History
The DKP considered itself a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which had been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 for its aggressively militant opposition to the West German constitution. The new party was formed on 25 September 1968. [5]
The foundation was preceded by talks between former KPD functionaries and Gustav Heinemann, the West German minister of justice, who explained to them that while a refounding of a banned party was not legally possible, Communists were free to form an entirely new party. [6] Even though the close links to the banned KPD made the new party vulnerable to be declared illegal, no such declaration was requested by the German government as West German authorities were liberalizing the attitude towards the communist bloc and East Germany in particular.
The DKP remained on the political fringe, never winning more than 0.3% of the total votes in federal elections. [7] It had relatively greater local support in the 1970s: it achieved up to 2.2% of the vote in Hamburg, 3.1% in Bremen and 2.7% in the Saarland, yet still not enough to enter any Landtags. However, the party enjoyed some success in municipal elections, two patterns of municipalities can be identified in which the DKP was able to win seats: on the one hand working-class residential communities with a long left-wing tradition such as Bottrop in the Ruhr area or Mörfelden-Walldorf in Hesse, and on the other university towns such as Marburg or Tübingen. [8] Following German reunification, the DKP entered a steady decline. [2]
The DKP received national public attention in early 2008 when Christel Wegner, elected to the state parliament of Lower Saxony on the list of the Left Party as the first DKP member of a state parliament, allegedly endorsed the Berlin Wall, the Stasi and other aspects of the East German state in an interview. This caused embarrassment to the national Left Party leadership. [2] Despite denying that she made the controversial statements (at least in the form that was reported), she was expelled from the Left Party faction a few days later. [9]
On March 2 and 3, 2013, the 20th party congress of the DKP took place in Mörfelden-Walldorf (Hesse). The election for the party chairmanship between the incumbent Bettina Jürgensen and her challenger Patrik Köbele came down to a tight contestafter a years-long dispute over direction within the party. Köbele won the election and wanted to position the party as “more militant and revolutionary, re-emphasizing the class struggle, class consciousness and the vanguard role of the Communist Party”. “The distance to those forces that prefer reforms within the existing social system to anti-imperialist revolutionary rhetoric without social backing as a short-term goal will increase,” Köbele emphasized when he took office.
The DKP ended its observer status in the Party of the European Left on 27 February 2016. [10]
The group around the former chairpersons Bettina Jürgensen, Heinz Stehr and the “architect of the reform course” in the party, Leo Meyer, organized itself in the “Communist Network” and in the association “Marxist Left” (MaLi). MaLi is the official “partner movement” of the European Left Party. [11]
In the course of the internal discussion about the party's orientation in relation to the anti-monopolistic strategy (AMS), some, mainly young members left the party and the youth organization SDAJ because they rejected the AMS. They initially founded the group “What next?”, from which the Communist Organization (KO) emerged in mid-2018 and the Communist Party (KP) emerged in 2024. [12]
The Communist Party of Germany was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
Socialist German Workers Youth is a political youth organization in Germany. It is a Marxist–Leninist organization and related to the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei. SDAJ is a member of World Federation of Democratic Youth.
The Communist Party of Germany is a Marxist-Leninist communist party in Germany. It is one of several parties which claim the KPD name and/or legacy. It was founded in Berlin in 1990. The party is also commonly referred to by the name KPD-Ost to differentiate it from other parties with the same name, most prominently the historical Communist Party of Germany.
Mörfelden-Walldorf is a town in the Groß-Gerau district, situated in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region in the federal state (Bundesland) Hesse, Germany.
Unsere Zeit is a weekly newspaper published by the German Communist Party. The paper's full name is Unsere Zeit: Sozialistische Wochenzeitung.
Die Rote Fahne was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Communists. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg famously published it in 1918 as organ of the Spartacus League.
The Communist Platform is an association within the German Left Party. Among the main goals of the KPF are the preservation and advancement of Marxist thought, improving the situation of the poor, and fighting racism and anticommunism. They believe that change in society should be aimed at building a socialist society. Its most prominent member was Sahra Wagenknecht, who was a member of the European Parliament and is now a member of the Bundestag. As of May 2008 the Platform had around 961 members.
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The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi rule in Germany.
Gisela Elsner was a German writer. She won the Prix Formentor in 1964 for her novel Die Riesenzwerge.
Patrik Köbele is a German politician and leader of the German Communist Party (DKP).
Paula Rueß was a German political activist (KPD). Forced into exile by the Nazi takeover, during the early 1940s she worked with the French Resistance.
Hanna Rautenbach was a German politician (KPD).
Agnes Schmidt was a German activist and politician who served as a member of the Parliament (''"Landtag"'') of State of Thuringia (1920–1952).
The Three Arrows is a social democratic political symbol associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), used in the late history of the Weimar Republic. First conceived for the SPD-dominated Iron Front as a symbol of the social democratic resistance against Nazism in 1932, it became an official symbol of the Party during the November 1932 German federal election, representing their opposition towards monarchism, Nazism, and communism.
The Left Communists were a group of members of the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag expelled from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the period 1926–1928.
Eugen Wiedmaier was a German political activist and party official (KPD) who engaged in anti-fascist resistance after 1933. Following six years in solitary confinement, he died while detained at the main penitentiary in Ludwigsburg, during the first part of 1940. The death was reported as a suicide.
The Lenin League was a German revolutionary socialist organisation that was active during the later period of the Weimar Republic. Founded in 1928 by former left communist members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), it experienced a number of splits over the years before going underground in the wake of the Reichstag fire and finally disappearing by the outbreak of World War II.
The Communist Working Group was a political faction in Thuringia, Germany. KAG was founded by the Landtag of Thuringia members Otto Geithner, Agnes Schmidt and Hans Schreyer, whom had constituted an ultra-left faction in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Geithner and Schreyer had been expelled from KPD, whilst Schmidt resigned from the party to join KAG.
Wolfgang Gehrcke is a German left-wing politician. Starting in the 1980s, he has held many high positions in his political parties and has been a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2002 and again from 2005 to 2017 after a brief year in the Landtag of Brandenburg.
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