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 liable 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]
The DKP ended its observer status in the Party of the European Left on 27 February 2016. [10]
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.
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.
Communist Party of Germany is a name that has been and is being used by several Communist organizations in Germany.
Antifaschistische Aktion was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the July 1932 German federal election and the November 1932 German federal election and was described by the KPD as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD."
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 Roter Frontkämpferbund, usually called the Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB), was a far-left paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. A legally registered association, the RFB was banned in 1929 but continued its work illegally.
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.
The Communist League of West Germany was a Maoist organization in West Germany which existed from 1973 until 1985. The KBW contested the general elections in 1976 and 1980 in West Germany and was rated as the strongest of the German Maoist parties from 1974 until 1981. After 1982 the KBW was virtually inactive and was finally dissolved completely in 1985.
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.
The East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) on 21 April 1946 in the territory of the Soviet occupation zone. It is considered a forced merger. In the course of the merger, about 5,000 Social Democrats who opposed it were detained and sent to labour camps and jails.
Magda Langhans was a Hamburg political activist and politician (KPD). Because of her political beliefs and activities she spent six of the twelve Nazi years in jail. After the war she resumed her membership of the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft.
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.
Ernst Grube is a German teacher and Holocaust survivor. He never tires of presenting - "up to a hundred times a year" - the story of his childhood in Nazi Germany. In contrast, he speaks very little of what happened after his release from the Theresienstadt concentration camp and his return to Munich in May 1945: his involvement with the FDJ and the Communist Party itself during the period when it had been banned in West Germany. His trades union activism, his campaigning against re-armament during the 1950s and in favour of reunification receive little coverage. Several times his activism led him to violent police encounters and arrest. A leafleting campaign he undertook for the (illegal) Communist Party led to several months of solitary confinement and a conviction from a federal court.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Section of the Communist International was a communist party in Czechoslovakia. The party emerged from a split in the German labour movement in the Czechoslovak Republic and functioned parallel to the Czech Marxist left movement for most of 1921. The party represented a more radical position compared to the Czech Marxist left, and fully supported adherence to the Communist International. It eventually merged into the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Karl Kreibich, also known as Karel Kreibich, was a Sudeten German communist politician and author in Czechoslovakia. Kreibich emerged as the main leader of the revolutionary socialist movement amongst German workers in Bohemia after the First World War. He was a leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and a functionary of the Communist International. During the First Czechoslovak Republic, he was elected to parliament thrice. During the Second World War he was part of the exiled Czechoslovak State Council, based in London. After the war he served as Czechoslovak ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement. The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.
Josef Ledwohn was a prominent German trade unionist and Communist Party official who became an anti-Nazi resistance activist in 1933. He resurfaced in what became the British occupation zone after 1945 and was then, between 1946 and 1954, a leading member of the state parliament ("Landtag") in the newly reconfigured state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He was a leading exponent of German reunification, albeit under conditions to be determined by the East German ruling SED party and the residuum in the west of the old German Communist Party.
The German October was a plan of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) to attempt a communist revolution in the Weimar Republic in October 1923, amidst acute political and economic crises in the country. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD), under the United Front strategy, was directed to enter into coalition governments with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the states of Thuringia and Saxony and utilize their resources to assist the revolution. Despite their efforts, the KPD and ECCI leadership found no support and the plan was called off on 21 October. However, local branches of the KPD in Hamburg and Bremen launched their own insurrections, which were suppressed by the local police.
