU chairman Helmut Kohl, lost the federal election in 1976 , there was an open power struggle between him and the CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss . With the Kreuther separation decision of November 1976, the CSU state group in the Bundestag terminated the faction community with the CDU. The regional group withdrew this decision after the CDU had already prepared a regional association in Bavaria.
In the following years there were occasional new discussions about a fourth party ; Franz Josef Strauss in particular continued to defend this idea as a way to take over government, while Helmut Kohl and most of the CDU rejected it. The different points of view were based on a different assessment of the FDP: Strauss considered it to be a left-wing party that was tied to the SPD; Kohl, on the other hand, was of the opinion that a takeover of government would also be possible through a change of coalition of the FDP - which ultimately proved to be right. Some commentators were also of the opinion that the comparatively moderate Kohl would definitely prefer a government with the liberals than alone with a strengthened, right-wing conservative CSU.
For the Bundestag election in 1980 , Strauss was able to assert himself as candidate for chancellor of the Union parties against Kohl's preferred candidate Ernst Albrecht . After Strauss' clear failure in the election against Chancellor Helmut Schmidt , Kohl's position was strengthened again, so that a fourth party as the CSU's dream concept lost its importance. In 1982 the coalition of the FDP actually changed and Helmut Kohl became Chancellor. In the federal election in 1983 , on the one hand, the Greens established themselves as a new party in the Bundestag; on the other hand, the majority of the CDU / CSU and FDP was confirmed, so that the idea of a fourth party was dropped.
Right small parties
The Republicans
The idea was given a brief boost by the founding of the Republicans party in 1983, which was initially a split off from the CSU. With Franz Handlos , the applicant for the Kreuther separation decision of 1976 took part and became its founding chairman. He and his colleagues hoped to be able to fulfill the idea of a nationwide party to the right of the Union, but on the basis of the Basic Law . But since the CDU / CSU refused to cooperate with the REP, were able to retain conservative voters and thereby pushed the REP to the extreme right (Strauss: “ There must be no democratically legitimized party to the right of the CSU ”), they made it the Republicans fail to establish themselves as a fourth party.
German Social Union
After the political change in the GDR, the center-right party DSU was founded. In the first (and last) free election of the People's Chamber in the GDR in 1990, she stood as a partner of the left-wing East German CDU and the Democratic Awakening in the Alliance for Germany , and was then represented in the de Maizière government. The CSU temporarily supported its programmatically related DSU. However, the electoral successes of the GDR-wide party fell short of expectations. In the state elections in October 1990 she was unable to win a mandate. The attempt to gain a foothold in West Germany also led to the breaking off of contacts with the CSU after the CDU intervened. So the DSU became an insignificant right-wing conservative small party.
The green
The “ green ” movements that also emerged at the end of the 1970s were also traded as the “fourth party”, especially since it was initially unclear whether they would be politically right or left. This concerned above all the Green Action Future, founded in 1978 by the Bundestag member Herbert Gruhl, who left the CDU . With the emergence of a single green party after 1979, however, it became clear that it saw itself politically on the left and thus did not correspond to the original idea of a fourth party , even though it became the fourth (or correctly: fifth) party in the Bundestag. The term went out of use in the 1980s .
literature
- Andreas Schulze: Small parties in Germany: Rise and fall of non-established political associations , Chemnitz 2003, ISBN 3824445581 . P. 71ff.
Individual evidence
- ^ Gideon Botsch : The extreme right in the Federal Republic of Germany 1949 until today . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2012, p. 68.
- ^ Werner Patzelt: German Social Union. In: Federal Center for Political Education. August 5, 2014, accessed June 17, 2018 .