History
In spring 2012, the Facebook group "Initiative Humanismus" created the "Manifesto of the Initiative Humanismus", which was to serve as the basis for a humanist party. The Party of Humanists was founded on the basis of this document on 4 October 2014 in Berlin. [5] [6] The provisional executive committee consisted of eight spokespersons for various subject areas. [7]
At the first ordinary federal party conference in March 2015, David Helmus was elected as the party's first chairman. [8] Beka Kobaidze served as secretary general, while Ioana Hauke took over as treasurer. According to the chairman, the party had around 75 members in September of the same year. [9]
The Berlin regional association was founded on 2 April 2016. [10] A few months later, the regional associations of Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg were founded. [11] [12] Shortly afterwards, in February of the following year, the Bavarian state association was also founded. [13]
On 21 March 2017, the Party held a joint press conference along with the Pirate Party Germany, the Liberal Democrats, the New Liberals, the Transhuman Party Germany, and the youth organization of The Left to announce a "socialliberale proclamation" and better cooperation among the participating organizations. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
In the 2017 German federal election, the Humanist Party took part in an election for the first time, although it was initially only electable in North Rhine-Westphalia. For this purpose, various teams were set up within the party, which now has around 600 members, for internal party organisation. [19] In the election, the party received 5.991 second votes. [20] After the federal election, the party received an influx of new members. As a result, state associations were founded in Hamburg and Lower Saxony in the same year, as well as state associations in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein in 2018. [21] [22]
In January 2019, Steven Pinker was accepted onto the advisory board of the Humanist Party. One month later, in February 2019, Michael Shermer, founder of the American Skeptics Society, also became a member of the advisory board. [23] [24]
The Humanist Party was registered for the European elections on 15 March 2019, in which it took part with its lead candidate Robin Thiedmann. It achieved 0.2% of 62,604 votes, but missed out on a place in the European Parliament. [25] In 2021, the last four state associations, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Thuringia and Saarland were founded. [26] [27] Shortly after the founding of the Brandenburg state association, the party celebrated its new size of 1800 members. [28] In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first digital federal party conference was held on 29 January and 20 February 2022.
In April 2023, 19-year-old Lasse Schäfer was elected as the new national chairman. This makes him the youngest party chairman in Germany. [29]
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