National-Democratic Party of Germany National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Founded | 25 May 1948 |
Dissolved | 27 March 1990 |
Merged into | Free Democratic Party |
Headquarters | East Berlin, East Germany |
Newspaper | See list
|
Membership (late 1980s) | c. 110,000 [1] |
Ideology | |
National affiliation | Democratic Bloc (1948–1950) National Front (1950–1990) Association of Free Democrats (1990) |
Party flag | |
![]() | |
The National-Democratic Party of Germany (German : National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands, NDPD) was an East German political party that served as a satellite party to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) from 1948 to 1989, representing former members of the Nazi Party, the Wehrmacht and middle classes. It should not be confused with the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), which was a party in West Germany and continues as a minor non-governmental party in the modern united Germany.
The NDPD was co-founded by Lothar Bolz (a former member of the Communist Party of Germany and the National Committee for a Free Germany in the Soviet Union), Wilhelm Adam (a former member of the SA) and others. It was intended to reach out to social groups that had been attracted by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) before 1945 (such as military men and some of the middle classes) and provide them with a political outlet, so that they would not be tempted to support the far-right again or turn to the anti-communist Western Allies. German nationalism had been a potent force during the interwar era, millions of Germans had been members of the NSDAP, and Stalin wanted to use them to create a new pro-Soviet and anti-Western strain in German politics. [6] According to top Soviet diplomat Vladimir Semyonov, Stalin even suggested that they could be allowed to continue publishing their own newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter . German Communists and some Soviet officials were initially appalled by Stalin's ideas and were not enthusiastic in their implementation. [7] Instead, the party launched a regional daily, Mitteldeutsche Neueste Nachrichten , in 1952. [8]
In addition to old NSDAP members, former officers and displaced persons were also to be intercepted by the new party, like the West German All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights and the Austrian Federation of Independents. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Board, meeting in May 1948, stated that "these politically unclear people" should not vote "cadets" for the bourgeois parties CDU and LDPD at the next election, [9] like the West German CDU and FDP.
According to Klaus Schroeder, [10] the NDPD had fewer former Nazis among its ranks than the communist SED had. This was due to the NDPD being much smaller than the SED.
The NDPD was recognized by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany on 16 August 1948 and later sent 52 delegates to the East German parliament, the Volkskammer , as part of the National Front. None of these ever voted against the government on any issue, similarly to other block parties which were effectively puppets of the ruling party, the SED.
Nonetheless, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the NDPD became an independent agent in politics, participating in the only free Volkskammer election ever held (on 18 March 1990). NDPD was not included in the electoral cartel of the other liberal-to-be parties in East Germany and entered the race alone. The results were a debacle: with 44,292 votes (0.38%) they received fewer votes than they (nominally) had members. On 27 March 1990 the NDPD became part of the Bund Freier Demokraten , a short-lived organization that eventually merged into the Free Democratic Party (FDP). [11]
The NDPD programme demanded, among other things, the promotion of the middle class. Bolz was one of the few prominent members who was not a former Nazi and was, in fact, a member of the SED until he founded the new party. He had previously been a member of the Communist Party of Germany until it was suppressed by the Nazis. The NDPD was established by the communist authorities with the aim of claiming support among these ranks of society. The NDPD was organised on democratic centralist grounds and had 110,000 members in the late 1980s.
The party was supposed to represent liberalism, like the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, and (at least initially) also played with the German national sentiment. However, the NDPD was even more loyal to the SED and was reluctant to criticise the government even during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. [4]
After the revolution, there were attempts by the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) [12] and the right-wing populist The Republicans [13] to win the NDPD as an ally, but this failed. [14]
Later, the NDPD understood itself as a centrist party and distanced itself from communist and nationalist/neo-fascist endeavors. Likewise, they were pro-European and rejected designation as "right-wing party", right-wing national or national conservative. It was also argued to rename the party "New Democratic Party of Germany". [12] [15]
Lothar Bolz | 1948–1972 |
Heinrich Homann | 1972–1989 |
Günter Hartmann | 1989–1990 |
Wolfgang Glaeser | 1990 |
Wolfgang Rauls | 1990 |
Election | Votes | % | Seats | +/– |
---|---|---|---|---|
1949 | as part of Democratic Bloc | 15 / 330 [lower-alpha 1] | – | |
1950 | as part of National Front | 30 / 400 | ![]() | |
1954 | 45 / 466 | ![]() | ||
1958 | 45 / 400 | ![]() | ||
1963 | 45 / 434 | ![]() | ||
1967 | 45 / 434 | ![]() | ||
1971 | 45 / 434 | ![]() | ||
1976 | 45 / 434 | ![]() | ||
1981 | 52 / 500 | ![]() | ||
1986 | 52 / 500 | ![]() | ||
1990 | 44,292 | 0.4% | 2 / 400 | ![]() |
The Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany was an East German political party. The DBD was founded in 1948. It had 52 representatives in the Volkskammer, as part of the National Front. The DBD participated in all GDR cabinets. The founding of the DBD was an attempt by the SED to weaken the influence of CDU/LDPD in the rural community by establishing a party loyal to the SED. The leadership cadre came mainly from the ranks of the SED. In the late 1980s, the party had 117,000 members.
The Liberal Democratic Party of Germany was a political party in East Germany. Like the other allied bloc parties of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the National Front, it had 52 representatives in the People's Chamber.
The National Front of the German Democratic Republic was officially an alliance of parties and mass organisations (1950–1990). In fact, only one party held power in the GDR, namely the communist SED. The National Front was an instrument to exercise control over the other parties and organisations. The precursor of the National Front was the Democratic Bloc.
The German Democratic Republic was created as a socialist republic on 7 October 1949 and began to institute a government based on the government of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. The equivalent of the Communist Party in East Germany was the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, which along with other parties, was part of the National Front of Democratic Germany. It was created in 1946 through the merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. Following German reunification, the SED was renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which eventually merged with the West German Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice to form the modern Left Party.
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.
The Ulbricht Group was a group of exiled members of the Communist Party of Germany and the National Committee for a Free Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht, who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945. Composed of functionaries from the KPD and ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, their job was to seek out anti-fascist individuals and prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Berlin. There were two additional regional groups, the Ackermann Group in Saxony and the Sobottka Group in Mecklenburg. Many of the group's members later became high-level officials in the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
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.
Friedrich Wehmer was a regional politician in Germany during the Weimar period and a national politician in the German Democratic Republic after the war.
Herbert Täschner was a politician in the German Democratic Republic who later in his career became a publisher. Between 1950 and 1954 he served as General Secretary of the country's Liberal Democratic Party.
Arthur Lieutenant was a German Liberal politician.
Gustav Siemon was a German politician. At a national level he was a member of the East German National legislature (Volkskammer). Regionally, he led the National Democratic Party (NPDP) in Mecklenburg.
Marlies Deneke is a German politician.
Franz Dahlem was a German politician. Dahlem was a leading official of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and, after 1945, of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED).
Roberta Gropper was a German Communist political activist who became a member of the Reichstag in 1930. In 1934 she fled to the Soviet Union where she fell victim to party factionalism and spent more than three years in a concentration camp: this was followed by a Siberian exile. She was able to return to Berlin in 1947 and became a mainstream politician in the German Democratic Republic .
Herta Geffke was a German activist and politician who resisted Nazism. After 1945 she became a member of the Central Party Control Commission of the SED in the Soviet occupation zone, identified as a "true Stalinist" and feared on account of her interrogation methods.
Friedel Apelt was a German political activist, trades union official and politician (KPD/SED). During the Nazi years she participated actively in anti-fascist resistance, and spent much of the time in prison or as a concentration camp internee. After the war she was able to resume her political career in the Soviet occupation zone.
Ilse Rodenberg was a Hamburg typist who became an actress and, later, an influential East German theatre director. She combined this with a political career, sitting as a member of the East German parliament for four decades between 1950 and 1990. She was a member not of the ruling SED (party) but of the National Democratic Party of Germany, one of the smaller Block Parties which contributed a semblance of pluralism to the country's political structure.
Arnold Gohr was a German clerical worker who became a trade unionist and activist. After 1945 he entered mainstream politics in East Berlin. As the Soviet occupation zone evolved into a Soviet sponsored one-party dictatorship, he never joined the ruling party, remaining instead a leading "collaborationist" member of the eastern version of the Christian Democratic Union. He became a party chairman and served between 1948 and 1958 as "deputy lord mayor" of Berlin, a period during which the increasingly divided city's constitutional status and future were contentious and ambiguous on a number of different levels.
State elections were held in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany on 20 October 1946 to elect the state legislatures of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. They were the only elections held in the future territory of East Germany before the establishment of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, and the only free and fair elections in that part of Germany between 1932 and the Peaceful Revolution.
Wolfgang Rauls was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He was the last leader of the National Democratic Party during the Wende, before its eventual merger into the Free Democratic Party. After German reunification, he entered state politics in Saxony-Anhalt, serving as Minister for the Environment and, eventually, Deputy Minister-President in the CDU cabinets from 1990 to 1994.