All-German People's Party Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei | |
---|---|
![]() 1953 election poster by the party, pushing their anti-re-armament message | |
Leader | Gustav Heinemann |
Founded | 1952 |
Dissolved | 1957 |
Split from | Christian Democratic Union and Centre Party |
Merged into | Social Democratic Party of Germany |
Ideology | Centrism Christian democracy Christian left Pacifism [1] Neutralism [1] |
Political position | Centre to centre-left [2] |
The All-German People's Party (German : Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei, GVP) was a minor political party in West Germany active between 1952 and 1957. [3] It was a Christian, pacifist, centre-left [2] party that opposed the re-armament of West Germany because it believed that the remilitarisation and NATO integration would make German reunification impossible, deepen the division of Europe and pose a danger to peace.
Most members were dissidents from the Christian Democratic Union or German Centre Party who disagreed with the foreign and intra-German policy of Konrad Adenauer's government. The party failed to win broader public support, only gaining 1.2% in the federal election. The party dissolved and many members joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD), with a number of former GVP activists rising to high-ranking positions, including two Presidents of Germany, Gustav Heinemann and Johannes Rau.
The party was formed by a number of former CDU or German Centre Party members and former Confessing Church supporters, who opposed the re-armament of Germany and a close co-operation with the Western powers. The forerunner of the party was the "Emergency Association for Peace in Europe" (Notgemeinschaft für den Frieden Europas), founded in November 1951 by Gustav Heinemann and Robert Scholl, the father of the resistance activist Sophie Scholl . [4]
Heinemann was the president of the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany and had been a CDU member and minister of the interior in Adenauer's first cabinet from 1949 to 1950 before he resigned in protest against Adenauer's secret negotiations with the Americans about a West German contribution to a Western military alliance. Together with Helene Wessel, then chair of the Catholic Centre Party, and two other persons he formed the steering committee of the party which did not have a chairman. Heinemann and Wessel often appeared together in order to appeal to both Protestants and Catholics.
The party believed in détente and favoured plebiscites. It refused to monopolise Christian faith for anticommunist positions and advocated to fight antisemitism and religious prejudice. On economic issues, the party refrained from taking a definite position given that its members' views were too diverse.[ citation needed ]
In the only Bundestag election the party took part in, the 1953 election, they managed to obtain only 1.3% of votes (for the common list with the East German-funded Bund der Deutschen ("Alliance of Germans"). The only—moderate—electoral success of the GVP were the local elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (both Heinemann's and Wessel's home state) on October 28, 1956, where the party got 78 seats. After they could only win 1.6% in the Baden-Württemberg legislative election of 1956, the GVP was formally disbanded on May 19, 1957.
The party recommended that members join the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Some members had already left the GVP for the SPD. The Social Democrats had refused to adopt GVP members on their lists for the federal election of 1957 but granted good list positions to some former GVP members (among them Heinemann and Wessel). This helped SPD to open itself to parts of the Christian, especially Protestant, middle-class. [5]
A number of former GVP members had substantial careers in the Social Democratic party. Erhard Eppler became federal minister on development aid, Jürgen Schmude on education and Diether Posser state minister in North Rhine-Westphalia. Most noteworthy, Gustav Heinemann and Johannes Rau, two of the only three SPD Presidents of Germany, had both been earlier GVP members.
The Free Democratic Party is a liberal political party in Germany.
Johannes Rau was a German politician (SPD). He was the president of Germany from 1 July 1999 until 30 June 2004 and the minister president of North Rhine-Westphalia from 20 September 1978 to 9 June 1998. In the latter role, he also served as president of the Bundesrat in 1982/83 and in 1994/95.
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is the major party of the centre-right in German politics.
Gustav Walter Heinemann was a German politician who was President of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He served as mayor of Essen from 1946 to 1949, West German Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, and Minister of Justice from 1966 to 1969.
The Centre Party, officially the German Centre Party and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Christian democratic political party in Germany. It was most Influential in the German Empire and Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf waged by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party name Zentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.
The Bavarian People's Party was a Catholic political party in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic. After the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, it split away from the national-level Catholic Centre Party and formed the BVP in order to pursue a more conservative and particularist Bavarian course. It consistently had more seats in the Bavarian state parliament than any other party and provided all Bavarian minister presidents from 1920 on. In the national Reichstag it remained a minor player with only about three percent of total votes in all elections. The BVP disbanded shortly after the Nazi seizure of power in early 1933.
The Parlamentarischer Rat was the West German constituent assembly in Bonn that drafted and adopted the constitution of West Germany, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, promulgated on 23 May 1949.
Federal elections were held in West Germany on 15 September 1957 to elect the members of the third Bundestag. The Christian Democratic Union and its longtime ally, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, won a sweeping victory, taking 270 seats in the Bundestag to win the first – and to date, only – absolute majority for a single German parliamentary group in a free election.
The 2000 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was held on 14 May 2000 to elect the 13th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The outgoing government was a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Greens led by Minister-President Wolfgang Clement.
Federal elections were held in West Germany on 6 September 1953 to elect the members of the second Bundestag. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) emerged as the largest party.
The Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP), also known as the German Empire Party or German Imperial Party, was a nationalist, far-right, and later neo-Nazi political party in West Germany. It was founded in 1950 from the German Right Party, which had been set up in Lower Saxony in 1946 and had five members in the first Bundestag, and from which it took the name. Its biggest success and only major breakthrough came in the 1959 Rhineland-Palatinate regional election, when it sent a deputy to the assembly.
The All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights was a right-wing political party in West Germany, which acted as an advocacy group of the Germans fled and expelled in and after World War II.
Erhard Eppler was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and founder of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). He studied English, German and history in Frankfurt, Bern and Tübingen, achieved a PhD and worked as a teacher. He met Gustav Heinemann in the late 1940s, who became a role model. Eppler was a member of the Bundestag from 1961 to 1976. He was appointed Minister for Economic Cooperation first in 1968 during the grand coalition of Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) and Willy Brandt (SPD), continuing under Chancellor Brandt in 1969 and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) in 1974, when he stepped down.
Diether Posser was a German politician, representative of the Social Democratic Party.
The Evangelical Working Group of the CDU/CSU (EAK) is a specialized agency of the CDU and CSU. The term evangelical is not to be confused with a more conservative or radical connotation in the English language, but refers to the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, the general union of mostly Lutheran and mainstream regional churches.
The 1995 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was held on 14 May 1995 to elect the 12th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The outgoing government was a majority of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Minister-President Johannes Rau.
Helene Wessel was a German politician. From October 1949 to January 1952 she was chairwoman of the Centre Party and a founding member of the All-German People's Party, which eventually joined the SPD. She was elected to the Parlamentarischer Rat, the West German constitutional convention.
The German Party was a national-conservative and monarchist political party in West Germany active during the post-war years. The party's ideology appealed to sentiments of German nationalism and nostalgia for the German Empire.
The 1980 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was held on 11 May 1980 to elect the 9th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The outgoing government was a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) led by Minister-President Johannes Rau.
The 1985 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was held on 12 May 1985 to elect the 10th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The outgoing government was a majority of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Minister-President Johannes Rau.