Wende (Federal Republic of Germany)

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Wende (in the first years also called Bonner Wende ) was a term for the change of government in the Federal Republic of Germany in the autumn of 1982. The term was already mentioned in August 1981 by the then Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher when he was in an internal FDP paper saw the country at a crossroads and emphasized the need for a turnaround. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt reproached him for these words in his last government declaration on September 17, 1982, and blamed him for the breach of the coalition; on that day the four ministers of the FDP resigned. A week earlier, the so-called “Scheide-Papier” of the economics minister of the social-liberal coalition , Otto Graf Lambsdorff , ensured the final termination of a common economic and social policy. The newly elected Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl on October 1st then used the term “ spiritual and moral turn ”, which should go hand in hand with the change of government.

As early as 1976, the SPD politician Erhard Eppler published a work entitled Ende oder Wende , in which he reflected critically on western and German industrial society and called for drastic changes. Thus the term already existed before Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Helmut Kohl used it as a synonym for radical political changes of course.

chronology

  • On September 9, 1982, Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff ( FDP ) wrote to Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt a concept for a policy to overcome weak growth and to combat unemployment that was incompatible with SPD positions.
  • On September 17, 1982, in a speech to the German Bundestag , Helmut Schmidt declared that he had lost political confidence in his coalition partner FDP and called on the opposition to pass the constructive vote of no confidence . Since Schmidt had informed the coalition partner in advance about the content of his speech, Hans-Dietrich Genscher had informed him that he and the other three FDP ministers would resign.
  • On September 26, 1982, the FDP fell in the state elections in Hesse from 6.6 to 3.1 percent and failed for the first time since 1946 in Hesse because of the 5 percent hurdle .
  • On October 1, 1982, the FDP and CDU / CSU overthrew Helmut Schmidt's government in a constructive vote of no confidence and elected Helmut Kohl as Federal Chancellor. He received 256 of the 279 possible votes of the new coalition, seven more votes than required for his election. This date was later regarded as the actual turning point .
  • On October 10, 1982, after the state elections in Bavaria , the FDP had to leave the state parliament for the first time since 1946 (drop from 6.2 to 3.5 percent), in Hamburg its share of the vote in the state elections on December 19, 1982 went from 4.9 back to 2.6 percent. Similar votes were lost in the elections in Rhineland-Palatinate on March 6, 1983 (from 6.4 to 3.5 percent) and in Schleswig-Holstein on March 13, 1983 (from 5.7 to 2.2 percent). Many former FDP voters apparently perceived the breach of the coalition as treason and punished the FDP for it at the state level.
  • On November 28, 1982, opponents of the Wende who had left the FDP founded the Liberal Democrats (LD) party in Bochum .
  • Kohl wanted the change of government to be confirmed by the voters as soon as possible. In order to get new elections, he put the vote of confidence in the Bundestag on December 17, 1982 . Most MPs in the governing coalition abstained from voting, resulting in a negative result. On the same day, Kohl proposed to Federal President Karl Carstens that the German Bundestag be dissolved.
  • This dissolved the Bundestag on January 7, 1983 and set March 6 as the date for new elections. The complaint by some members of the Bundestag for abuse of the vote of confidence was dismissed by the Federal Constitutional Court on February 16, 1983.
  • The federal election on March 6, 1983 brought the Union 48.8 percent and the FDP 7.0 percent, so that a CDU / CSU-FDP coalition had a clear majority in the Bundestag.

Causes of the turning point

Although the CDU achieved an excellent result in the 1976 Bundestag election with 48.6 percent of the vote, this was not enough for a change of Chancellor, since the FDP, on the Union and the SPD were dependent on the Union and the SPD as a coalition partner for lack of absolute majorities, a coalition statement in favor of the election the SPD had met.

SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt achieved high levels of sympathy through his crisis management of the RAF terrorist attacks. This was one of the reasons why the SPD was able to slightly increase its good election result from 42.6 percent (1976) in 1980 to 42.9 percent. To date, it is the second-best SPD result in a federal election. At the same time, however, internal party criticism of Schmidt became louder and louder. The main reason for this was his aim to implement the controversial NATO double resolution, which meant further stationing of nuclear weapons in Germany. This brought him considerable criticism, especially from the left wing of the SPD. By sticking to it, Schmidt gradually lost support within his own party. For example, the then SPD party chairman Willy Brandt rejected the policy that led to the NATO double decision. Spokesmen for this internal party opposition were Erhard Eppler and Oskar Lafontaine.

After the SPD party congress in the spring of 1982 had spoken out in favor of tax increases, which were rejected by the FDP, the differences between the coalition partners in the area of ​​economic policy intensified.

On the other hand, Helmut Kohl had strengthened his internal party position in the Union when he approved Franz Josef Strauss's candidacy in the 1980 federal election. With the candidate Strauss, the Union lost around four percent compared to the area code and achieved 44.5 percent, a significantly worse result than Kohl four years earlier. This broke Strauss' claims to power, who then concentrated again on Bavarian state politics.

In this constellation, according to the then CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler, talks between the CDU and FDP took place in 1981 and 1982 in order to persuade the FDP to change its coalition.

When Helmut Schmidt realized in the summer of 1982 that the coalition could no longer be saved, he commissioned his Minister of Economics, Otto Graf Lambsdorff (FDP), to work out a “concept for a policy to overcome weak growth and fight unemployment”. This concept contained a number of elements that were unacceptable to the SPD. This paper later became known as "divider paper".

Derived terms

When turning letter sent a circular to the left FDP -members of 20 August 1981 in history: It demanded the FDP -Bundesvorsitzende Hans-Dietrich Genscher in a letter to the FDP -members a turn. This indirectly addressed the SPD. The text was understood as an invitation to break the coalition.

Wendepapier was later called the letter from Otto Graf Lambsdorff of September 9th.

When turning Chancellor was Helmut Kohl called - ironically mainly by his political opponents, failed to as the promised "spiritual and moral revolution".

Because of its role as a " tip the scales " and at the same time alluding to his large ears, attached to the cartoon character Wendelin remember, Hans-Dietrich Genscher was nicknamed Wendelin .

See also

literature

Sound carrier

Web links

  • Tilman Michael Dralle: The NATO double decision: New historical and legal perspectives on a controversial political alliance decision. 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Successor to Apel? , Der Spiegel , No. 37, September 12, 1988.
  2. ^ Gode ​​Japs: Separation after 13 years together , Deutschlandradio , September 7, 2007.
  3. ↑ Otto Graf Lambsdorff : Concept for a policy to overcome weak growth and to fight unemployment . In: 1000dokumente.de . September 9, 1982.
  4. ^ Application by the CDU / CSU and FDP parliamentary groups according to Article 67 of the Basic Law of September 28, 1982 (PDF, 13KB)
  5. ↑ Plenary minutes of the 118th session of the 9th electoral term on October 1, 1982 (PDF, 2.9MB)
  6. ↑ Helmut Kohl's question of trust ( memento of November 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), www.bundestag.de, accessed on October 1, 2012.
  7. ↑ BVerfGE 62.1
  8. ↑ bundeswahlleiter.de ( Memento from January 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ bundeswahlleiter.de ( Memento from December 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Philipp Gassert, others (ed.): Second Cold War and Peace Movement. Munich 2011, p. 211.
  11. ↑ welt.de
  12. ↑ welt.de
  13. ^ Jürgen Dittberner : The FDP: history, people, organization, perspectives. 2nd revised and updated edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-14050-6 , p. 50/51.
  14. ↑ Werner Kany: Unofficial personal names: education, meaning and function. de Gruyter, 1992, p. 273.