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The CDU and German political culture: A confessional party response to a changing nation

Byrne, Christopher Raymond, M.A.

The American University, 1991

Copyright ©1991 by Byrne, Christopher Raymond. All rights reserved.

UMI 300 N.ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 . ' THE CDU AND GERMAN POLITICAL CULTURE: A CONFESSIONAL PARTY

RESPONSE TO A CHANGING NATION

by

Christopher Raymond Byrne

submitted to the

Faculty of the School of International Service

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in

International Affairs

Signatures of Committee:

Chair:

kjrusa CjO G-ry Dean T^<-, I ^ / Datef i / /

1991

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016 7227

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY © COPYRIGHT

by CHRISTOPHER RAYMOND BYRNE

1991

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE CDU AND GERMAN POLITICAL CULTURE: A CONFESSIONAL PARTY RESPONSE TO A CHANGING NATION

BY

Christopher Raymond Byrne

ABSTRACT

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of the Federal Republic of Germany is an interconfessional Sammelpartei

(catch-all party) based on the Catholic social principles of personalism, solidarism, and subsidiarity. This paper examines the development of the CDU since 1950, the way it shaped the political culture of the Federal Republic of

Germany, how well it has held to its principles, and its ability to maintain itself as the leading party in the united Germany based on CDU election campaigns, CDU history and the philosophical and ideological writings of leading

CDU intellectuals. The CDU can take credit for helping to lead Germany to democracy and a functioning civil society; however, its abandonment of many of its Catholic philosophical roots in favor of protecting the economy may hurt its chances for leadership as it tries to transform

Eastern Germany and serve as a role model for Christian Democrats in Eastern Europe.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Dr. Albert Mott, School of

International Service, and Dr. Saul Newman, School of Public

Affairs, for their guidance, suggestions, and support during the preparation of this thesis. I also wish to thank Mr. William Baker, School of International Service Graduate

Office, and Mr. David Klein, Georgetown University, for their editorial assistance and encouragement throughout.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

The CDU as the Focus of Study

2. POLITICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY ...... 9

Political Catholicism

The Party System 3. CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC THEORY AND ITS INCARNATION IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF G E R M A N Y ...... 34

Personalism, Solidarity, and Subsidiarity

The CDU Party Program as it Evolved in the Late 1940s

4. CDU PARTY HISTORY FROM 1950 57

The Role of Konrad Adenauer

The Post-Adenauer Years

The CDU in the 1980s

Conclusion

iv 5. THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC UNION AND ITS NATIONAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS ...... 88

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

6. CONCLUSION ...... 122

The New Political Culture in Germany

APPENDIX

A. TOP FIVE LEADING ISSUES BY PARTY FOR 1949-1980 . 133

B. THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS IN RELATION TO THE STATE PIUS XII'S 1942 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE ...... 134

REFERENCES ...... 135

V CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Thomas Mann in 1918 described politics as

"uncouth, vulgar and stupid." That politics taught "envy, insolence, and covetousness...causing the defilement of the national life....I do not want politics. I want practicality, order, decency" (Reichel, 1980, p. 384). This study deals with political culture and the role of a party in German political culture. Both terms, political culture and party, are the source of seemingly endless debate, both in English and in German. How the CDU sees itself in this debate will be examined.

Geoffrey Pridham (1977), in his study of Christian

Democracy in West Germany, addresses the problem of studying an individual political party. He sees three possible approaches: focus on party organization; its policies and goal orientation; and how it governs the country and its response to political developments. This study is a combination of the second and third approaches, with the main emphasis on CDU policies and goals in response to political developments. Pridham's work focuses on party organization for the most part; however, he encourages further study of the CDU in all three areas "because of the absence of a comprehensive and up-to-date academic study on the subject in either English or German" (Pridham, 1977, p.

15).

In reaction to Germany's authoritarian past, the Allies and their German assistants created a Parteienstaat, a political system based on political parties, in the West in

1949. This is in contrast to the totalitarian Party State of the Nazi period, in which the National Socialist Workers Party controlled all aspects of government. In the

Parteienstaat, the political parties are responsible for all political decisions. Article 21 of the Basic Law mandates formation of the "political will of the people" to the parties. As such, the effects of party doctrines and ideas, as well as voter responses to them, are reflected in the political culture of the nation. By contrast, the numerous and fractious parties of the Weimar Republic were unable to establish themselves as legitimate representatives of the people's will, especially in the face of possible presidential rule by decree. President Paul von Hindenburg did so from 1925 until Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and the passage of the Enabling Act in 1933. In Hitler's fever to rule by decree, the Reichstag ceased to exist as an operational entity in any democratic sense. The party landscape of the immediate post-war period contained many parties, ranging from the Communists on the left to the Socialist Reichs Party on the right. The two major parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the

Christian Democratic Union (CDU), represented an "antebellum mass integration party" or Weltanschauungspartei (SPD) and a

"postwar catch-all party" or Sammelpartei/Volkspartei. The

SPD had acted before the war as a party of the working class. It saw that the bourgeois parties, for the most part, were unwilling to change from "clubs for parliamentary representation into agencies for mass politics"

(Kirchheimer, 1966, p. 183). The SPD, as a working-class party, had a socialist Weltanschauung and worked for the democratic participation and social integration of all class groups in an industrialized socialist state.

The Federal Republic of Germany celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 1989. Over those forty years, the CDU, in partnership with its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian

Social Union (CSU), was a member of the coalition government for twenty-seven years (1949-1969, 1982-1989). From 1957 to

1961, the CDU/CSU had an absolute majority in the Bundestag.

The legacy of the CDU is noticeable in the basic structures of the Federal Republic— in its Basic Law, in its economic system, and in its values. One sometimes speaks of the "CDU-State" when describing the German state and its functions (Heussen, 1982).

The CDU, unlike the Social Democratic Party (SPD), began as a new party, geared toward the Federal Republic's Parteienstaat system. The CDU's precursor was the Catholic

Zentrum of the Weimar era, a quasi-Weltanschauungspartei which worked for the social integration and political participation of all Catholics. Because of its denominational focus, the Zentrum could never become a mass party, since it excluded non-Catholics (Kirchheimer, 1966, p. 183). The CDU attempted to be many things to many people— interconfessional, classless, and non-ideological— in other words, a "catch-all party." Irving (1979, p. 113) calls the CDU "dull, bourgeois, pragmatic, almost hysterically anti-Communist and excessively critical of political 'extremism', but at the same time staunchly committed to parliamentary democracy and human rights...."

CDU popularity during the 1950s was so great that it can be argued that the post-1959, pragmatic, centrist SPD is as much a product of the CDU as the "CDU-State" is. The CDU as the Focus of Study

Given the importance of political parties to the life of the Federal Republic, studying individual parties provides interesting insights to the state of the nation and its attitudes toward democracy, politics, ideals and values, and its past— its political culture. During the 1950s, the

CDU was able to effectively respond to the demands of the electorate for stability and economic growth. However, the

SPD has transformed itself from a Weltanschauungspartei to a

Volkspartei, like the CDU. Younger generations, from the students of 1968 to the Greens of the 1980, question German political institutions as they are outlined in the Basic Law and are impatient with the Parteienstaat. Terrorism, especially in the 1970s, threatened the "law and order" that the CDU prided itself on establishing in the Federal

Republic. The ideals and values, the political attitudes and self-perception of Germans— their political culture has changed dramatically since 1949. Has the CDU grasped these changes and sought to represent them in their programs and actions, as a true "catch-all" or Volkspartei should? Is the CDU, a party claiming an interconfessional basis (in its party programs and in its voting base), able to effectively act as a party of "Christian values" in an increasingly secularized nation? Does the CDU want to? Since the end of the Adenauer era in 1966, Helmut Kohl, Kurt Biedenkopf, and their colleagues have been able to create a new party, appealing to young and old, white-collar and blue-collar, and applying what they learned from thirteen years in opposition (1969-1982). Or does the CDU reflect older values and political ideas, with which it is able to attract votes in what is still an essentially conservative and un­ political nation? With unification and an additional seventeen million citizens, unfamiliar with the "CDU-State," will the CDU be able apply its standard formulas successfully or will it be forced, due to bumbling and intransigence, back into the opposition?

Sources

Much of what appears in German about the CDU was written by CDU members or leaders (Schonbohm, 1985; Kohl,

1973, 1976; Biedenkopf, 1975, 1989) or by opponents of the party hoping to discredit it (Engelmann, 1980; Social

Democratic Party, 1973). Such sources can be highly useful and are valuable; however, whenever possible, I have turned to English-language analyses and empirical studies in

English and German whenever possible.

The richest sources of information on the CDU, besides those items produced by the CDU or its members, are analyses of Bundestag elections and campaigns. The debate among commentators and political scientists surrounding each election in Germany, as well as actual voting results and data, provides guides to the state of the political culture at that moment in time. There have been twelve Bundestag elections since 1949 (1949, 1953, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1969,

1972, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1990). The CDU/CSU received more votes than the SPD in each election except 1972 (when it received 44.9 percent of the vote to the SPD's 45.8 percent) (Biedenkopf, 1990, p. 24). This study will focus on the elections of 1957, 1969, 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1983 as they had the greatest impact on the CDU's response to the political situation: In 1957, the CDU won an absolute majority (50.2 percent); in 1969 and 1972, the CDU experienced its worst defeats; in 1976 and 1980, the CDU did well, but was unable to overcome the SPD/FDP opposition; and in 1983, the CDU regained the chancellor's office.

Before examining the elections, however, it is necessary to lay a definitional and historical groundwork of

German political culture. Also important are the roots of

German Christian Democracy, not only the roots of the CDU, but the development of what is called "political

Catholicism" in the Federal Republic. The CDU has always been inter-confessional, but its main theoretical repository and source of support has always been in Catholicism. An understanding of Christian Democratic theory is essential to understanding much (but by no means all, especially since

1972) of the CDU's party programs. CHAPTER 2

POLITICAL CULTURE IN GERMANY The political culture in which the CDU was established contained the seeds for the reestablishment of an authoritarian system which placed the state above democracy.

For the United States and the United Kingdom in 1945 democracy was a way of life and the state was a part of the democratic system. For the Germans in 1945, as described by

Leonard Krieger in The German Idea of Freedom (1957), the state was "the law-and-order authority standing above society, guaranteeing unity and efficiency, the powerful protector standing above party" (cited in Bracher,

1971/1975, p. 6).

The state, then, held a singular place in the German mind. As it developed during the late nineteenth century, the state has "rights against the individual; its 'member' has obligations, among them that of obeying without protest.

There are individual rights as well, but there may, indeed must, be 'abolished' in the superior rights of the state"

(Dahrendorf, 1967, p. 202).

At the same time, the German people had experienced from 1871 to 1918, an "authoritarian welfare state," designed by Bismarck, which provided for the workers and allowed for some bourgeois entrepreneurship, but was autocratic and hierarchically structured. The military saw itself as the vanguard of the education of society. Its values of order, duty, and obedience were diffused throughout society (Conradt, 1989, p. 155). For the bourgeoise, left out of the political process for the most part, politics was administration, therefore good administration was good politics. Bracher (1971/1975, p. 9) points out that the bourgeois mentality of Wilhelmine

Germany was the "worship of success." Good administration allowed for economic success; therefore, the bourgeoise supported the political system that allowed them to succeed.

At the same time, those who were dependent on the

"authoritarian welfare state" were "treated like children of the patriarchal family" (Dahrendorf, 1967, p. 63). For the workers, there was no chance of becoming active participants in the broader society.

Weimar Germany continued these traditions in much the same fashion. Despite having a democratic constitution, the division and the factionalism in the Reichstag combined with the weak economy and feeling of defeat, exacerbated the feeling that democracy "as a way of life" would not work and threatened the stabililty of the nation. At the same time, 11 according to Helmuth Plessner (1959, p. 32), Germany attempted to overcome its feelings of inferiority as a result of World War I by dissociating itself from value system of the United States, France, and the United

Kingdom.

This value system of the Western Allies differed strongly from that of the Germans in their view of the state. In the United States, France, and the United

Kingdom, the state has never had a superordinate place above the civil society. During the Empire, the "semi-democracy"

(Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 3) of Weimar, and Hitler's Total

State, the needs of the state and its efficient organization always had preference over individual or societal needs. Civil society, the locus of individual and group interests, hardly existed, according to Dahrendorf (1967), and was mainly restricted to the family, which traditionally was run as a patriarchal mini-state, much like the government. This view of the state as all important and all powerful can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century and the influence of Prussian ideas in the post-Napoleonic states and principalities. Prussian foreign policy placed more importance on national freedom and unity than on individual freedom and constitutional government. The success of

Prussia's policy, evident in the establishment of the German Empire in 1871, meant that until 1945 the state, rather than the individuals living under it, made and enforced decisions regarding its structure, administration, and maintenance.

Even in Weimar, "the state was placed on a pedestal as the guarantor of continuity and good order, standing above party and above the interplay of democratic forces" (Bracher,

1971/1975, p. 13).

Given the power of the state in reality and in the minds of the German people, perhaps the destruction of the

German state in 1945 was the only way that the

Parteienstaat, in concept a state "open to society, markedly democratic and no longer unpolitical" (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 29), could be established. Germany lost the war in 1918, but the state structure remained intact, despite

"democracy", including the bureaucracy and most aspects of the military. In addition, the patriarchal ideas of the state remained fixed in the minds of ordinary Germans as well as many of its elected leaders and bureaucrats, which prevented the formation of the civil society necessary to create a truly functioning democracy. In 1945, Germany was physically destroyed, its military power decimated, its rank and file and officer corps dead or in prison camps, its territory occupied. The victors, hoping to avoid a disatrous repetition of past events, removed the military as 13 factor and imposed their value system on the Germans.

"Militant democracy" in the Western zones was to become the way of life. Denazification and reeducation would allow the

German people to discover free expression of opinion, including critique of the government. The political parties would no longer be below the state, they would become part of the functioning of the state, responsible for enacting the will of the people as they directed through organized interest groups, their parliamentary representatives, and the ballot box.

The CDU, like many Germans, retained its psychic attachment to a separately functioning state for at least the first twenty years of the Federal Republic. Most significantly, this is reflected in Bracher's (1971/1975, p.

220) description of the CDU as "a party of prominent personalities rather than of members." Among these prominent personalities was Konrad Adenauer, who although a democrat, embodied a fatherly leader and, by extension, the state, much as Kaiser Wilhelm had in the early part of this century. However, the state established in the Federal

Republic was quantitatively different from that of the

Reich, and for that the CDU can take some credit.

The CDU was established in the late 1940s in a Germany that was rebuilding itself from nothing. Part of the CDU's early success can be attributed to its close cooperation with the Allied authorities, especially in the British Zone, where Konrad Adenauer lived. The attitudes Germans had toward politics and government were laden with images from twelve years of National Socialism, of Gleichschaltung that politicized all aspects of every day life. The CDU was attempting to make a fresh start; thus, they called themselves a union, not a party, to avoid authoritarian overtones. Nevertheless, the citizens of the Federal

Republic, no matter how hard they tried, were unable to shake off years of living in authoritarian and totalitarian societies.

"What of a people that neither celebrates nor distorts its history, but ignores it?" (Stein, 1977, p. 218) Such was the case in 1949. For many, Germany was starting at "year zero," and many citizens refused to become involved again in the dirty business of politics. Uwe Kitzinger noted in 1960 that Germans in 1949 were willing to participate in the

Federal Republic at least as far as voting, although they might not have believed that voting would make a difference.

The new Federal symbols— the eagle, the Weimar flag, the new national anthem, "Unity and Law and Freedom"— in any event were of little help since they were intended not to reignite nationalism. 15

Germans, who during Weimar seemed to agree with Thomas

Mann and were non-political, had, by the 1950s, become passionately and aggressively so. (Allemann, 1956, p. 104).

The attitudes toward the state and toward politics and ways of behaving learned and relearned over the previous decades were not erased by replacing the old political structures with new ones and conducting denazification programs. As a result, German attitudes regarding politics and democratic institutions, the stuff of political culture, became de­ politicized (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 153) and voting became another duty that citizens performed for the state, along with paying taxes and obeying the law, that did not impinge on the "private virtues" that Dahrendorf (1967) considered primary after an era of collectivism.

Politics continued to be seen as part of an established order and as a means of achieving prestige, rather than as a mediator of interests. Bracher (1971/1975, p. 8) notes that viewing politics and the state in such an exalted position continued a "spirit of submission" rooted in the authoritarian system established by Bismarck in 1871.

Perhaps in an environment of rebuilding and reestablishing an economy in a new state with an apparently alien type of government, fear of change and of democratic upheaval S la

Weimar were unwanted. For many Germans good administration 16 was good politics. Voting was all that was necessary to keep the system going. The bureaucrats would do the rest.

The CDU and its State attempted to reduce the impact of political democracy by attempting to bridge differences between workers and management, Catholics and Protestants,

Northerners and Southerners. However, as former President

Theodor Heuss (Free Democrat) wrote, the state is "the reflection of the community which has brought it into being, it is no abstract notion for man neither is man for it"

(Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 161). In 1949, the German people wanted a state that would take care of their interests and needs with as little input from them as possible, much as it had between 1871 and 1945. The CDU, as embodied by Konrad

Adenauer, was willing and able to provide a state that concerned itself with economics (Erhard's Social Market

Economy) and foreign policy; left much of daily administration to the Lander; and required only the occasional vote.

The Adenauer "Chancellor Democracy" provided order and security, but, as Bracher (1971/1975, p. 215) points out, maintained a status quo of economic security at the cost of unification. As Verba noted in 1965 (p. 141), the German's viewed the political system as an instrument that served their needs, "an economic and social service agency rather than a guarantor of freedom and democracy." The CDU of the 1950s embodied Max Weber's definition of real government— in the daily administration (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 18-19).

Part of the reason for the CDU/CSU absolute majority in 1957 and the SPD Bad Godesberg program of 1959 was a popular desire to maintain this system. Their ability to change it was limited— by their own choice. Democracy and the

Economic Miracle were connected, in that voting for the CDU ensured continuing economic success. Extremes of the most innocuous kind were avoided. For example, despite a cult of respect reverence for Adenauer, even among non-CDU voters, an EMNID survey in October 1958 showed that only about 10 percent of Germans thought Adenauer's work was "very good" (or "very bad"). If Germans were socialized to view the family as a mini-state, with the father as its head, then

Konrad Adenauer was part of the search for a "national" father (Stein, 1977, p. xix), to replace the discredited

Hitler and long-gone Kaisers, a Bismarck, and a Hindenburg.

Despite an aloofness from the political input, economic issues have always figured prominently in attitudes toward politics. Since 1951, the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research has annually asked what the most important question with which all Germans (state and society) should be occupied. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, economic 18 issues were considered most important, despite an increase in the 1960s of concern about education, pollution, crime control, and reform (Baker, Dalton, & Hildebrand, 1981, pp.

93-94).

In spite of the changes which occurred in the 1960s— student unrest, recession, an SDP/FDP coalition, most

Germans by 1971 regarded the state as something to be feared and honored. Voting was considered a duty like paying taxes, immunizations and school. To the state belonged politics; to the civil society belonged political parties, the economy, research institutes, interest groups, and families. In a survey conducted in the Federal Republic and

France, respondents were asked what they thought of first when they heard the word "state". Twenty-four percent of French respondents said a union of citizens and 23 percent said government. While 40 percent of Germans responded government, 19 percent said territory and 12 percent said laws. Only four percent responded with political institutions (Greiffenhagen, 1979, February 5, p. 82).

Germans in 1979 were still making a differentiation between themselves and the state— only four percent saw that political institutions or a union of citizens was what the state in a democracy was all about. However, the "new" political system established after

1945 and its "militant democracy" began to show important results. During his term as federal president (1969-1974), President Gustav Heinemann was asked if he loved the state.

He replied that he loved his wife, a response that found resonance in many Germans (Haffner, 1980, p. 28). President

Heinemann was saying, in effect, that the state was no longer an object of reverence, to be obeyed and protected, no longer "a sovereign entity over and above social and political groupings" (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 6). The

Germans had begun to accept the Anglo-Saxon notion that democracy meant the "adoption of the state by the people"

(Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 7). The state was beginning to be viewed as the servant of the citizen, rather than the omniscient parent.

This attitude, that the state cannot or should not be an object of devotion, was even more pronounced in the

1980s. A 1986 Allensbach poll showed that 44 percent of

German voters rejected the power monopoly of the state

(Biedenkopf, 1989, p. 29). Such attitudes will find more adherents as those voters who were politically socialized since 1949 become a larger segment of the population. In

1970 almost half of those over the age of fifteen were politically socialized before World War II. However, by 1980, 40 percent of those over fifteen were politically socialized after 1950 (Reichel, 1980, p. 112). Slowly, the democratic process, combined with economic stability (compared to the rest of the world), political stability of the CDU-State, and political education have led to increased feelings of political effectiveness in the German citizenry.

Baker et al. (1981, p. 51) also believe that older Germans, socialized before 1950, may accept the younger generation's example and increase their involvement in the democratic process. Also, as educational levels and incomes rise, political participation may increase as well. However political participation increases in Germany, the fact remains that the political system of the "party state," a

"child of the CDU" as Padgett and Burkett (1986, p. 95) call it, has an authoritarian tinge that student protest and groups such as the Greens have sought to counter. From 1949 to 1969, the Federal Republic "was controlled by the secular trinity composed of the new political system [the CDU-

State] , the Economic Miracle, and the ruling party, the CDU"

(Padgett & Burkett, 1986, p. 95).

Political Catholicism

An important aspect of German political culture in the

1950s, and of reduced importance since, is the position of

Catholics in Germany. Although Catholics represented almost 21

50 percent of the West German population before unification, they represented only about 30 percent before 1945. During the 1870s, the Church was one of the targets of Bismarck's

Kulturkampf, and as such, German Catholics felt it necessary to organize politically. The Zentxrum party was at the forefront of political

Catholicism during the Weimar Republic and was represented in the Reichstag for the fourteen years of the Republic's existence. Quink's 1987 study indicates that for political

Catholics in Weimar, having a confessional demarcation was necessary to encourage Catholics to become involved in the political process and thereby obtain long-term influence in government. This meant emphasizing the German Catholic milieu and its party.

Catholics, despite some persecution, were able to maintain some sort of separateness during the Third Reich with the signing of the 1933 Reichskonkordat between the

Nazis and the Vatican which guaranteed a religious school system supported by the state (Conradt, 1989, p. 110). To its own detriment, though, the Zentrum voted for the 1933

Enabling Act giving power to Hitler. However, with the end of the war, the division of Germany and the influx of large numbers of Catholics to the Western zones from the East, political Catholicism as a movement lost much of its 22 momentum as Catholics almost achieved parity with

Protestants in the population.

In addition, political Catholicism lost momentum in the establishment of the CDU as an interconfessional party open to Catholics and Protestants. Nevertheless, and in spite of the Bavarian CSU, which emphasized the Catholic nature of that state, the Zentrum party survived, mainly on the edges of political life, stripped of much of its political support and no longer in control of a Catholic trade union as interconfessional unions became the order of the day.

Another important aspect of this decline, which affected all segments of the German population, especially in the late 1960s and beyond, was the increasing influence of mass media on political socialization of the population, especially of the youth. Mass media, according to Quink

(1987, p. 317), "milieuized" the teaching of values and behavior for the entire nation. As such, Catholic systems of teaching values and norms lost cohesion in the face of secularized, national radio and television networks. This meant that the "first column of the separation mechanism

(Abgrenzungsmechanismus) of Catholic subculture" was destroyed.

Since the late 1960s, Catholic sub-organizations have stagnated or lost members, increasing the proportion and 23 influence of elderly members. At the same time, the dissolution of a specifically Catholic milieu has meant the loss of political Catholicism's microstructures. Ultimately this led to structural losses in the CDU, a party founded initially on membership in parish churches and Catholic clubs.

Nevertheless, Reichel's 1980 volume notes that the

Catholic Church (not necessarily its individual members or societies) continues to present its values orientation as needful of state acknowledgement. He remarks (pp. 159-160) that although Catholics increasingly ignore the Church on such issues as abortion and contraception, the Church "calls on the state and wants to move it to recognize its basic convictions (Grundwerttiberzeugungen)." General loss of meaning of religion

For the Federal Republic, religion as a meaningful part of everyday life has steadily declined since the 1950s. For a party with "Christian" in its name, this change in the political culture may have fateful ramifications. For example, according to a 1982 Allensbach poll of 20 to 29- year-olds, 20 percent thought a strong religious belief was especially important, but 50 percent thought religion was out-of-date and irrelevant. Only 25 percent thought the task of the Christian was to try and change society (a 24 concept important for Christian Democratic theory). Sixty percent believed that a Christian cannot change society and instead should work to change him/herself and live like a

Christian (Biedenkopf, 1990, pp. 66-67).

Whereas the Zentrum party of the Weimar era attempted to place specifically Catholic concerns and values before the Reichstag, the post-war parties, both CDU and SPD, have tried to overcome confessional barriers partially as a way of avoiding fractiousness in government, as well as to establish broad electoral bases that will maintain their position in government. Nevertheless, religion may not be totally meaningless in the political equation. Baker et al.

(1981, p. 201-202) found that for many Germans, political parties are not the main political reference point, rather, in choosing a party identification in a poll or in voting, party labels may represent their church or their social class— organizations which serve as "politically decisive reference group[s]," rather than the actual party itself.

The general loss of meaning of religion does not signify that religion will disappear from the political/social milieu in the near future. Gunlicks'

(1990, p. 17) article notes that groups such as Rev. Moon's

Unification Church, Jehovah's Witnesses and Hare Krishnas have become increasingly popular in the 1970s and 1980s. In the five new Lander, these groups have already made inroads, including the Mormons, who recently erected a temple there.

Ninety percent of Germans in 1967 believed in God or a higher being. In 1979, a majority of Germans (79 percent) still believed in God or a higher being and 38 percent of

Catholics still attended church almost every Sunday.

Political Catholicism may have lost much of its momentum, but the fact that large numbers of Germans still had some kind of religious sensibility may indicate that what the CDU initially stood for, and it continues to say in its party programs and in its Basic Program, may not be as much of a liability as an overview of the decline of political

Catholicism would indicate. The continued success of the decidedly secular Social-Liberal coalition of 1969-1982 is interesting to note considering that “religion, and to some extent region and rural-urban residence, show a persisting influence on partisan choice, in contrast to the marked decline in the importance of social class" (Baker et al.,

1981, p. 193). However, the infusion of millions of new, mostly Protestant, Eastern Germans, many raised in a de facto atheistic state may reduce the "persistence" of religion as an influence, at least in the short run. 26

The Party System

Important to the study of an individual political party is defining its place within the party system. Although traditionally the three major German parties or party groups

(in the case of the CDU/CSU) represent divergent histories and ideologies, the German voter's fear of a non-coalition government, stemming from memories of the Nazi past as well as a lack of balance during the CDU/CSU absolute majority under Adenauer (1957-1961), means that no party since 1961 has been able to obtain an absolute majority of votes in a general election (even the CDU/CSU absolute majority in 1957 was a scant 50.2 percent). As a result, the CDU, SPD, and

FDP are in a triangular balancing act, with each party sharing common views against the others, which serve them in coalition and in opposition. Pappi (as noted in Smith,

1983, pp. 175-176) describes the three linkages. The CDU and FDP are connected by "bourgeois" issues such as the

Social Market Economy and private property issues. The CDU and the SPD are connected by corporatist issues, including social elements: in the case of the CDU, Catholic social togetherness; and in the case of the SPD, the trade union movement. The SPD and FDP are connected by social-liberal issues such as individual rights and the secular characteristics of society. All of these combinations have 27 been in power in the Federal Republic since 1949 (except for the 1957-1961 period of CDU/CSU absolute majority). A quick survey of the five leading issues for each party between

1949 and 1980 shows the party overlap on each side of the triangle. (Appendix A)

In studying the effects of changing political culture on the CDU it is important to remember these relationships.

As Baker et al. noted in 1981 (p. 232), the "mental pictures the electorate has of what the parties are and what they stand for, are likely causes of change in electoral trends."

During the 1950s especially, even in coalition with the FDP and smaller parties (1949-1957), the "C" of the CDU represented the spirit (Zeitgeist) of the 1950s. According to Quink (1987, p. 315, 318), the CDU at this time made an impression on (wirkte hier pragend fur) the political culture of the Federal Republic. During the 1950s the "C" meant Catholic above anything else. The interconfessional aspect of the party, despite the highly visible role of

Protestant economics minister Ludwig Erhard, was not truly emphasized widely until the 1960s— that is, after Adenauer's demise. Quink says that emphasizing the interconfessional was vital for the CDU's political viability.

In 1959, as the SPD's Bad Godesburg program moved the party closer to the goals and ideals of the CDU/FDP coalition, it also opened the door for the Catholic Church to view the SPD as a party with which it could work effectively. The 1966-1969 Grand Coalition of the CDU and

SPD showed Catholics that, indeed, the SPD was a party they could vote for with a clear conscience. Vatican II and more liberal subcultures within German Catholicism allowed the SPD to work inside Catholic party politics, namely southern

Germany, where the SPD was able to gain a foothold in the urban areas of Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart and the border regions of Hof, Coburg and Kronach.

Another aspect of the party system in Germany was how voters influence party behavior while parties are trying to influence voters (Dalton, 1985). In the case of the CDU, their attempts to establish themselves as a genuine catch­ all or Volkspartei were hindered by adherence to the idea that they were the only party capable of running the government against the backdrop of squabbling among the liberal and conservative wings of the party throughout the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. If Kirchheimer (1966, p. 193) is correct and parties who wish to become

Sammelparteien and to attract large numbers of voters need to "modulate...interest group relations in such a way so as not to discourage potential voters who identify themselves with other interests," then the CDU, despite a large voting 29 base among Catholics, the old middle-class of small businessmen and the self-employed, rural dwellers and farmers, was unable or unwilling to expand its voting base beyond these groups until they were out of government (1969) and had attempted and failed to take over again after an abortive vote of no confidence (1972).

To compound the CDU's problems in the late 1960s and early 1970s, their claim of being the only legitimate party of government was contradicted by changes in the party system which had been working since the SPD adopted their

Bad Godesberg program in 1959. Kurt Schumacher's vision of a "truly democratic," socialist, working-class SPD and

Federal Republic, leading to a neutral, socialist, unified

Germany was unsuccessful at the polls and became increasingly moreso after Schumacher's death in 1952. The

SPD decided to give up Marxism and transform itself into a social-liberal party. In other words, the SPD gave up its historical role as a mass-integration party,

Vieltans chaining s parte i , and join the CDU in the fight for the center as a catch-all party, Sammelpartei (Otto

Kirchheimer's term) or Volkspartei.

The Bad Godesberg program allowed Catholics and others who "earlier never would have dreamed of voting for something other than the CDU" (Haffner, 1980, p. 54) to view the SPD as a viable alternative— a party that accepted the market economy and many of the social ideas behind Erhard's

Social Market Economy; a party that was no longer summarily rejected by the Catholic Church; and was no longer overtly anti-religious. The SPD had little to lose in this policy change since their core of voters had nowhere else to go

(the FDP was perhaps too beholden to private property).

Because the party had a large membership, the CDU was threatened with a loss of support by voters who supported them, but were not members and who were anti-socialist, but did not view themselves as totally in harmony with the interests of business and the educated elites.

In effect, the SPD moved to the center, which the CDU had staked out and verbally defended since 1949. Seen in this way, Bracher (1971/1975, p. 213) is wrong when he asserts that by "'becoming all things to all men'...[the parties were] sacrificing not only revered political traditions, but also the composition of their body of support." The SPD was able to establish a coalition government with Adenauer's party seven years after changing their program. The SPD may have abandoned some political traditions, but it was the CDU who lost its body of support in the process. In the 1950s and 1960s a conservative Germany followed a conservative Adenauer and his party, as shown in two of their slogans: "No experiments" (1957) and "Security for All" (1965). By 1972, however, the affluent Germans were beginning to look at new issues and new concerns. In trying to be all things to all people, the CDU began including

"progress" (Fortschritt) in its slogans, as in the slogan

"Progress based on stability" of the 1970s.

By the 1970s and 1980s both parties were publicly espousing many of the same goals, but recommending different means to achieve them (see Appendix A). Of course, as

Kolinsky (1984) noted, mentioning the importance of women's issues, youth problems, and the needs of the elderly became absolutely necessary for every party. However, for the CDU the radiation of well-being from the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in

Bonn did not penetrate the party structures. Women were underrepresented in party offices and the SPD and Greens had larger youth organizations than did the CDU. Does this still qualify the CDU as a Volkspartei? It may if one accepts Haffner's (1980, p. 113) idea that all the voters really want is a government and a reserve government; in other words, two parties or party groups who can smoothly trade places and who "avoid losing themselves in tactics, 32 finesse, 'politics' in the old, bad sense, 'party squabbles'."

According to Padgett and Burkett (1986, p. 85), the CDU is able to reflect the views of a wide number of voters.

The CDU was able to introduce new political values into the German political system and ultimately established a new political culture based on new symbols. These symbols included a functioning party system, a market economy with strong social underpinnings, and a commitment to the West— in short, a society and state based on "Christian," even humanistic principles.

Did the CDU let their "new political culture" get ahead of themselves? Were some of the new symbols simply old, authoritarian ones reworked to be acceptable in the new

Germany— such as the "Chancellor Democracy," the strong support from industry and big business, and a Catholic

Church that until recently regarded the 1933 Reichskonkordat as a binding document? It is interesting to note that during the years of the Social-Liberal coalition in the

1970s many of the "skeletons" in the closet of the CDU-State began to be revealed and argued over, such as the debate over whether to grant the Federal Government emergency powers in time of crisis or the barring of "radicals" from the civil service— conservative views supported by the CDU during the Grand Coalition and in opposition. This is mainly due to the attempts of the SPD to be the party of inner reform, especially in the face of what was seen as obstructionist opposition by the CDU and CSU.

The SPD changed its tactics and programs in response to a political culture in the late 1950s that was unready for a socialist state. The CDU, on the other hand, seemed to view the political culture as partly its own creation, which they insisted they best represented, even in opposition. The CDU of the 1980s, hoping to hold on to power, retained much of its conservatism and reduced the "C" of CDU to a theoretical starting point that supported conservative policies. The following chapters will examine the genesis of the CDU from 1945 to 1990, its attitude to youth and women, and how it responded to changing political and voter demands. CHAPTER 3

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC THEORY AND ITS INCARNATION IN THE

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Christian Democracy as a European political movement has existed since the late nineteenth century, mainly as an attempt to realize Catholic social principles and theory in political policy making. Christian Democracy was also a way for Catholics to make a contribution to liberal ideas and parliamentary democracy. Many of the first attempts at applying Catholic thought to the social milieu were unsuccessful. As Heidenheimer (1960, pp. 10-11) points out, the Catholic political theoreticians had little contact with the workers they were trying to help and those involved with the workers in the Catholic social movement saw little, if any, use for political democracy. Heidenheimer mentions that during the 1890s, Italian Giuseppe Toniolo wanted to unite the world's workers, not under the banner of socialism, but under the banner of the Church.

In Germany, a form of social Catholicism, a forerunner of Christian Democracy, arose in Mainz as early as 1848.

Wilhelm Emmanuel Kettler, Bishop of Mainz from 1850 to 1877, preached on social subjects to large crowds. He believed

34 that a truly Christian society would have no need for state intervention or legislation to equalize property. Kettler felt that representation through legislatures would ultimately violate private property rights (Grace, 1955, p.

17). During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, early Christian Democrats lived near Cologne,

Mainz, and Trier. Many of Christian Democracy's early adherents were members of the aristocracy, as well as farmers and craftsmen who led "an established and traditional way of life, in many ways attractive and worth preserving" (Fogarty, 1957, p. 101).

Leo XIII released the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 which specifically explained Catholic thought on society and economy upon which Christian Democratic theory is based.

Nell-Breuning's 1937 synopsis of this encyclical lists eight main points (pp. 366-394): Man has a natural right to private property; the state is a human creation, thus subordinate to man; the state may not abolish or absorb paternal rights; capital and labor need each other to exist; to right social evils, society must return to the Christian life and Christian institutions; in the eyes of the state all interests are equal; the state should safeguard private property and protect laborers rights; and the state should favor the multiplication of property owners. As a political movement, Christian Democracy received one of its first official hearings in Pope Leo XIII's 1901 encyclical, Graves de Communi, which outline Christian

Democratic ideas and aims. Pope Leo focused the encyclical to the problems of the working class. Basically, he called on Catholics and governments to improve the condition of the worker's lives in order to allow them to "be men, not mere animals, Christian men and not pagans" (quoted in Fogarty,

1957, p. 3). Catholics were critical of laissez-faire economics and its exploitation of workers and the resultant destruction of the family and weakening of spirituality.

Prior to Graves de Communi, Bismarck had launched his

Kulturkampf against the Catholic church. In response, the

Church developed three aims: 1.) maintenance of its own autonomy; 2.) maintenance of the freedom of religious education; and 3.) opposition to Prussian centralization.

The Catholic Zentrum party, which would play an influential role in the Weimar Reichstag, was founded on the basis of these aims.

The CDU as envisioned by many of its founders encompassed most of these points in some way. Economically, the Adenauer government placed private property at the center of the economic recovery. Labor, in the form of non­ confessional and, at first, confessional unions, was given a voice in management through the principle of Mitbestimmung.

Technically, the CDU, by definition an inter-confessional, non-ideological party, views all interests as equal; however, in practice, this has not always been the case.

The Social Market Economy is designed to protect private property from state expropriation and the "social" part of the Social Market Economy protects workers from exploitation and the financial hardships of unemployment and illness.

Lyon (1967, p. 72) notes that active Catholic support of ideas such as minimum wages, safety and hygiene standards in factories, health insurance and labor laws for women and children, consumer cooperatives and credit banks came as a result of the moral encouragement of Rerum Novarum. The CDU has encouraged multiplication of property owners through the early privatization of state-owned industries in the early

1950s. The best example is Volkswagen, shares of which

(Volksaktien) were offered to the general public at reasonable prices. The funds from the sale of stock were placed in a special account to be used in the East after unification. Until that time, some of the funds were used to adapt the industries of the Saar to the German market, to improve water supplies and control, and to "help the middle classes" (Kitzinger, 1960, p. 92). Much has been written about Konrad Adenauer's

’’Chancellor Democracy." Kitzinger's i960 work details the

1957 election campaign and the authoritarian overtones both of the election campaign and the public responses to that campaign. Rerum Novarum's insistence that the state may not abolish or absorb paternal rights fits in well not only with the political culture of Weimar and the Third Reich, but with the early Federal Republic as well. Dahrendorf (1967, p. 139) cites Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitscke's

1918 Politik (Politics], in which he writes that the father is sovereign— that the family represents the state in microcosm. The Kaiser, President von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler, and Konrad Adenauer are all fathers for the "state- family." Perhaps a kindly, old fatherly type such as Konrad

Adenauer was necessary to rebuild Germany. The fatherly, yet democratically elected, leader can be seen as serving as a bridge between the patriarchal state that existed separately from the civil society and above its concerns and the new political culture of the Parteienstaat, which placed a premium on citizen participation. Nevertheless, a state or party rooted in theological notions of paternal sovereignty impeded Germany's development as a place where the conflictive aspects of democracy are accepted as normal and necessary. This view of the paternal state, still part 39 of the evolving political culture of the Federal Republic, has continually declined since the end of the Adenauer era.

The CDU was not founded as a mass party, based on class and ideology. As a break with the past and as a counter to what was perceived as the strident class-struggle emphasis of the SPD and its leader, Kurt Schumacher, CDU strategy represented no classes, only individuals. Pope Pius XI's

1931 encyclical, Quadragesima Anno, called for the

"elimination of classes as such" (Nell-Breuning, 1937, p.

218) and the rearrangement of society into "vocational groups," or "associations of social performance." How these differ from labor unions is unclear, but the main difference seems to lie in the Church's perception of labor and of socialism.

In the Church's view of socialism, labor looks to the state and asks the state what it can contribute to labor.

Pius XI asked labor what it could contribute to society.

German Christian Democracy's and the Church consideration of socialism as anathema is rooted in Quadragesimo Anno.

Socialism by nature is anti-God and therefore allows the state to mold society in a way that is "foreign to Christian truth" (Nell-Breuning, p. 432). Christian priniciples must inspire economic life, especially the law of charity— which if followed removes the need for the state to become 40 involved in individuals' economic dealings. Christian

Democracy also rejects liberal economic principles, calling these liberal notions of success too performance-oriented: that is, too oriented to success and money. The Christian

Democratic idea of performance looks at the worker's place in the "social organism" and what kind of work is performed, rather than the volume of production.

Theory and practice work less in concert in Christian

Democracy than in socialism or even liberal economics. As

Lyon (1967, p. 70) notes, Christian Democratic social and economic doctrines are vague. The Catholic social doctrines upon which Christian Democracy is based are expressed in terms of "natural laws" which give few, if any, guidelines for practical application. "Their adherents have developed elastic and eclectic policies, borrowing from other parties and inevitably attracting the accusation that they are turncoats or trimmers."

The authoritarian aspects of Christian Democracy, with their affinity with autocratic institutions, especially in

Germany, are overtly non-confessional, but are based on the model of the Catholic Church itself. Conversely, Lyon notes that Christian Democratic concern for labor and working conditions arose as a response to socialism. The CDU continued its attacks on the SPD as the party of godless 41 socialism even after the 1959 Bad Godesberg program was adopted. The CDU campaigns of 1972, 1976, and 1980 stressed the anti-socialist aspects of Christian Democracy, even though the SPD did little to change what Adenauer and Erhard had wrought.

Personalism, Solidarity, and Subsidiarity

CDU party programs and theoretical writings, such as those written by Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1973, 1976), Saxony

Minister-President Kurt Biedenkopf (1975, 1989), Minister of Labor Norbert Blum (1981), and CDU intellectual Wolf-Dieter

Narr (1966), make wide use of the terms personalism, subsidiarity, and solidarity, as discussed in the aforementioned encyclicals and Pope John XXIII's 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris.

Personalism

Pius XI's "vocational groups" stem from the idea of

"personalism." Personalism, as stated in Quadragesimo Anno, makes the individual responsible to and for society, a society "organically structured" along "certain ideal lines." These ideal lines involve social and technical skills. Ideal personalities are to be grouped in a

"pluralist social structure in which scope is left for the free though socially responsible development of groups of 42 all shapes and sizes, from the family up to international society."

There are two forms of pluralism: "Vertical pluralism" refers to ideological differences which divide society from top to bottom and "horizontal pluralism" refers to different levels of society, such as individuals, families, age groups and firms, industries, and social classes. Personalist and pluralist aspects of society are maintained through political, economic, or social sanctions which keep the social structure together; as well as competition, direction, and consultation which allow the differing levels of society to work together (Fogarty, 1957, p. 29). Solidarity

The concept of solidarity is used by the CDU as the basis not only of their ideas of social welfare, but on their attacks on socialism. CDU thinkers such as Blum, currently Minister of Labor, and Biedenkopf, currently

Minister-President of Saxony, have defined the concept extensively in their writings. According to Bliim (1981, pp.

13-14), the task of solidarity is to create societal institutions which allow individual will to coincide with societal will. Otherwise marriage, family, and state are not possible. Solidarity is intended to prevent societal 43 chaos by empowering the weak through increased contact between all strata of society, thereby reducing poverty.

Biedenkopf, writing in 1975 (pp. 31-32), called solidarity the "community relations" of individuals as part of their "self-fulfillment." It is the duty of the individual in society to cooperate with others in order to establish a society free of class struggle. The response of individuals in society to the demands of their poor neighbors leads to social solidarity.

Grafe's 1986 study of the modernization of the CDU (p.

73) defines solidarity more cynically. Solidarity "means to be there for each other because the individual and the community are dependent on each other." However, for the

CDU, solidarity means charitable organizations, such as

Caritas, and social security. "Solidarity forbids the misuse of the system of social security," leaving the definition of "misuse" to policy makers.

Subsidiarity

The Catholic social theory of subsidiarity stems from the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas taught that humans are part of a hierarchically ordered society, in which human freedom is realized, starting with the family and continuing up through estates, guilds, and parishes to the state and to the Church. In helping others and being responsible for 44 themselves, humans can find their place in society and have an influence on the natural order (Pechmann, 1985, p. 159).

The idea of subsidiarity, as expounded upon by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, is that humanity is older than the state and that by definition the family precedes the state.

Therefore, if the family, the town, the county, or whatever communal unit smaller than the state is functioning efficiently the state or any communal unit larger than the existing one should not replace it. However, if the state is able to fulfill some tasks better than can smaller units, the state should be given those tasks, especially if in fulfilling those tasks the state increases "freedom and security" (Nell-Breuning, 1937, pp. 208-209).

For the CDU, the idea of subsidiarity is essential to much of their party program and embodies its perception of itself as an appealing counter to socialism. In the CDU-

State based on subsidiarity, as Bltim (1981, p. 15) sees it, smaller communal entities have precedence. Without subsidiarity, the solidaristic community cannot exist.

Therefore, to give all social policy to the state renders makes that social policy increasingly ineffective. "The anonymous apparatus [the state bureaucracy] prostitutes itself as an object of exploitation." Giving bureaucracy 45 the task of implementing social policy removes the onus of responsibility of each for the other from society.

Biedenkopf's (1975, p. 32) definition is more specific.

What people are able to achieve individually may not be taken away and given to the society at large. It is unjust for the state to appropriate the contributions of a group or community and claim that it is an achievement of the entire society. In order for subsidiarity to function, the individuals and groups, working on their own initiative, must contribute to the entire society (solidarity). Group interest will be bidirectional, toward the interests of the individual members and toward society as a whole.

According to Biedenkopf, the connection of subsidiarity and solidarity is the basis for Mitbestimmung.

Mitbestimmung allows two groups (labor and management) to work together for their own good and the good of society at large without state direction by allowing worker input through an advisory board in company decision-making.

However, the German state is involved through the codification of Mitbestimmung as system of labor relations, thus giving the state some role in the economic decision­ making process. Biedenkopf defends state intrusion (without specifically mentioning it) by explaining that citizen loyalty is necessary for the success of groups. By making 46 groups or group relations legal entities, apparently, citizen loyalty (and by extension responsibility for them) is guaranteed.

When the CDU speaks of the "Third Way" they are referring to the concepts of personalism, solidarism, and subsidiarity. By emphasizing individual responsibility within a hierarchical order, state-dominated socialism is avoided, as is unjust laissez-faire capitalism. After the initial inner-party struggles over Christian socialism and planned economies, Adenauer and Erhard announced the Social Market Economy. They and the CDU intellectuals that agreed with them saw the market economy as "the economic order that best conformed to a subsidiarily ordered society" (Pechmann,

1985, p. 162). A structured society, where each had a role to fulfill and could see his or her contribution to the rebuilding of the society, must have seemed comforting to many Germans. The idea of "as much freedom as possible, as many commitments as necessary" harkened to the authoritarian era of Kaiser Wilhelm and Weimar. The state was where it belonged: out of the daily lives of most people. Voting was a duty; therefore, voting for Adenauer and Erhard's

Social Market Economy was necessary to maintain the economic upswing. The fact that much of the population in the 1950s were socialized under authoritarian or totalitarian regimes 47 meant that the ideas of solidarity and subsidiarity, even for Protestants, did not seem foreign.

The CDU Party Program as it Evolved in the Late 1940s

The CDU's Berlin Program of 1945 states the basic premise for the existence of the CDU: "From the chaos of guilt and shame into which the idolization of a criminal adventurer threw us, an order of democratic freedom can grow only if we return to the cultural, moral, and intellectual forces of Christianity" (translation by Lyon, 1967, p. 79).

These forces of Christianity, unlike those in France or Italy, were combined forces of Catholics and Protestants.

Although the theoretical underpinnings of the party were rooted in Catholicism, Protestants were invited and encouraged to join. Ultramontanism may have been a factor in the CSU, but no overt attempt was made to link the CDU with Rome or the Catholic Church. Over time, the Church viewed the CDU as a conduit for bringing Church interests before the state, while Protestant groups tended toward the

SPD. The CDU presented itself as a Christian party for all

Germans regardless of social status, religion or ideology.

The main enemy of the CDU, as seen by the leadership, was socialism (and, by extension, communism). The party called itself social, meaning it was devoted to social justice and social welfare. As Barzel (1947, p. Ill) 48 explained, just as Plato was hellenic, but not a hellenist, and Goethe was classic, but not a classicalist, so was

Christ social, but not a socialist. The CDU was presented as the party of rights and freedoms, especially those listed by Pope Pius XII in his 1942 Christmas message (see Appendix

B) ‘ In the late 1940s, CDU leaders discussed several paths the party might follow. The Dusseldorf Program of 1949 which introduced the Social Market Economy and set the tone for the Adenauer years reflected the liberal-capitalist wing in the CDU leadership (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 219). The other wings of the early party still survive today, albeit in weakened form. Catholic trade unionists such as Jakob

Kaiser, Ernst Lemmer, Karl Arnold, and Eugen Kogon wanted the party to emphasize the "Third Way" aspect of Christian

Democracy. They felt that through Christian principles,

Germany could establish itself as a link between East and

West. Much of their thinking, known as Christian Socialism, was embodied in the 1947 Ahlen Program of the CDU. The

Ahlen Program attempted to discover the "Third Way" between private and state capitalism and establish a totally new economic order. National economic planning would be introduced. Small and medium-sized firms would be privately held, but large firms and heavy industry would be nationalized. Workers and management would work together through co-determination. In other words, economic power would be distributed across various groups (Clemens, 1989, p. 13; Narr, 1966, p. 85). The Catholic Church raised serious objections to Christian Socialism. Referring to

Quadragesima Anno, the Church stated that "Christian socialism is a contradiction in itself. It is impossible to be simultaneously a good Catholic and a real Socialist"

(Irving, 1979, p. 120).

Simultaneously, another group, mainly of legal scholars, known as the Ellwanger Circle of Friends

(Ellwanger Kreis) met in 1947 and 1948 to discuss their vision of Germany as embodied in a federal constitution. Mostly from southern Germany, these men saw Christianity as the best way for Germany to reestablish itself. "Christian

Politics," according to Wiirttemburg-Baden Justice Minister

Josef Beyerle, involved returning the citizenry to respecting God's and human law; respecting life, property, and the existence and honor of one's neighbors; protecting the family; overcoming selfishness through Christian helpfulness; establishing a social order that provides a high enough standard of living for people to focus on personal development; protection of the freedom of churches to act in the community; and freedom for Christian education in the home, school, and Christian organizations. The

Ellwanger Circle also saw Germany as embodying a "Third

Way," but a cultural rather than economic one. The

Ellwanger Circle felt that Western cultural (i.e.,

Christian) values were threatened by the Soviet Union, which they viewed as anti-God, and the United States, which they viewed as a materialistic, "history-less" mass society. By joining pragmatic politics with Christian ideals, Germany could become the bulwark of Western culture in the face of the new powers (Benz, 1977, p. 787).

Adenauer, however, was skeptical of the efficacy of

Christian Socialism and felt that close ties to the United

States were essential to rebuilding Germany. Therefore, it seems, Adenauer was willing to keep some progressive social ideas in the program to attract trade union members and emphasize the interconfessional aspect to attract more

Protestants. Ultimately, with men such as Protestant Ludwig

Erhard (who initially considered joining the Free Democratic

Party) directing the economic expansion, the trade union movement within the CDU was overshadowed by industrial and financial interests.

By the time of the first Bundestag (1949-1953) the CDU had established itself as a party combining a Christian

Weltanschauung (the Ellwanger Kreis/Catholic Church Third Way), anti-communism firmly rooted in the West (Adenauer), and the Social Market Economy (Erhard and some aspects of the Catholic trade union movement). As Smith (1983, pp. 93-

94) notes, these three aspects form the basis for the CDU-

State and in many ways reflect the ideology of the Federal

Republic. For the CDU, that ideology means that the CDU's main concern is preserving the status quo while they are in power or fighting to maintain it while they are in opposition.

Regarding the political culture of the Federal Republic it is important to note that in the discussions of the trade unionists and Ellwanger Kreis, in Adenauer's anti-communism, and in the Social Market Economy, much is made of the importance of choosing the right economic system and of preserving some aspect of Germanness or Western culture.

Very little is said of democracy or of the will of the people. Perhaps this is understandable considering the immense destruction and upheaval in Germany, which was partly the result of the failed Weimar democracy in 1933.

Conversely, the emphasis on protecting the family and private property, the responsibility of neighbors to help each other, and the idea of subsidiarity shows that the CDU and its early thinkers helped create a society that continued an authoritarian tradition, but one infused with Catholic, rather than Prussian, notions of the state. Had

Adenauer decided to pursue unification, rather than economic reconstruction as a main goal, it is possible that today's Germany would more closely resemble a secular version of

Thomas Aquinas' hierarchically ordered society. The onus to link with the West and identify itself with democratic anti­ communism would be less. The benevolent father and his supporters could claim authoritarian measures were necessary to maintain Germany's place between East and West, between

Godless communism and Godless materialism.

How the CDU sees itself as molders of society

Whereas in other democracies a party might present itself as a defender of freedom or as the true representative of the people, the CDU sees itself from a much more vaunted perspective. The challenge set before it is "to form and develop society" (Biedenkopf, 1975, p. 33).

Political leadership must maintain and renew loyalty to the system. The task of government is to "carry out" the

"common good" against group interest. "Common good" is mentioned in CDU writings as resulting from the conflict between solidarity and subsidiarity; the conflict between group interest and individual interest. It is the task of government to make sure that group interest can never 53

"endanger the goals of the whole," otherwise "socialistic class warfare" will ensue (Biedenkopf, 1975, pp. 39, 45).

Despite the emphasis on individual will against group interest, the hierarchical order embodied by subsidiarity means that the state retains a superordinate position.

State power must respect the value of the person. The interest of organized society in the Federal Republic requires a balance between solidarity and subsidiarity, between "working together and conflict" (Biedenkopf, 1975, pp. 35-36).

Politicians in Western democracies sometimes attack socialist societies not only for their emphasis on public ownership of the means of production, but also for their lack of democratic values, in the sense of basic rights and self-government. The CDU attack on socialism is couched in slightly different terms. "Because the theory of socialism reduces society to its conflicts and its rule from victory of one class over the rest of the organized society, it is unable to recognize state authority as legitimate authority

[italics added]" (Biedenkopf, 1975, p. 36). For most

Western liberals, state authority in socialism is the main problem preventing economic and democratic development.

For Biedenkopf (1975, p. 36), the success of the

Federal Republic is due to the fact that West German laws are based on an economic order, not a political order. He broadened this idea in 1989 (p. 63) by writing that overcoming "class war" through free markets, competition and private ownership combined with recognition of worker interest and provision of social security "is the most important domestic achievement of the Union." What is the role of democratic systems and values in the economic order created by the Union? When state authority is viewed as the main bulwark against socialism and the role of the government is to maintain loyalty to the system and achieve a vaguely determined "common good," benevolent authoritarianism seems justified in order to maintain the economic system. Here, the state may not intervene unless absolutely necessary.

As Grafe (1986, p. 140) observed, the CDU views democracy as a straightforward process. The CDU rarely defines democracy, other than to state that it is the system that the Federal Republic has. "The Federal Republic has a

Basic Law, a parliament and a market economy. It is therefore a democracy, however democratic decisions are really made." As molders and formers of society, the CDU looked to applying Christian ideals to the economic system, but they were ideals already suited to a market economy— respect for individuals and their property. Schdnbohm 55 (1985, pp. 142-243) correctly points out that the founders of the CDU were believers in Christianity.

To define a Christian view of man and Christian values in a CDU program seemed superfluous and beside the point, because their faith precipitated into the practical politics of the CDU. The generational change and the large increase of new members in the CDU, for whom Christian faith is no longer a decisive motivation in their political behavior, indicates a growing need for a more precise description of what the 'C' in the name of the CDU actually means today.

The CDU may find it difficult to maintain electoral momentum by relying on a Christian ethic that sees societies hierarchically and focuses heavily on economics in the wake of unification and the growing interest in rewriting the

Basic Law, in referenda, and direct primaries. Of course, there are still Germans who vote "Christian," but their numbers are decreasing. Even among devout Catholics, the

SPD has been a valid voting choice since 1959. Loss of

Church members to the SPD and to secularized society means that "the CDU could lose the benefit of the close social fabric of which Church membership is an integral part"

(Smith, 1983, p. 128).

"The Christian worldview alone guaranteed justice, order and moderation, dignity and individual freedom and, therefore, a true and real democracy" (Biedenkopf, 1989, p.

64). Unfortunately, Biedenkopf and his party's Christian worldview are based on a hierarchical system. A system based on biblical justice, requiring order and moderation as signs of Godly behavior, and emphasizing, as Christ did, dignity and individual freedom. In practice, though, "a true and real democracy" has little hierarchy, if any. In the expression of multiple interests democracy tends toward disorder and immoderation, if only for effect. If too much emphasis is placed on justice, order, or moderation, dignity and individual freedom may suffer as society attempts to conform. Thomas Mann and his "unpolitical" countrymen in 1918 also valued justice, order, and moderation; however, their desire to be just, orderly, and moderate led ultimately to fascism. CHAPTER 4

CDU PARTY HISTORY FROM 1950

The choice of the name Christian Democratic Union was meant to convey certain ideas to voters. The word "union" was chosen over "party" because "party" had. too many connections with the Nazi era, but mainly as a way to attract Protestant voters. German Protestant associations or clubs often carried the name "Union," while Catholic associations or clubs were called "Leagues" (Liga). Many believed that "Union" carried the idea of Protestants and

Catholics working together for Christian goals (Barzel,

1947, p. 163). In some parts of the country, this early emphasis on the Christian aspect of Christian Democracy encompassed in some parts of the country strong anti-

Marxist/anti-socialist overtones. The slogan "Christ or

Marx!" was used by the CDU in some parts of Germany in

1946.

The leadership of the CDU saw itself as a "Christian- influenced mirror image of the society" (Narr, 1966, p. 75).

The emphasis on "Christian" in the name of the party is important, for the CDU's leadership felt that a return to

Christian values was the only acceptable response to the 57 58 twelve years of National Socialism. At the same time, there was a fear of growing materialism and secularism which could only be overcome through radical action— in this case, the

Social Market Economy. The Social Market Economy combined with protection of the family and controlled urbanization was to lead to a process of "de-proletarization" (Narr,

1966, p. 76).

This new "Christian-influenced" party received its first recognition in January 1946, when it was licensed in the British Zone under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer

(Irving, 1979, p. 117). From the beginning, the CDU strove to be inter-confessional, non-ideological, and oriented to no particular class. As such, it combined many different elements and organizationally was decentralized. The CDU's initial support came from four areas: Catholic areas with a

Zentrum party tradition, mainly in the South; conservative, middle-class Protestant areas of the Center and North;

"national-liberals" in the North; and Bavaria, where the

Christian Social Union was established (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 220).

Whereas supporters were many and came from all strata amd all regions, the CDU's actual membership in the early years made up only two percent of its electoral support. The bulk of its membership, seen confessionally, was "far from ideal for that of a Christian people's party" (Bracher,

1971/1975, pp. 220-221). Catholic parliamentarians outnumbered Protestants three-to-one. Catholic electors outnumbered Protestants three-to-two. Members tended to be middle-class, while overall support was more broad-based, including upper and working class voters (Bracher,

1971/1975, p. 221). This membership base was reflected in the party platform of 1949. The Diisseldorf Program committed the CDU to parliamentary democracy and federalism; individual responsibility in society [solidarity]; to the family and parental rights regarding education; to small businesses and farmers; and to co-operation between management and workers (Irving, 1979, p. 121).

Part of Holtmann's (1989, pp. 227-237) study of early post-war Germany focused on the establishment of the CDU in the towns of Unna and Kamen near Dortmund in North Rhine-

Westphalia. The CDU was able to establish itself in these towns on an inter-confessional basis. In Kamen, Catholics and Protestants had held ecumenical discussions with each other in air raid shelters during the war, often with pastors and priests. In Unna, after the war, ecumenical roundtables were held which led to support for establishing a party like the CDU. In both towns, the Protestants were less enthusiastic about the CDU in public than the 60

Catholics, but pastors and priests from Dortmund made occasional visits and spoke of the need for a Christian party.

To get members and supporters, male CDU organizers in

Unna traveled the town in pairs, like the disciples in the

New Testament. They told people they met they had decided to support the CDU. Very early in these towns, as elsewhere in the Federal Republic, the CDU was known as the party of the middle class, focused on economics and not bound by

"confessional restraints," as the Zentrum was. The efforts of CDU supporters in Unna and Kamen are representative of the founding and structure of the party as a middle-class party with a loose organization. The loose organization and middle class focus was popular, but its decentralized nature had disadvantages.

Unlike the SPD, which was a centralized mass party, oriented to workers, the CDU relied heavily on regional associations

(Landesverbande), whose desire for autonomy and influence quickly turned the party into an "association for [the election of] the Chancellor (Kanzlerverein)" from 1949 until the 1970s (Irving, 1979, p. 113). The decentralized nature of the CDU changed little after the establishment of the

CDU/CSU/FDP coalition in 1949. The CDU's first party congress was not held until 1950— five years after the party 61 was founded and one year after the party formed the first government of the Federal Republic.

During the 1950s, the CDU parliamentary group and party members in the government offices were mostly tied to

"industrial, middle-class and agrarian interests," while giving the impression of being broadly based and receptive to a wide range of interest group demands (Bracher,

1971/1975, p. 221). The industrial, middle class, and agrarian interests, along with Chancellor Adenauer, gave the

CDU a decidedly conservative tone. In practice this meant that the Christian ideas and values which undergirded the philosophy of the party at its beginning were relegated to party conferences, publications, and election campaigns. According to Narr (1966, pp. 149-150), the CDU success in government was seen as the result of the politicization of German Christians, which led to a "qualitative change in politics." Desiring to be the majority party, the CDU used

Christian ideals as an "integration ideology," which led not to politicization of Christian values but to their depoliticization. "That which was Christian was emptied of its content, filled with old social ideals, and once again became captive to a party mentality." Christianity went from being the motor of the party to a "campaign poster 62

[aimed at] people who were otherwise unready to sing the 'filthy' song of politics."

While the emphasis changed, the impact of the "social

Catholics" (Kaiser, Lemmer, and Arnold) waned but remained in the social committees (Sozialausschiisse) of the party.

These social committees allowed the CDU to attract

Catholics, especially urbanites and workers, who would not be willing to vote for a "straight conservative" party

(Smith, 1983, p. 90). As party intellectual Walter Dirks described it, the CDU "is on the Right and acts on the left." The Christian party with the "elan of newness and with a conservative goal" became a conservative-liberal party with opportunistic methods and a "C-element" (quoted in Narr, 1966, p. 150).

The Role of Konrad Adenauer

The influence of the personality of Konrad Adenauer continues to be felt in the CDU. His interpretation of what was best for the CDU and for the Federal Republic often overshadowed the goals and values the CDU wished to advance.

While party leaders praised the idea of the CDU as a "catch­ all" party (Sammelpartei) which would unite Germans of all backgrounds in a political family, Adenauer actively worked against such a view. He felt that "collecting" supporters was an unwise course for the future and should not be the 63 basis of a political party (Blttm, 1981, p. 16). By the same token, Adenauer was against Christian Socialism and was willing to be eclectic in welcoming non-socialists into the party.

The weak organization and decentralization of the party added to Adenauer's prominence as leader and chancellor. He was able to play the regionally controlled interest groups off each other and thereby control the party. "CDU party congresses became little more than occasions for acclamation..." (Bracher, 1971/1975, p. 221). At the same time, Adenauer was able to express his anti-socialist views against the labor wing of the party. As the economic miracle continued in the 1950s, growing affluence weakened any left-wing leanings among CDU supporters (Lyon, 1967, pp.

82-83).

The CDU had absorbed most of its competition on the right by 1957, including what remained of the Zentrum, the

German Party, the Union of Expellees and Refugees (BHE), and the Bavarian Party. Adenauer felt that by absorbing these parties and allowing ex-Nazis to join the CDU, powerful extreme right-wing parties would not form. Encouraging

Protestants to join would prevent the SPD from becoming the exclusive party of the trade union movement. Nevertheless, the absorption of competing parties and enticement of 64

Protestants did not lead to increased membership. In 1947, the CDU had 600,000 members; by 1954, membership dwindled to

215,000. Not until 1977 (660,000 members) did membership exceed the 1947 level (Irving, 1979, p. 121).

The parliamentary group during the Adenauer years was highly disciplined, but beyond the Bundestag, party organization was weak, as the membership numbers show. Weak organization was partly due to the CDU's devotion to

"freedom," which was connected to anti-socialism, anti­ fascism, and a desire to be linked with the West. Some felt that a party based on freedom could not control its members through a party machine (Kolinsky, 1984, p. 124).

Also, a party based on subsidiarity and solidarity could argue philosophically that a party machinery would interfere with a hierarchical order that eschewed centralized influence over local affairs, if matters could best be handled locally. The CDU during the Adenauer years became the "Party of Government, the Party of Chancellor Konrad

Adenauer" with the result that the party as a political entity appeared only to mobilize voters in elections (Narr,

1966, p. 159).

The Greiffenhagens' (1979, January 22, p. 72) study of political culture in Germany revealed how fervently the CDU wished to be seen as the party of the center, as a catch­ all, moderate party, rather than a conservative party. In the 1950s, conservatism was discredited as an acceptable descriptor of a political party. Although German conservatives during Weimar were not wholly supportive of

Hitler, they also did little to oppose him, ultimately allowing Hitler to take power. By emphasizing CDU social programs, Mitbestimmung, German links with the West, and

Christian values, the party, despite its absorption of conservative parties, hoped to be viewed as moderate and somewhat economically liberal.

Nevertheless, the desire for conformity as a symbol of loyalty to the party and to the new, democratic state broke through the veneer of Christian respect for individuals. The Social Market Economy became "tabooized" during the

1950s (Greiffenhagen, 1979, January 22, p. 76). Those both in and out of the party who questioned the freedom of the market were labeled supporters of a planned economy, which meant they were Nazis or Communists. Suspicion born of twelve years of totalitarianism and four years of occupation lingered, especially as the CDU and SPD attacked each other in the Bundestag and in regional and national elections.

"It was as if the Germans were locked in a continuous and particularly vicious American presidential campaign, only here everyone believes all the campaign charges and counter- 66 charges" that labor unions were bent on destroying private property and the Catholic Church was plotting to establish a totalitarian regime (Stein, 1977, p. 216).

With the party serving as an extension of Chancellor

Adenauer and attacks on the dangers of the Social Democrats, the CDU was able to maintain its vision of democracy as, above all, dependent on a strong, stable economy. The CDU

Economic Council (Wirtschaftsrat) said that the state was an instrument used by society to define itself, society being one and the same with the economic system (Grafe, 1986, pp.

126-127). The CDU felt that as a representative of the centrist majority, it represented the basic concerns of the society; thus, it was impelled to represent the economy rather than the political system as the basis of stability

(Grafe, 1986, pp. 77-78).

Konrad Adenauer felt that as a politician, he, like others, must often do things that go against God's commandments. Between 1949 and 1963, the Christian focus of the Christian Democratic Union shifted from a strong focus on Christian ideals and values of a model society and economy to a sense that Christianity was what held the party together at its most basic level, but it had little impact on the daily activity of the party (Grafe, 1986, p. 9). In a sense this was a positive development, since it might attract less enthusiastic Catholics and non-Catholics as well as conservative Protestants who would be uncomfortable with a party with roots in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.

Conversely, a shift in focus off of Christianity endangered the CDU's desire to be called a centrist, rather than a conservative party. The SPD move to a less confrontational and more centrist policy after 1959 acted as the impetus for the slow changes in CDU from a decentralized, chancellor- centered party of government to a centralized, slightly more broadly based Volkspartei.

The Post-Adenauer Years

The early 1960s in the Federal Republic witnessed continued economic expansion, increasing international acceptance, and national stability. Adenauer (age 87) was replaced in 1963 by the architect of the Social Market

Economy, Ludwig Erhard. Adenauer's tenure in office and advancing age made him a target of party reformers and the opposition. Adenauer's insistence on holding on to the chancellorship; his sharp attacks on Erhard's leadership ability, before and after 1963; and his revered status as the father of the new German democracy meant that Adenauer's legacy and the values and ideals of the early years of the party remained after his death in 1966. Narr's 1966 (p. 189) description of CDU programs and practices reveals a curious anti-modern current in the party that was still noticeable after Adenauer's promotion to party leader emeritus in 1963. This anti-modern stance was characterized by a "save what can be saved" mentality in some party leaders. The "conservative-restorative" view looked to pre-1789 Europe for ideal societal structures, which could be found in the Catholic Church and the ideals of solidarity, subsidiarity, and personalism. Narr points out that the CDU, a modern party, was able to infuse these older ideals into German political culture because the CDU's modern heritage gave it a winning edge in elections over the

SPD, whose history as a party began in the nineteenth century.

While these anti-modern tendencies remained with the party, change slowly began to occur. The 1961 Social

Welfare Law is a good example. This law, introduced by the

CDU and passed with its support, was not based on the principle of subsidiarity, as similar laws of the 1950s were. The 1961 law recognized independently acting groups and official institutions on the basis of sustaining existence through long-term subsidies. Under subsidiarity, long-term subsidies imply state involvement where smaller groups can fulfill the same tasks. Erhard's lackluster chancellorship, the Federal

Republic's first recession in 1966-1967, and the CDU/CSU/SPD

Grand Coalition of 1966-1969 led party leaders to consider preparing a party program, the previous program having been prepared in 1949. The main purpose of the program was to keep the party together and justify its aims in the post-

Adenauer era. The 1967 Brunswick Congress met to prepare the program and sent 30,000 proposals to the CDU office in

Bonn. The Congress achieved little that was new (Kolinsky,

1984, pp. 125, 126).

The combined electoral losses of 1969 and 1972 engendered party-wide discussions of what direction the party should take. Centralization of party operations in a single location in Bonn, the new Konrad Adenauer House, was achieved in the early 1970s. For the first time in party history, the CDU hired a business manager in 1970, RUdiger

Gob, who was an expert in organization and publicity.

Helmut Kohl was elected CDU chairman in 1973 and was able to strengthen the party organization and increase the influence of the parliamentary faction. When Adenauer was chancellor, he tended to ignore the parliamentary faction and relied on party organization for election campaigning (Irving, 1979, pp. 126-127). With centralization, public relations, and new, younder leaders like Kohl, the CDU slowly began 70 abandoning the fatherly, chancellor-centered heirarchy and broadened the party leadership and decision-making to include the parliamentary faction. Thus, the CDU recognized the changing political culture by including the elected representatives in their party and governmental decision­ making. The state was moving closer to the civil society.

Between 1973 and 1975, CDU party leaders and intellectuals spoke and wrote extensively about what the aims and goals of the CDU ought to be. The question of the

"Christian" aspect of the party was raised in a speech by

Richard von Weizsacker at the 1973 Hamburg Party Congress.

While the founding and the policy of the CDU are based on "the solid foundation of a Christian view of humanity and its values....Principles are not self-acting things." Von

WeiszScker emphasized the importance of technology and science in daily life and for the need of the CDU to make technological change a political issue rather than a reason for political reaction. When new issues are created, the

CDU can remind the membership of the basic, Christian principles and how they should apply, rather than abandoning principles altogether or using them in a reactive way (Schonbohm, 1981, p. 142; 1985, p. 143).

Other CDU leaders and supporters were looking more closely at what the party needed to do. Schossler wrote in 1973 (p. 13) that twenty years (1949-1969) as the "Voters'

Party and the State Party" had pushed the CDU to the

"ideological and sociological edges of society." The task of the party in the future must include dealing with the side effects of industrial society. At the same time, the party needed to strengthen its recruitment structure and encourage intellectual writing and social science work. For example, Schossler said that approximately two-thirds of the social scientists at the CDU's Konrad Adenauer Foundation were members of the SPD or the FDP. In other words, the CDU had none of its own members conducting its campaign research.

Helmut Kohl wrote an article for Die politische Meinuna in 1973 called "The Future of the Union" (pp. 43-52) in which he outlined the necessary changes for the CDU to catch up with the political mood of the nation. He called on the party to be more precise and convincing in describing its aims and goals. Kohl felt that the CDU in the past had not sufficiently explained the moral imperatives of the party in a way that was understandable or attractive to voters. In the area of environmental protection, for example, the state must use its influence to ensure that the social costs included in maintaining the German standard of living are recognized by the state, industry, and individuals in investment, production, and use decisions. Whereas the Socialists, according to Kohl, would use state intervention into individual activities to cover social costs, the CDU policy is to have the state remind individuals that they are responsible for the costs of their actions. In one stroke,

Kohl was able to combine the liberal economic legacy of

Adenauer and Erhard (limited state intervention) and the basic tenets of subsidiarity and solidarity (individuals are best suited for certain tasks, for whose consequences they are personally responsible).

The new leader of the party still referred to the same issues that had propelled the party into power in 1949: the

"Third Way"; the achievement of consensus whenever possible; the role of the state as the "reminder," as the one who knows better.

Kurt Biedenkopf (1975, p. 31) returned to the idea of the "common good" and the need to establish the political authority of the "common good" through completing the relationship between solidarity and subsidiarity.

Biedenkopf (1975, pp. 46-47) accused Willy Brandt and the

SPD/FDP coalition of trying to redefine solidarity and subsidiarity by defining classes as the goal of solidaristic duty, thereby giving the responsibility of establishing the

"common good" to binding authority. CDU actions in the Bundestag, however, belied the leadership's desire to maintain itself in the center as the true Volkspartei. During the IG Meta11 strike of 1974, the

CDU, together with the FDP, took the employers' side, weakening the CDU's claim to represent all Germans and pushing the unions onto the side of the SPD. The result was increasing alienation between the CDU and unions and a politicization of economics that the CDU hoped to avoid

(Smith, 1983, p. 220). The CDU's attachment to the market economy led to increasing identification with the entrepreneurial class, including fighting legislative action against cartels (Smith, 1983, p. 212).

The philosophical debate of the 1970s resulted in the

1978 Basic Program. The Basic Program presented the CDU faithful with "The New Social Question," which pictured the

CDU as the "mouthpiece of those who are ignored by other parties and by mainstream social agencies, the old, the poor, the housewives..." (Kolinsky, 1984, p. 126). The New

Social Question attempted to achieve a new consensus between economic liberalism of industrial interests, Christian

Social philosophy of the middle class, and Christian trade unionists— the CDU's traditional voter base (Merkl, 1990, p

69). After years of being accused of being beholden to industrial interests and after the 1976 attempt by the CSU 74 to establish itself as an independent national party, the

Basic Program served to present a fresh, reformed face to the voters. All the same, however, the "New Social

Question" was hardly new— the CDU always claimed to be the representative of groups with no organized representation of their own.

An important aspect of the Basic Program was the further loss of importance of Christian values in daily party activity. The founders of the CDU in the 1940s wanted to combine Christian ideals and values with politics and mold Germany after that model. Von Weizsacker's 1973 speech at the Hamburg Party Congress spoke of the need to recognize the Christian view of people and Christian values and the need to remind people constantly of those values. Paragraph five of the Basic Program of 1978 says that a political program cannot come from Christian belief, beyond establishing an "ethical basis for responsible politics" which allows Christians and non-Christians to work together.

This new interpretation of the "C" of CDU is important in that it recognizes the increased secularization of German society; nevertheless, the weakened Christian emphasis removes some of the uniqueness of the CDU, especially as compared with the FDP, and could absolve future policymakers 75 from reflecting on the foundations of the party in their work.

The CDU in the 1980s

The 1978 Basic Program may have presented the German public with a unified CDU, but the philosophical debate continued. Leaders such as Norbert Bilim (1981, pp. 11-13) continued to stress the need for a Christian base. Calling the world "in need of improvement and capable of improvement," he called for a "Christian-Social anthropology," which was to be the path between fatalism (we can change nothing) and fanaticism (we can change everything); between capitalism ("the loneliness of the individual") and socialism ("the loneliness of the collective"). Christian-Social anthropology integrates aspects of both capitalism and socialism. Although Bliim discussed a "Third Way," he saw it as an integration of the best of capitalism and socialism, rather than an outright rejection of both.

The German left-wing during the 1980s began to refer to the CDU as an evil party, beholden to capitalist interests, repressive, and mired in the 1950s. At the same time, other critics, namely Per Spiegel in 1983, praised the CDU for its state-of-the-art organization and technical organization

(Grafe, 1986, pp. 7-8, 47). However, in many ways, the CDU 76 in the 1980s resembled the CDU of Adenauer's time. The family was again made the focus of much CDU activity.

Chancellor Kohl called the family "the foundation of our state and our society." As such, although all other aspects of society could change, and were in need of change, the ideal family remained inviolate (Grafe, 1986, pp. 212-213). At the 1983 CDU Party Congress, Kohl resurrected many of the ideas of the early party, including restricting the state to "its proper task" and guaranteeing the entrepreneurial freedom. He promised that "the arrogance of power" would never be a hallmark of the CDU, but at the same time he insisted that the CDU had to retain an "unchangeable profile" as the party in power (Biedenkopf, 1989, p. 265).

The arrogance of power was nevertheless noticeable in the early years of CDU opposition, as the leadership and the parliamentary group recovered from losing their first national election in 1969.

Biedenkopf's 1989 analysis of the CDU focused on the idea of the political center and the need for the party to remain there through determining majority political consensus (p. 34). He felt that the strain of parts of the population due to rapid economic development and the intensity of electronic media were leading to increasing feelings of helplessness among members of the "center," those who were well-to-do and educated. Their feelings were not being addressed by the CDU or the SPD; hence the growing popularity of the Greens and the Republicans, who provided seeming alternatives to alleviate the stresses (p. 47).

Therefore, the CDU needed to achieve the same "radicality of conscience" in its view of the "Christian person" that Greenpeace had in its view of the environment. In other words, the CDU needed to be more outspoken regarding conservation and less insistent on an increasing standard of living (p. 239). Yet, earlier in the same volume,

Biedenkopf warns against radicalism, especially in speeches, because it weakens the authority of a centrist party (i.e., the CDU) (pp. 38-39). Ideology

The CDU's lack of an ideology, inherent in the idea of a Sammelpartei, was a major factor in the debate over the need for a party program during the 1960s and 1970s. The principle of subsidiarity, according to the 1986 CDU party manifesto, is the foundation of party thinking (Biedenkopf,

1989, p. 252). According to Padgett and Burkett (1986, p.

104) the CDU does lack an ideology. The Christian Social wing opposes the atheistic aspects of SPD policy, but not socialism. The doctrine of the free-market economy is a

"weapon to gain power," rather than an ideology. During the 1980s, however, conservative party thinkers and commentators have called for a CDU ideology, without calling it that. Besser (1985, pp. 52-53) called on the CDU to acknowledge the responsibility of all CDU politicians to have a "Christian" viewpoint. He also accused the CDU of trying to "pawn itself off as a liberal, big-city party" that was embarrassed by the "C" in the party name, unwilling to engage the churches as discussion partners. Rohrmoser (1985, p. 33) wanted the CDU to be the "Christian-inspired conservative" response to Greens and Republicans. The CDU needed to focus on the religious, philosophical, cultural, and political traditions of Germany. He feared that the

"spiritual leadership" in the country had been taken over by the Greens and the Alternative movement (pp. 18-19).

Norbert Walter (1986, pp. 22-23), an economist and supporter of Erhard's economic ideals, feels that the CDU's employment programs are "resorts to recipes from the 20s and

50s. Already once in German history these recipes have led to catastrophe...[in the] 80s they are proving to be unsuitable....It determines the policy of the FDP and the majority of the CDU...."

On the left of the CDU, Dirks (1982, p. 150) felt that

Christian renewal for the most part defied "a party political fixation....One cannot bake bread with salt and 79 yeast: Out of the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount one can create neither the bread of culture nor a polity nor a party." The CDU and its institutions do good work and are well organized, but they will be unable "to make history” with them. In 1987, Dirks (pp. 58-60) described the CDU as the party of the status quo, "for which the future is essentially an extension of the present." The CDU's members and parliamentary group are "people interested in the maintenance of their professional life and assets." Quink's (1987, p. 318) social scientific study of political Catholicism supports Dirks' contentions. She determined that the CDU continues to build on the same mobilization and organization techniques, based heavily on

Catholic culture, that they have used since the 1950s,

"moving itself off to the side." Dirks (1987, p. 60) predicts that the CDU will lose Catholic support as

Catholics question the "C" of a conservative CDU.

The criticism of CDU policies from the right and the left wings of the party have no doubt intensified since unification in 1990. The overwhelming victory of the CDU in the East was based on Kohl's promises of economic recovery;

Eastern mistrust of the SPD, which had merged with the

Communist Party in 1946 to become the Socialist Unity Party; and, perhaps, the CDU's centrist ideas. The Christian 80 aspect of the CDU was certainly not a factor, despite twenty years of discussion over the "Christian" meaning of the party.

Youth and Women

Two areas of party life that deserve brief mention are the relationship between the CDU and youth and the CDU and women. As the party that claims to represent politically those with no organized interest, youth and women have not always viewed the CDU as their best representative, despite traditionally receiving high percentages of women's votes in national elections in the 1950s and 1960s.

The CDU has a youth organization, the Young Union (Junge Union), for members aged 18 to 35, which is a way for young party members to become more involved in the party.

Helmut Kohl's career in the party started in the Young

Union. The 1969 Basic Program of the CDU fixed the

"Christian View of Youth" for the Young Union. This view of youth considers equally the individual and social aspects of human nature; it recognizes the ability of humans to be rationally self-aware and to act responsibly. It also recognizes the defectiveness of human nature. Therefore, regard for differing personalities and tolerance of different points of view are required. Youth should promote solidarity and have a willingness to sacrifice for the weak, 81 oppressed, needy, and socially disadvantaged. This

Christian View of Youth requires helping those who wish to help themselves and rejects the view that the satisfaction of material needs alone is a requirement for a just order

(Grotz, 1983, pp. 86-87). The student movement of 1968 called for institutional change, attacked bourgeois society and its institutions

(marriage, the nuclear family), and the division between manual and mental labor. It critiqued political institutions of parliamentary democracy (Habermas, 1989, p.

183). The CDU, as the party of the bourgeois, was in no real position to respond, other than to fall back on calls for law-and-order and to attack the student movement as disruptive of society. The "Christian View of Youth" of

1969 did speak to most of the students.

Despite dedicated work by the Young Union in the 1970s to promote CDU views and the CDU to youth, most young voters in the 1970s were not convinced that the CDU was no longer simply a party of old values, old money, and old religion.

According to Kolinsky (1984, p. 159), by the early 1980s, the CDU had changed its approach to youth by emphasizing issues such as peace in the context of traditional CDU values as freedom and the social market economy. The 1981

CDU Federal Party Congress had the theme of "With Youth: An Alliance for Peace and Freedom." However, the Young Union and the CDU overall were able to gain some benefit from the student and youth movements of 1968 and after. According to

Habermas (1989, p. 185), the student revolt of 1968 led to a buildup of neoconservative ressentiment, which led to a

"counterrevolution" in the 1970s. The electoral gains of the CDU in 1976 and 1980, as well as the election of the moderate Helmut Schmidt as chancellor, reflect some of this

"counterrevolution." The "Yuppies" of the 1980s are the heirs of this era.

CDU thinker Martin Wissmann's 1981 essay on the CDU and youth outlined some of the CDU's problems in relating to the younger voters. In opposition, the CDU tended to act as the governing party rather than as a voice for change and critique. By defending the existing order against SPD reform, the CDU reinforced their reputation as the party of the status quo. Wissmann felt that the CDU failed to understand that its claims of being the party of social justice, equal chances, and representative of the unrepresented conflicted with youth's views of societal reality.

Societal reality for German youth was that the CDU was closely allied with a socially unjust and unequal economic establishment. Therefore, Wissmann argued, the CDU needed to shift its focus away from the use of economic means to solve all problems and emphasize the provocative nature of the "C" in CDU— its emphasis on freedom, social justice, and solidarity. The CDU should promote freedom from bureaucratization and the influence of big industry, as well as freedom for non-conformists. According to Wissmann, support for non-conformists is especially necessary, since the "mantle of intolerance" was successfully hung on the CDU during the 1970s by the Young Socialists and Marxists (p.

169) .

A related problem, analyzed by Baker (1974, p. 581-

582), was that children of CDU supporters were being socialized to the CDU-related belief structure of the churches and conservatism in general, rather than to identification with the CDU. While this normally led to eventual CDU partisanship among CDU children, it was facilitated by "a conservative home and frequent attendance at a Catholic or possibly Protestant church." As conservative values (such as loyalty, conformity, duty, passivity, and setting good examples) in the wider society lost value and as church attendance dropped, Baker saw future problems in recruiting youth to the CDU.

According to Grafe (1986, pp. 34-35), youth in the

1980s, as seen by the CDU, were overall more conservative 84 and less concerned with debating theoretical issues. They asked basic questions and were "spontaneous, enthusiastic, and optimistic." Youth who supported the CDU tended not to be "the doubters and the world reformers."

The conservatism of young voters may continue into the

1990s, especially if fears increase of a weakened German economy and standard of living because of increased taxes and higher costs associated with unification and increased immigration. Nevertheless, the CDU must still grapple with the problem of decreasing church attendance, of emphasizing family life in a country with a declining birthrate and increasing numbers of single people and non-European immigrants who are unfamiliar with the CDU's cultural and philosophical foundations.

The CDU faces a similar problem with women. Women are not as active as men in the CDU, despite their prominence in the cabinet and the Bundestag of late. According to

Strecker (1980, p. 21), parties like the CDU/CSU, FDP, and

SPD are modeled on a male lifestyle, becoming "political performers, rather than people's movements."

Women are important to party survival, especially for the

CDU, who relied on their votes to stay in government.

Between elections, however, the women's group within the 85

party are left with the task of dealing with those women's

issues that the party emphasized during its campaigns.

The CDU's Women's Union (Frauenvereinigung) works to

present opinions on political questions in the creation of

party policy. They also work to increase the role of women

in the work of the party, especially in those areas of

direct concern to women, as well as increasing the number of

women in the organs of the party and the parliamentary group

(Strecker, 1980, p. 22).

In accord with the principles of solidarity and

subsidiarity, the goals of the CDU for women include support for working women through improved educational

opportunities, equal pay, and "partnership parenting"

(Strecker & Lenz, 1980, p. 52). Women play a prominent role

in the cabinet of the Kohl government, including leadership

of the Ministry of Family and the Elderly, Ministry of Women

and Youth, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Urban Planning,

and the Treuhandanstalt, the corporation privatizing the

state economy of the former German Democratic Republic.

The CDU might consider its past success among women during elections. In 1953 election, 57 percent of the CDU's

support came from women (Reichel, 1980, p. 146). In that election, women represented 20.2 percent of second ballot candidates and 16.9 percent of those elected (as compared 86 with 12.8 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively, of SPD candidates) (Pollock, 1955, p. 186). In 1976, the CDU still received 57 percent of its support from women (Reichel,

1980, p. 146). By 1983, the percentage had dropped to 55

(Smith, 1986, p. 129). Women continue to represent more than 50 percent of the German population (Schdnbohm, 1985, p. 85; Smith, 1986, p. 129), but less than 50 percent of the

CDU membership (Schdnbohm, 1985, p. 85).

As parties such as the Greens (with a stated policy of maintaining a 50-50 balance between men and women in the parliamentary group and in party organs) and the SPD (who are hoping for a 50-50 split by 2000) attract younger women

(Mallinckrodt, 1991), the CDU will be left with a declining support base of older women who will be less prone to question the status quo that the party represents.

Conclusion

The CDU has adhered to its theoretical background in personalism, solidarity, and subsidiarity and includes these principles in conservative policies that strove to keep and expand upon the gains of the economic miracle and the success of the Social Market Economy. As a result, it consistently (except for 1972) wins a plurality of votes in national elections. Dalton wrote in 1985 (p. 293) that "voters migrate to

the party that best represents their views; parties change

to reflect the opinions of their voters; or parties convince

their supporters to accept party policies." CDU party

history shows that it changed little of its initial emphasis on a Christian foundation since 1949. However, in order to

attract voters who were less influenced by Christian ideals,

the CDU focused on the ideals of economic growth and

traditional German values such as the primacy of the family

that appealed to the conservatives, but were still

compatible with Christian Democratic theory. During its

years in opposition (1969-1982), the CDU maintained that it was the true representative of the status quo, repelling

some voters, especially among youth, but retaining the

voters who remembered the days of Konrad Adenauer. Through

election campaigns and results, one can see how successfully

CDU theories and the ideas of party thinkers were translated to the voting public. CHAPTER 5

THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC UNION AND ITS NATIONAL

ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

The CDU/CSU has consistently won more votes than any of the other major parties in every national election since

1949, except 1972. It won an absolute majority in 1957

(50.2 percent) and governed without a coalition partner until 1961. In other years, it has been in coalition government with either the FDP (1961-1965, 1982-present), the SPD (1966-1969), or the FDP and smaller parties (1949-

1957).

During the 1940s and early 1950s, the CDU was able to win votes through a combination of religion, politics, liberal economics, social welfare, and anti-communism. The

CDU was also aided by the fact that it had the support of the Catholic and Protestant churches, which were recognized by the Western occupation powers as local authorities with a reputation as anti-fascists (Bracher, 1975, p. 141). The political culture in the late 1940s was marked by indifference to politics brought about by twelve years of

Nazi political indoctrination and six years of war.

88 89

Reestablishment of the pre-Nazi private world and private values was considered more important than politics. A new experiment with parliamentary democracy, especially one established by the occupiers, was only grudgingly accepted, partly out of a fear of the Soviets in the East (Allemann,

1956, p. 62).

The CDU was able to benefit from this fear. The SPD, the only party to survive fairly intact from the Weimar era, called for a planned economy, state ownership, and distrust of the West. Under leadership of Kurt Schumacher from 1945 to 1952, the SPD attempted to correct what it viewed as past errors. For Schumacher, this meant "a militant, patriotic, and class oriented battle for power on behalf of the German masses" (Edinger, 1968, p. 258). The CDU was portrayed as made up of reactionaries and supporters of authoritarianism who allowed the Nazis to take power. Schumacher insisted that the SPD, as the "only truly democratic and patriotic force in the country," was the only party equipped to rebuild Germany. (The CDU was to pursue a similar line of reasoning in the early 1970s.) The CDU actively supported decentralized, federal government, and (after 1949) a free, unplanned economy. They also were able to successfully portray the SPD as a "Marxist," working-class party— giving credence to the CDU as an integrationist, non-class party, 90

able to satisfy the material and security needs of the

population.

The attention paid to decentralization sprang from the

Catholic social theory upon which most of the CDU's ideas were based, but also from a desire by the CDU to be a new

creation for a new country. Centralism was too reminiscent

of Nazism, communism, and the Weimar Republic. Federalism,

however, was not a totally new idea— it found resonance in

the Catholic concept of solidarity and was reminiscent of

the Germany of the Zollverein, where each state and principality minded its own business unless necessity

dictated joint action. As Allemann wrote (1956, p. 77),

federalism is a traditional, rather than a rational form of

state organization— it is "a conservative form.” In fact,

the most conservative of the new states (Lander), Bavaria

(CSU), voted against the Basic Law in 1949 in the Bundesrat

because the Basic Law was not federal enough (Allemann, 1956, p. 84).

The 1950s

In 1949, Konrad Adenauer was elected chancellor by his party and coalition by one vote— his own. Despite the slim majority, Adenauer ruled the Federal Republic until 1961 and

controlled the CDU from behind the scenes until his death in

1967. Allemann (1956, p. 339) compared him to Bismarck, a 91 one-man government. The election campaigns of 1953 and 1957 dealt not with the Christian View of Humanity or the need for a pluralist German democracy. These campaigns focused on Konrad Adenauer, the benevolent leader, and Ludwig Erhard, the creator of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle.

Those Christians who were concerned by the emphasis on economics and personalities stayed for the most part with the CDU because in practice it was the party of Christians.

Some on the "left wing" of the CDU called for a Christian renewal in the name of Christ, without any specific connections to economic interests or political practices, saw their leaders sent abroad to work in embassies or become mired Church work (Dirks, 1953, pp. 132-133).

Adenauer had no need for advisors, religious or otherwise, in his government. He ignored the parliamentary group and had no confidants. Writing in 1956, Neumann (p.

382) described Adenauer as ruling "with seigneurial dignity and peasant shrewdness. An air of impenetrable mystery surrounds this figure of ageless wisdom....Naturally, his brand of democracy smacks of some autocratic tastes and of outspoken suspicion of mob rule," which was in accord with attitudes and sentiments towards the state which Germans brought with them into the immediate post-war era. A 92

December 1955 EMNID poll found that 45 percent of all

Germans and 52 percent of German men called Adenauer the man

"they most admired," followed by Albert Schweitzer with only

14 percent (Allemann, 1956, p. 332).

These views of Adenauer were exploited by the CDU party organization during the election campaign of 1953, but much more in 1957. Adenauer was presented as a man of the people

(he was mayor of Cologne during Weimar) and as a kind of "ersatz-Hindenburg" (Allemann, 1956, p. 337), who lent an aura of fatherliness combined with democratic authority.

The CDU victory of 1953 depended in part on new voters who voted for Adenauer, rather than for the CDU. Thirty percent of CDU voters polled after the 1953 election said they voted CDU because of Adenauer's personality and prestige; 21 percent voted CDU for religious reasons. When given a list of reasons, 40 percent said they voted CDU out of Christian loyalty; only 18 percent said it was because of Adenauer's prestige (Grace, 1955, p. 43).

As long as Adenauer remained so popular, elections became more like plebiscites for Adenauer, rather than national elections for the Bundestag. "Chancellor supporters" appeared in 1953 and 1957 during the final weeks of the campaigns to mobilize wavering voters (Pridham, 1973, 93 p. 205). The CDU became merely the organizational framework for Adenauer's chancellorship.

1957

The adulation that Adenauer received in the mid-1950s combined with the successful economy would indicate that the

1957 election was decided before election day. Nonetheless, the CDU election machine made a point of reminding Germans who their leader was, what he had done for them, how moral and anti-communist he was. The issue was not economics— there was no arguing with success. In the social area, the

CDU introduced pension reform just before the election to secure the votes of any doubtful pensioners. On foreign policy issues, the CDU could claim that the alliance with the West remained strong, while uprisings in East Germany

(1953) and Hungary (1956) were crushed with Soviet tanks.

The choice was between Father Adenauer and his "team" or socialism and class struggle under the SPD (Kitzinger, 1960, p. 104).

At the 1957 Hamburg Party Congress, the remnants of the

CDU's left-wing— the Christian Socialists and trade unionists— were defeated and dispersed (Kitzinger, 1960, p.

91). The conservatives who supported liberal economics had triumphed. The emphasis of the campaign, therefore, was on leadership and security— economic security and the security 94 of knowing that with Adenauer in control, politics would not i need to become more chaotic or conflictual.

Adenauer's speeches were often preceded by hanging of

posters with a painting of Adenauer, proclaiming that "HE

comes"— a veiled comparison between Adenauer and Jesus

Christ. His speeches discussed the weather, how serious

"the situation" was, the importance of old-fashioned

education, or how his government had eased the workload of

housewives (Kitzinger, 1960, p. 121). His campaign tour had

"all the characteristics of an inspection by a colonial governor in a restive province" (Pridham, 1977, p. 339).

Christianity was an occasional topic of Adenauer's speeches.

For Adenauer, the speeches did not revolve around the Church

or subsidiarity or the role of the Christian in molding

German society. Rather, Christianity was the antithesis of

communism. Re-electing Adenauer would mean preserving

Germany from communism. In a speech on September 7, 1957,

Adenauer said that a Christian party was necessary because,

"we are fanatical defenders of the freedom and dignity of the individual, secondly because we are accountable to God

for all our political actions" (Schtttz, 1960, p. 345).

Adenauer also reminded the voters that if the SPD were elected to government, "a domestic policy and a foreign 95 policy...landslide would follow" (Per Spiegel. 1957,

September 11, p. 14).

The CDU was attacked by the FDP for having a clerical bias and Catholic priests would often direct their flocks from the pulpit to vote CDU. However, Adenauer and his team focused on the economic aspect, on the material success of the Federal Republic and how the CDU was responsible for that success. Although women were promoted as candidates both in 1953 and 1957 (Pollock, 1955; Kitzinger, 1957), the

CDU's campaign pitches to women focused on material issues— "Your lipstick confirms it," "Your wardrobe confirms it"

(Kitzinger, 1960, pp. 115-116). Adenauer even promised to ease housework (Per Spiegel. 1957, September 11, p. 30).

The resultant 50.2 percent majority for the CDU was due in part to the large number of women (54 percent) who voted for easier housework and a party that would protect the family. The slogan "No Experiments" meant what it said— that the CDU would maintain the status quo at all costs.

The SPD regrouped after this election. Its Bad Godesberg program of 1959 moved it to the center and reconciled it with the social market economy. Had the SPD campaigned in

1957 on "questions of Germany or democracy," according to

Bracher (1975, p. 216), they would have fared worse. 96

For an electorate politically socialized before the war, the 1957 CDU campaign must have seemed idyllic. The revered chancellor, whose popularity continued to rise, especially after the 1956 Hungarian uprising, visited the people in their towns and villages. He was in charge, he and his party gave the people material well-being in the economic program and protection in the Atlantic Alliance.

The omnipresent posters of "Der AZte," the attack on

SPD ideology to the exclusion of other parties, the use during party political broadcasts of a fanfare "reminiscent of announcements of victory during the war" (Kitzinger, 1960, p. 266) must have disturbed some voters. Christian duty to others meant also Christian duty to vote in order to keep the family and the Church safe from socialism. The

Federal Republic, it seems, still wanted a father, a leader who would take care of politics, without hurting profits.

Unfortunately, the CDU believed that this feeling would continue indefinitely. By 1961, four years later, the CDU lead over the SPD in national elections dropped from 28.4 percent to 9.2 percent and continued to fall (Bracher, 1975, p. 216).

The 1960s

The 1960s in the Federal Republic represented, at first, a time of "self-satisfaction,... inability to reform, 97

[and]... spiritual encrustation..." (Weidenfeld, 1989, p.

18). In the 1950s, younger voters were still supporting the

CDU, but by the early 1960s, the CDU membership and support was mainly Catholic, independent businessmen and older adults. Women, youth, workers, and Protestants were underrepresented in the membership and were increasingly drawn to the SPD (Schonbohm, 1985, p. 86).

The images of the SPD and the CDU were beginning to merge, as well. Despite vigorous attempts by the CDU since

1949 to portray the SPD as the party of class struggle and planned economics, DIVO polls before the 1957 and 1961 showed that more than half of the voters believed that a SPD government would not differ from the CDU government (Verba,

1965, p. 148). The SPD succeeded in reminding voters of its anti-Nazi role before 1933 and its opposition to Nazism.

The CDU and the FDP, as new parties, could claim to be freed from the Nazi past, but with known ex-Nazis as members, these parties had a weaker claim than the SPD of being truly anti-Nazi. The SPD also began including "the universal values of a democratic emancipation movement, humanism, classical philosophy, and Christianity" in its party programs (1954 and 1959) and accepted Pope John XXIII's encyclical on social and economic reconstruction, Mater et Magistra, which concerned subsidiarity, the common good, just wages, and the

need to support agricultural interests (Bracher, 1975, p.

225; Harte, 1967, p. 441). The SPD actively supported

Erhard's faction in the CDU parliamentary group and spoke of

joining the CDU in a "Grand Coalition" at the time of the

1961 election. Doubts were raised regarding the CDU's claim

to be the only "Christian" party, if the SPD was accepting

the teachings in encyclicals (Bracher, 1975, p. 226). For the CDU, the change in tactics of the SPD meant that the

CDU's hold on the bourgeois vote was in danger, especially

among younger middle-class voters disturbed by the ex-Nazis

in the party and the authoritarian overtones of the Adenauer

administration.

The CDU ran the 1961 campaign similarly to the 1957 campaign— the "No Experiments" slogan was reused. Adenauer, who was 85 in 1961, refused to change any aspect of his party and openly criticized Erhard, his chosen successor.

The CDU/CSU was returned to power, but with only 45.4 percent of the vote, they formed a coalition with the FDP.

Eberlein's (1962, p. 249) analysis of the election indicates that those who voted CDU in 1961 did so out of fear for their economic security; while those who voted SPD, including many former CDU supporters, did so out of a desire for something new, for a "more just new order." Since both the CDU and SPD were now parties of the social market economy and of the center, the CDU was no longer able to act like the "government party" with no organization and a small membership. Being Christian and anti-socialist in a Federal Republic with no overt

"socialist" party (the Communist Party of Germany had been banned in the early 1950s) and less interest in religious or class ideology should have appeared as a liability to the CDU leadership. However, Adenauer was aware of his popularity and refused to give up control of the CDU after stepping down as chancellor in 1963 until his death in 1967.

The CDU in 1965 ran its campaign as it had the campaigns of

1957 and 1961— focused on the chancellor. Instead of portraying Adenauer as the father of the country, the posters portrayed Ludwig Erhard, father of the economic miracle (Irving, 1977, pp. 132-133). The CDU's 1965 result was improved over 1961 to 47.6 percent, but the SPD's improved as well from 36.2 to 39.3 percent. However, within the CDU the loss of Adenauer's strong, direct leadership took its toll. Adenauer, in fact, supported a coalition with the SPD over the objections of Erhard and most of the parliamentary group (Irving, 1977, p. 133). Political commentator Gerd Bucerius described the CDU at this time as

"gnashing its teeth" and causing its supporters, many of 100 whom did not like voting anyway, to gnash their teeth when entering the voting booth (Haffner, 1980, p. 46). The main benefit of this gnashing of teeth for the CDU was the realization that the post-Adenauer era required better organization and more centralization. For German voters, wrote Bucerius, their gnashing of teeth meant the realization that the voters themselves had to "provide a majority party that is capable of governing" (Haffner, 1980, p. 46).

1969

The 1966 recession, CDU losses in Land elections, and the departure of the FDP from the coalition brought about the fall of Erhard and the rise of the CDU/SPD Grand

Coalition under CDU Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and

Foreign Minister Willy Brandt.

For the CDU, the 1969 election campaign meant convincing voters that its one-time hated rival, with whom it now shared government, was unworthy of remaining in government. The CDU viewed itself as a "pluralistic, catch­ all people's party, ideologically committed to little more than anti-communism and a vague Christian morality" (Dowell,

1978, p. 90). The SPD presented itself not much differently, except that it was more concerned with reconciling with communism through Ostpolitik and claimed no 101

Christian moral basis. For those reasons, the CDU focused on Chancellor Kiesinger and the fact that he was the chancellor and filling the role of Adenauer. The slogan was, "It depends on the chancellor." Appealing to Christian values would not work, since the SPD had proved worthy enough to share government with the Christian party.

Claiming the CDU was the better economic manager would not work, since the Minister of Finance, Karl Schiller, was an

SPD member and widely seen as the one who brought the

Federal Republic out of the 1966-1967 recession (Irving,

1977, p. 134).

The CDU's major mistake in 1969, it seems, was assuming that little had changed since 1965— despite student protests, the Prague Spring, and the death of Konrad

Adenauer. The voters had trusted the chancellor in the past, there was no reason to believe they would not do so in

1969. Also, the CDU hoped that the Prague Spring and student unrest would rebound to the CDU's benefit by encouraging those who worried about West German security and law and order to vote CDU. There were 500,000 new, young voters, but still 11 million over age 60. Their campaign strategy ignored voters under 40 for the most part and focused on the wealthy, the old middle class of farmers and small businessmen, devout Catholics, older women, undecided 102 voters over 40, and the new middle class of white collar service workers (Edinger, 1970, p. 555).

The "No Experiments" slogan returned, but under the guise of security— "Security into the Seventies." The CDU wanted the voters to maintain the status quo which the CDU had helped create for them. Kiesinger repeatedly invoked the dead Adenauer, even saying that his and Adenauer's souls were bound together. He also adopted Adenauer's gesticulations. Kiesinger, as Adenauer had, called on

Germans to develop a "solidaristic, world-political will" to protect the Federal Republic from the "monstrous communist world power [that stretches] from Vladivostok to our borders" (Per Spiegel. 1969, September 8, p. 25). The CDU won the 1969 campaign, but lost the election with 46.1 percent of the vote, as compared to the SPD's 42.7 percent. The FDP decided to join with the SPD in forming a coalition. The CDU lost most of its votes in industrial and urban areas, especially among Catholic workers and white collar civil servants— a major portion of CDU traditional support, along with the declining rural and agricultural vote (Irving, 1977, p. 135). According to Edinger (1970, pp. 558-559), 33 percent of SPD gains were among Catholic industrial workers and service workers living in urban and semi-urban areas of North Rhine-Westphalia. 103 The 1970s

Edinger predicted in 1970 (p. 578) that by relying on

older voters and "waning socioeconomic groups," such as

farmers, the "CDU/CSU would have serious difficulties in

remaining a viable competitor of the SPD; most likely it would suffer serious losses in the next election."

Hartmann, also writing in 1970 (pp. 586, 589), noted that in relying on the votes of older voters and pitching their

campaign to them, they alienated the more politically open

and aware younger voters by focusing on law and order, by

"branding protest groups as 'beasts' and 'bandits,' by

asking for increased powers and stricter law enforcement, by

calling the military (as Kiesinger did) the "school of the

nation." Instead of focusing on their Christian

orientation, speeches during the 1969 campaign focused on the dangers of planned economies and of Big Brother, themes that were fresh in the early 1950s. One group, Hartmann notes, seemed to be heavily effected— women aged 21 to 29.

In 1965, these women voted 47.5 percent CDU; in 1969, they voted 48.2 percent SPD.

After 1968, the definition of what is political changed

in Germany as well. "Much of what was formerly assumed to be part of the private sphere (see Dahrendorf, 1967) is a matter of politics— the relations between the sexes...or the 104 status of housework and childrearing....Private needs [became] politicized" (Habermas, 1989, p. 184).

Schdnbohm (1985, p. 94) claimed that by the 1969 election the CDU had changed from a "Christian integration party" to a "pluralistic Volkspartei" that was increasingly progressive and was willing to centralize its operations, including its various interest groups. The CDU in 1969, according to Per Spiegel (Tiefes C, 1969, October 13, p.

30), had only 280,000 members, compared to the SPD's

750,000. The CDU received only 20 percent of its income from member dues, compared to the SPD's 40 percent. Eighty percent of its members were Catholic, 40 percent self- employed, and only 14 percent workers— hardly a representative sample of West German voters.

It was not until 1976 that the CDU could claim to be a changed party. This was due in part to the CDU's resounding defeat in 1972 and the efforts of the Young Union and young leaders such as Helmut Kohl. The Young Union began after

1969 to call for new CDU policies and constructive alternatives to SPD policies, rather than "ideological cliches" (Grotz, 1983, p. 107).

The CDU, starting immediately after 1969, made sincere efforts on behalf of women, in an effort to draw back lost women's votes and to make the CDU, in light of the student 105 unrest and societal upheaval, seem more progressive, thus still eminently more fit to be the party in power. The

Berlin Program of 1971 called the job of housewife and mother equal to any other job and therefore housewives should receive social security benefits. The CDU also called for equal pay for equal work, equal chances of advancement, and improved schooling and job training for women (Strecker & Lenz, 1980, p. 53-55).

In most other areas, however, the CDU was still recovering from the shock of being out of government. Men like Kiesinger and Rainer Barzel tried to resurrect the ideals of the 1940s and 1950s with which the CDU identified-

-punctuality, dedication, and dependability. Christian values became less murky. Moral absolutes were used to

"fight evil" (Dowell, 1978, p. 94) .

The CDU acted as though the SPD/FDP government would collapse at any moment (Paterson & Webber, 1987, pp. 147-

148). With this thought in mind, Barzel called for a constructive vote of no confidence against Chancellor Brandt in April of 1972 over the issue of Ostpolitik, intending that the CDU would win the resulting nationwide election.

The CDU's campaign was "We will build progress on the basis of stability." In 1972, however, unemployment was only .8 percent and average monthly income was 1,250 DM. There was 106 no reason to vote CDU for economic reasons. Ostpolitik and

Willy Brandt were popular. Brandt's popularity in fact was compared to Adenauer's in the 1950s (Pridham, 1973, p. 216). But the CDU "team" of the moderate Barzel, conservative

Franz-Josef Strauss, Protestant Gerhard Schroder, and trade unionist Hans Katzer not only differed on social policy, but the "team" concept did not inspire the confidence of an

Adenauer or an Erhard (Irving, 1977, p. 138).

At the same time, the Federation of German Industry strongly supported the CDU and the Catholic Church encouraged the faithful to vote CDU because of an upcoming liberalized abortion bill which the CDU opposed (Irving &

Paterson, 1973, p. 226). The CDU was further identified with business interests and conservative religion, while proclaiming itself as broadly-based Volkspartei.

The end result was the first numerical defeat for the

CDU, 44.9 percent to the SPD's 45.8 percent. The only group that increased its voting for the CDU between 1969 and 1972 was the farmers. Manual and white collar workers switched to the SPD (Conradt & Lambert, 1974, p. 73). According to

Schossler (1973, p. 28), the CDU could have won the election if it had not tried to play so heavily on fear, using such slogans as "Erhard says: He who votes SPD, votes inflation!" and "The SPD of tomorrow: The radicals grab for 107 power" (Social Democratic Party, 1972, pp. 9, 15). In doing so, the CDU mobilized "neurotic" groups, such as small business owners, old people, and people with low levels of education; and drove away better-informed but undecided voters, who supported CDU finance policy, but felt that the

SPD/FDP had a better foreign policy capability (Schossler, 1973, p. 28).

The 1972 election frightened the CDU into action to change its image, increase its membership (its first drive was in 1974), and return to the center. Peters (1973) provided seven theses regarding the 1972 loss and what the party had to do to regain its standing. 1.) The CDU had no chance in 1972, because it focused on economic issues, inflation and price stability, which were not serious at the time and which younger voters would not understand, having grown up in a country with low inflation and stable prices.

2.) The election results showed a lack of "inner substance," of what made the CDU successful in the 1950s: "innovation, vitality, risk-taking, and a sense of values." 3.) The CDU refused to confront changing political relationships. The

CDU failed to see that its refusal to recognize East Germany played a part in the construction of the Wall and refused to recognize the popularity of Brandt's Ostpolitik. The younger voters and more affluent older voters of the 1970s 108 had different needs than the voters of the 1950s. 4.)

Barzel's attempted coup represented major leadership problems, mainly the inability of leadership to have a separate identity from Adenauer.

5.) The loss of believability of the CDU was a result of a progressive deterioration of moral substance. During the 1950s, the CDU was willing to stand by important, yet unpopular decisions, such as rearmament. By 1972, the CDU was more willing to make decisions that would win votes.

The CDU also refused to recognize that citizen initiatives apart from parties are valid expressions of the people's will towards the state in a democratic society. 6.) The

CDU could only regain power through deep reforms, such as those carried out by the SPD in 1959. 7.) The CDU needed to realize that the center had moved to the left since the

1950s. As such, appealing to the right would be fruitless.

Also, the CDU needed to give up the idea from the 1950s that economic policy, protecting private property, and guaranteeing entrepreneurialism were the most important tasks of the state. 1976

Although Peters' seven theses appeared in the

Frankfurter Hefte. which supports the CDU, the leadership of the party in 1976 seemed to ignore much of what he wrote. The young Helmut Kohl ran as chancellor candidate under the slogan of "Freedom instead of socialism." At the same time, however, the CDU reorganized itself into a centralized party structure, increased its membership to 800,000, and toned down its attacks on the SPD. The CDU, along with the SPD and the FDP, committed itself to the social market economy,

NATO, the European Community, and Ostpolitik. Chancellor candidate Kohl emphasized home, family, property, achievement, virtue, dignity, authority, partnership, patriotism, and the German homeland— perennial CDU themes— in his speeches. Law and order, another CDU theme, was emphasized as well. The Baader-Meinhof terrorism of the early 1970s was used by the CDU, especially the conservative wing, as proof that the SPD was unable to maintain order in

German society. Chancellor candidate Schmidt stayed closer to the issues in speeches, with the result that most Germans found Kohl to be "more sympathetic" and "warmer" (Conradt, 1978, p. 39).

"Freedom instead of socialism" was a non-issue in a free and social state, serving only to antagonize voters who might vote CDU as a change from the SPD. The typical CDU voter in 1976 was a woman, aged 50, who lived in a rural area and was closely connected with the Church

(Kaltefleiter, 1984, p. 51). Women such as she were among a 110

declining group, for which the CDU had no replacement. The

CDU and SPD campaigns were not radically different, except

for the slogan. By forcing voters to choose between

something they already had and wanted, freedom, and

something they did not have and did not want, socialism, the

CDU insisted on couching its message and image in the 1950s.

However, among CDU identifiers, 80 percent accepted the

slogan. Seventy-five percent of undecided voters and 90 percent of SPD identifiers rejected it (Kaltefleiter, 1978,

p. 132).

To back up their slogan, the CDU accused the SPD of

trying to destroy traditional education by proposing

comprehensive schools, using the slogan, "we will not allow

communists to bring up our children as communists" (Padgett

& Burkett, 1986, p. 227). This was part of the CDU's

overall support for the RadikalenerlaJ3, which would have

barred "radicals" from holding public office or sensitive

civil service jobs, including teaching positions. In the

comprehensive schools, so the CDU claimed, newly trained

teachers with leftist leanings would indoctrinate children.

By maintaining the traditional, compartmentalized system, the CDU argued, the family would retain the main responsibility for teaching values. This approach appealed to the rural Catholics, but working class voters, whose I l l chances of advancement were diminished by the compartmentalized system, supported the SPD position (Irving & Paterson, 1977, p. 212-213).

Had the FDP decided to leave the SPD, the CDU could have formed a government that year with its 48.6 percent of the vote (the SPD received 42.6 percent). The CDU instead was forced into four more years of opposition.

Nevertheless, the CDU regained 3.7 percent of the votes over

1972. Some were Catholics who voted SPD in 1972, but came back to the CDU, despite a more moderate stand by the German bishops, as compared to 1972. Irving and Paterson's 1977

(pp. 223-224) analysis of the election indicated that

Germans still voted out of a sense of duty, rather than as an exercise of rights. Student activism was down, while feelings against church and school reform and worries over law and order increased.

By playing on fears of economic uncertainty, rising crime, and general instability, the CDU was able to recreate some of the mood of the 1950s (Baker et al., 1981, pp. 262-

263). However, the black-and-white issue of freedom versus socialism and the focus on the issues of insecurity, a return to the issues of the 1950s, suggests that the CDU was trying to recreate the past, when it was the party, rather than act as an opposition force for progressive change, 112 despite its increased membership; a young, liberal leadership under Helmut Kohl; and the CDU's "New Social

Question," which called on all Germans to protect the interests of minorities and women. Whether the CDU would actually have changed anything if had formed the government is unclear, 78 percent of those asked in 1976 said no (NichtwShler, 1976, p. 76).

Internally, the CDU had overcome many of the weaknesses it inherited from the Adenauer years. New members, a centralized organization, sophisticated media techniques, and a group of young leaders willing to listen to the women, laborers, and youth pointed to a party ready for the 1970s and 1980s. The campaign emphasis on economics, the family, law and order, the specter of communism and socialism reflected a leadership afraid of alienating those voters they were least likely to lose, the rural Catholics and small businesspeople.

The fact that the CDU won more votes than the other parties may have been coincidence, but in only 20 years, the

Federal Republic had developed its own "Golden Age"— the

1950s, a time when there was little political conflict, strong leadership was in place, and no one was protesting or terrorizing, except in East Germany and Hungary. Regardless of the hated connotations, "conservative" described the CDU, 113 focused on the 1950s and economic stability, much better than "Christian.”

The 1980s 1980

For the 1980 election, after intense debate, the

CDU/CSU put forward the conservative Bavarian, Franz-Josef

Strauss. There were complaints in 1976 that in many ways it was difficult to tell the parties apart because their candidates and campaigning styles were so similar. Helmut

Schmidt, centrist and quiet, and Strauss, rightist and to many offensive, were total opposites. As Haffner (1980, p. 155) described Strauss, he showed an "unusual talent for provoking hatred."

The CDU returned to its usual campaign of impending crisis, claiming that the 1980s could not become like the

1910s and the 1940s, "decades of crisis." The CDU called for developing coal and atomic power; giving "child allowances" to mothers in order to stem the declining birthrate; preserving the family with social security benefits for mothers and housewives; and protecting German values and security with law and order legislation against

"enemies," criminals, terrorists, subversives, and

"socialist system-changers who try to rehearse class struggle in the classroom" (Merkl, 1990, p. 71). The CDU

t 114 returned to slogans calling for peace and order and outer security (Per Spiegel. 1980, May 12, p. 94).

The political culture that kept Adenauer in office for fourteen years, was not willing to replace Helmut Schmidt so easily either. Opinion polls in 1980 "showed clearly that the electorate did not want change and that the symbol of stability was Chancellor Schmidt" (Irving & Paterson, 1981, pp. 191-192). Whereas in 1976, the CDU might have been successful in attacking the SPD for its lack of success in combatting terrorism, since 1976, many members of the

Baader-Meinhof gang were killed or imprisoned, the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet to Somalia in 1977 was ended with a

Bundeswehr commando raid that resulted in no hostage deaths, and Schmidt was seen to be in command of the situation when the Red Liberation Front kidnapped and killed industrial- relations expert Hanns-Martin Schleyer in the fall of 1977.

Attempts by the Catholic Church to sway voters to the

CDU were actually counterproductive. On September 21, 1980, a bishop's letter was read in the churches which criticized the lenient divorce and abortion laws, as well as state encroachment and increased state spending. Thirty-eight percent of Catholics said they would vote SPD, citing the letter as the reason. For its part, the Church, specifically Cardinal Hoffner, said the letter was "in line 115 with Catholic social teaching." The letter also served to alienate CDU Protestants who wanted to prevent Protestant ministers from openly supporting the SPD (Irving & Paterson,

1981, p. 196).

The attacks and differences of opinion between the parties were ironic in light of the fact that, according to

Paterson and Webber (1987, p. 152) in the Bundestag

the policy differences between the government and the...CDU/CSU opposition had gradually become indistinguishable in practice and the role of opposition in a variety of policy spheres had increasingly been occupied by the left-wing of the SPD, and by extra-parliamentary movements in which some Social Democrats occupied leading positions.

The choice of Strauss was intended to make the CDU distinguishable and to reaffirm the support of the rural

Catholics and small businesspeople who had always supported the party (Kaltefleiter, 1984, p. 132). That may have been part of the reason that the CDU received a smaller percentage of the vote (44.5 percent) than it had in 1972

(44.9), its "worst defeat." The SPD, however, received only

42.9 percent of the votes. The voters who did not want to vote for the SPD, but did not like the conservative Strauss went to the FDP. The FDP, for its part, decided to stay in coalition with the SPD. The SPD/FDP government lasted only two years, when the FDP left the coalition over economic issues and Helmut Schmidt was unable to win enough votes to 116 stay in office. Helmut Kohl arranged to lose a vote of no confidence to force a national election. 1983 and 1987

The CDU had the advantage of being incumbent in 1983 without the disadvantages. It could "campaign against the thirteen years of socialist rule and optimistically point to the changes that it now wanted to make if the electorate gave it the opportunity" (Conradt & Dalton, 1988, p. 22).

Kohl called on voters to vote for recovery, ironically a slogan used in local elections by the SPD in 1976 (Irving &

Paterson, 1983, pp. 430-431).

Once again, economics was the CDU's campaign issue: unemployment, youth unemployment, bankruptcies, and public debt rather than nuclear disarmament or the environment. Kohl could claim that the CDU was right all along— the socialists did not know how to run an economy. The element of fear was returned as well. The CDU claimed that the

Greens were out to destroy jobs, a SPD-Green coalition would be the ruin of the German economy (Conradt, 1990, pp. 46-47;

Merkl, 1990, p. 79). Business interests campaigned more vigorously for the CDU/CSU than they had since 1972. Small and medium business owners threatened an investment strike if the SPD won (Irving & Paterson, 1983, pp. 430-431). As 117

it turned out, the CDU finished 10.6 percent ahead of the

SPD (48.8 percent vs. 38.2 percent).

The reelected Chancellor Kohl was not what most Germans expect in a chancellor. He was neither incisive nor

charismatic and seemed more at home campaigning and managing

the party than managing the Federal Republic. Unlike

previous CDU governments, the social policy of the Kohl

government lacked strong Catholic connections and economic

policy was not focused strongly on traditional middle-class

values (Padgett & Burkett, 1986, pp. 108-109). Kohl and his

associates had succeeded in moving the CDU to the left, in other words, back to the center. However, he promised that

his government would also return to the principle of

subsidiarity. The subsidiarity as defined by the Kohl

government was altered. Traditional subsidiarity distrusted

the state and its attempts to influence individual lives.

Kohl's subsidiarity still relied heavily on individual and group initiative, but saw that a secular state could have a role in protecting and providing for those groups unable to

fend for themselves. This change in thinking arose from

feelings of competition with East Germany, from the struggle with the SPD to stay in the center, and feelings among older conservatives in the CDU that the state should have a role 118

in promoting social responsibility (Mangen, 1989, pp. 176-

177) .

Between 1983 and 1987, there was little qualitative

change in social policy. Economic policy became more

monetarist, but there was no wholesale restructuring of the

economy. Kohl promised a fundamental change, as Brandt did

in 1969, but in effect the change was minor, partly because

institutional structures change only very slowly and the

social interest structure is unable to change except at

increments (Smith, 1989, p. 75).

The 1987 election campaign strategy of the CDU/CSU was

simple— Germany should continue as it had been. In effect,

this was "No Experiments" all over again. The stress was on

the strong mark, stable prices, steady economic growth, and

the controlled deficit. The nine-percent unemployment, which continued to be a problem, was not mentioned (Cerny,

1990, pp. 240-241). The 1987 election had the lowest voter turnout since 1949, delivering to the CDU its lowest vote

share since 1949 (44.3 percent, down 4.5 percent). About

sixty-one percent of those lost votes went to the FDP, the rest were split between the SPD, mainly due to the conservative tone of the CDU's economic and foreign policy, and the right-wing National Party (Derbyshire, 1987, pp. 72-

73). Surprisingly, many farmers voted FDP or did not vote 119 out of disgust over European Community dairy quotas (Irving

& Paterson, 1987, p. 349).

Between 1987 and the unification fervor of 1989 and

1990, the CDU really did continue much as it did before.

Realizing that environmental protection was not only an issue for the Greens, the CDU created the Ministry of

Environment in 1987 and gave increasing attention to acid rain, forest protection, and auto emissions. However, "New

Politics" issues such as increased citizen participation, women's issues, foreign policy, and minority rights, remained less important for the CDU (Dalton, 1989, p. 120).

Some of these "new politics" issues, though, were not new to the CDU. Women's issues and minority rights, especially, belong among the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

During the 1970s, the role of women and the need for equal recognition of both working women and homemakers was part of the election platform of the CDU in 1972. The CDU always regarded itself as the party to represent those sectors of society without organized interest groups.

During the 1980s, the CDU spoke with heavy emphasis on the

"old politics" issues of economic stability, law and order, and the German nation— issues which had served it well during the 1950s. Whether the CDU can continue to use these 120 themes in the unified Germany is doubtful given the economic situation in the East.

It is important to remember as well that the CDU throughout the 1980s was trying to put a brave face on the political situation in Germany and in Europe— to show it was in control and able to handle the situation. However, the decision to station Pershing IIs on German soil; Chernobyl; the Waldsterben, the death of the forests; the decision to build a new runway at the Frankfurt am Main airport; and demands for changes in the abortion law, among other things, brought people out into the streets as never before. The

Greens were able to raise issues in ways that made the conservative German society uncomfortable. The CDU was not "in control," but for the first time was forced to act like a political party in an Anglo-Saxon democracy, as a representative of a constituency which would give its votes to another party, risking "instability," in order to effect changes in decision-making in the Federal Republic.

Many of the above issues have been dealt with by history or have been pushed aside by unification. The wave of good will that brought the CDU into the East is rapidly deteriorating. East Germans, unfamiliar with the West

German political culture that left decision-making to the experts and fed up with a totalitarian state, have already taken to the streets. As unemployment rises in the East and environmental issues regain momentum in the West, the CDU has called for cooperation with the SPD. Red Army Faction terrorism is on the rise again, but 1970s catch-phrase

"Terrorists and Sympathisers" has not been used. Skinheads attack Polish visitors. The dreamt of unification called for by Adenauer has been achieved, but the CDU is caught unable to control the groups on its right and forced to cooperate with the groups on its left. If the Kohl government lasts until the 1994 election, it may discover that the great Volkspartei that was the CDU is back to where it was in 1972— beaten and needing new blood, perhaps from a

Young Union, this time with Eastern members. CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION Jtirgen Habermas (1989, pp. 189-190) divides the history of the Federal Republic into four phases: Phase I (1945-

1949), the time of currency reform and laying the groundwork for the new country. Phase II (1949-1963) was the "latent period" under Adenauer in which the "aggressive constructive will...was channelled into the private sphere." Phase III (1963-1968) was the "incubation period," the Erhard years, the first recession (1967), and the student revolt. Phase

IV (1968-1989) includes two sub-periods: The social- liberal years (1968-1982) when change was motivational and mental, rather than bureaucratic; and the years of the

"juste milieu" (1982-1989) when the "cheerful Yuppies [sat] atop a base of the...silent unemployed." Phase V (1989-) is just beginning. The 1990-1991 period is significant not only because Germany is united, but also because the two

German peoples, with their two political cultures, are not uniting nearly as painlessly as Chancellor Kohl promised.

Much of the way Germany is today is because the

Christian Democratic Union helped to create the Federal

Republic in 1949. The Basic Law, the Social Market Economy,

122 123 unification are all products of CDU policy or influence. It is important to understand the whys and wherefores of the party to make predictions about the future of the New

Germany or to trace events that led up to Unification Day,

October 3, 1990.

Konrad Adenauer and his attendants were able to ground parliamentary democracy in the Federal Republic. To the concern of other nations, Adenauer's "Chancellor Democracy" had heavy authoritarian overtones. He was the new German father, the new ersatz Kaiser. Germans might say that such an attitude was necessary, even understandable, in light of the previous decades' history and the economic condition of

Germany at the time.

The Christian element of German Christian Democracy seems to have been invoked more than it was practiced since

1949. Party programs and manifestos speak of the Christian roots of the party and the Christian morality which guides it. Over time, however, the emphasis has changed. Adenauer spoke of the need for the Federal Republic under the CDU as the protectors of Western Christendom against communism and the crass materialism of the United States. By the 1970s, the Christian aspect had become vague, hinted at. Thinkers such as Kurt Biedenkopf tried to explain to voters in the

1970s what liberty from a Christian view and subsidiarity 124 were all about and how they affected CDU policy formation.

The people listened politely (Kaltefleiter, 1978, pp. 116-

117), but did not understand that Biedenkopf was trying to explain the essence of the CDU to them to keep the CDU from becoming just a conservative party. By the 1980s, Kohl spoke about the need to return to the "spiritual-moral requirements" of "Zero Hour" (1945) (Heussen, 1982, p. 9), without saying what he meant beyond Germans should all help each other and recognize duties over rights.

The party based on Christian principles became the party based on the Social Market Economy. This may have negative effects on the CDU in the long run. By focusing so heavily on the economy, by returning, consciously or unconsciously, to the salad days of the 1950s, by relying on increasingly marginal economic groups for support, the CDU may marginalize itself. The 1950s no longer represent the majority of the population's experience. To most Germans,

Adenauer might as well be Bismarck for the relevance these men have in their lives.

The CDU is still a confessional party— its name makes it so. Catholics still represent the bulk of its support.

But the political culture has developed past the point where it needs or wants a strong, fatherly leaders or a religious legitimation. Citizens want more say in how their government operates, they are uncomfortable with Bishop's

letters telling them how to vote, they are willing to take

to the streets to make their views known. When confronted

by such issues, the CDU response seems to be, "yes, but look

at how well [or badly] the economy is going." For the

generations who remember the inflation of the 1920s, the

unemployment of the 1930s, and the destruction of the 1940s,

the state of the economy is linked with their survival. But

the CDU seems to forget that the safeguards of the Social

Market Economy, pension indexing, Mitbestimmung, and an

independent federal bank, were in many ways their own

creation, designed to prevent the upheavals of the past.

For the post-war generations, with better education and few economic worries, the CDU stress on the economy and the

fears of collapse can only seem stale.

The New Political Culture in Germany

As Habermas' Phase V begins, the strains in German

national psyche are beginning to show. The West has

achieved its Wohlstand and is slowly achieving democracy in

a Western sense, although perhaps not the "militant"

democracy envisioned by Adenauer. The East is falling in on

itself, calling out for help, and feeling colonized.

Westerners accuse Easterners of being lazy and boorish.

Easterners accuse Westerners of being self-centered, 126 individualistic, and exploitative. In the East, it seems, people have forgotten that the Western Wirtschaftswunder was a lengthy process. As Bavarian Max Streibl reminds the East in his "Appeal to the People in the New States," working life after the war in the West "did not begin with shorter working hours, with trips to Spain and with new cars in front of their doors" (cited in Perger, 1991, April 19, p.

3) • In the West, the voters, angry over higher taxes, voted the CDU out of government in Rhineland-Palatinate after 40 years. Helmut Kohl did say that unification would have a cost and that sacrifices would have to be made, but that was in the "fine print," which no one was supposed to read anyway. Unfortunately, the Western anger is not being played out only in the voting booths, but against Easterners as well. Easterners are still viewed as "bad Germans" who only want a share of Western prosperity without working for it.

Germans are also actively confronting their relationship to the state in calling for a new constitution which gives them the right to hold referenda and conduct recall votes. The right to conduct referenda was left out of the Basic Law to avoid some of the plebescitary chaos of the Weimar era. German civil society, a non-entity for the 127 most part in pre-war Germany, has become a recognizable phenomenon. Politics have become a matter for public discussion, as well as between friends and family. Calling the chancellor a liar and demanding his resignation, for example, is acceptable behavior now, when even thirty years ago such behavior would have been considered "un-German."

The electronic media, the women's and youth movements, and the increase in educational opportunities have educated the voters and in effect have forced the political parties to respond to opinion rather than to create it.

As more Germans reject the power monopoly of the state, the opportunities for citizen action increase, as well as the chance that politics will be viewed as something requiring citizen involvement instead of something best left to experts and requiring only an occasional casting of a ballot. In the unified Germany, however, these changes will take time. For example, a recent Infas poll indicated that job creation in the East is seen as a task for industry by

75 percent of Westerners, but as a task for the state by 66 percent of Easterners. The Social Market Economy, which eschews state involvement as much as possible, is embedded in the Western psyche. In the East, where the state controlled the economy, the Social Market Economy is still an unknown and unfamiliar quantity. That same Infas poll, 128 however, showed that politics in general had slightly more significance for Easterners than Westerners— more than 75 percent of Easterners discuss politics frequently with family and friends, while 68 percent of Westerners discuss politics within the family and 72 percent with friends and acquaintances (This Week in Germany. 1991, April 26, p. 6).

The addition of seventeen million new citizens who were socialized in a secular state will also have repercussions in a nation in which the Western half, although secularized itself, still has the Catholic and Evangelical churches as organized interest groups and still has parochial schools.

Abortion laws, which have been a bone of contention between the CDU and the SPD since the early 1970s, were more liberal in the former-GDR. Increasing numbers of voters in the

West, including CDU supporters, want more liberalized abortion laws as well. If the CDU stands its ground on this issue, it will lose more support, especially among its new­ found supporters in the East.

The nature of the family has changed in the West and is changing in the East. Maintaining that the family is the center of society, as the CDU does, fits in well with a

Catholic milieu and the Prussian world-view. Yet women in both East and West have (or had, in the East) full-time jobs and careers. Staying at home to raise a family is no longer 129 an acceptable option, even if doing so is compensated with

social security. The CDU cannot afford to alienate large

numbers of mostly women voters over this one issue.

Women's groups, environmental groups, Roma and Sinti,

Soviet Jews, Turks, asylum seekers, and Sorbians are among

the many groups in both East and West that are not fully

represented by the established interest groups of labor,

industry, the churches, agriculture, and the bureaucracy.

These groups increasingly ignore pleas to use the

established interest group system to express their needs.

The Parteienstaat was not equipped to deal with

unestablished interest groups, since they did not exist in

any significant form in 1949. However, the interests and

values of these groups must be recognized and responded to

lest the political situation in both East and West

deteriorate further in ways unforseen.

As the two Germanies come together, the CDU has to

rethink itself in order to attract the large numbers of new, mostly younger, often iconoclastic, voters that grew up after the war in the West or those Easterners who have no

experience with democracy. The CDU should be in an ideal position to do that. They helped form the Federal Republic; they can lay claim to a legacy stretching back to 1848; they were the new, interconfessional party in 1949. Solidarity 130

and subsidiarity seemed to have worked in practice during

the 1950s, perhaps they will work again in the East, an

economy almost in ruins. The CDU, however, seems to have

forgotten its own history. Four of the five new LMnder have

CDU governments, all run by Western Christian Democrats. If

subsidiarity and solidarity were followed, the Eastern

Christian Democrats, who know the situation and know the

people, would be allowed to govern, with support from Bonn.

The CDU at one time had a large labor wing which it

sacrificed for the middle class vote. In the East it has an

opportunity to broaden its base and bring back its labor movement.

The history of the CDU is in many ways the history of

the Federal Republic. Christian Democratic ideas of the

state and society may have heirarchic and authoritarian

overtones, but they were in many ways the basis of an

exceptionally strong economy that helped give parliamentary democracy roots in the German psyche. Today, in many ways, the CDU seems to have fallen behind the German population's desire for more democracy, trying to slow the nation's drive

instead of promoting a "Third Way" and advocating a just

system that gives minorities participatory rights. Voters

in the East, overwhelmingly CDU supporters in 1990, are not receiving a voice for their minority views in Bonn or in a 131 West Germany, trying to protect its economy and social system and impatient with the less sophisticated East.

Socialism has crumbled all around and the Kohl government is trying to shore up the Gorbachev regime in the

Soviet Union. Kohl and the CDU have begun to use a national appeal, calling on unified Germans to be proud of their nation and their common heritage. This stance frightens some and attracts right-wing elements to the CDU. The CDU in its programs and founding philosophy was not about nationalism or conservatism. As an inter-confessional, non­ class party based on a Christian ideal, and by extension on peaceful existence, the CDU should not be encouraging the nationalistic appeals one witnessed in Leipzig in late 1989 and early 1990. In forgetting its own heritage and at the same time insisting that some nationalism is acceptable and necessary, jeopardizes Germany's own historical view of itself as the bridge between East and West and of the CDU's role as a model for Christian Democratic movements in

Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. The CDU was in a similar situation in 1949, when they helped make democracy an accepted system to a people unfamiliar with democracy, distrustful of political conflict, and extremely wary of becoming too involved in the society at large.

Similiar situations at differing levels of intensity exist 132 in all of these countries. The CDU, by choosing the road of conservatism, may have lost its chance to be the model of progressive Christian Democracy in Eastern Europe and as the representative of a German nation that is more than expanding economic powerhouse.

The CDU cannot act as a model of progressive Christian

Democracy unless it is able to salvage itself in Germany.

The banner hanging outside the New Theater in Halle has a quote from Confucious, "By nature people stand close to each other, with practice they move apart" (Perger, 1991, April

19, p. 3). The CDU as a Sammelpartei and as a party based on Christian values should be well-equipped to bring these two groups of Germans together. Unless the CDU is willing to take up controversial issues and have a willingness to respond to change as it happens, rather than waiting until the protests start, it will serve to prevent Eastern and

Western Germany from moving together. APPENDIX A

TOP FIVE LEADING ISSUES BY PARTY FOR 1949-1980 (in order)

CDU SPD

Social Justice Technology/Infrastructure Social Market Economy Social Services

Freedom/Domestic Human Rights Social Justice

Regulation of Capitalism Foreign Special Relations

Foreign Special Relations Freedom/Domestic Human Rights

FDP

Social Justice

Freedom/Domestic Human Rights

Technology/Infrastructure

Non-economic Demographic Groups

Farmers/Agriculture

Note. From Electoral programmes in West Germany, 1949-1980:

Explorations into the nature of political controversy by H.-

D. Klingemann in Ideology. Strategy and Party Change:

Spatial Analyses of Post-War Election Programmes in 19

Democracies (p. 303) by I. Bridge, D. Robertson, and D.

Hearl (Eds.), 1987, Cambridge: Cambridge University.

133 APPENDIX B

THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS IN RELATION TO THE STATE

PIUS XII'S 1942 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

1. Right to physical, intellectual and moral life.

2. Right to religious training and education.

3. Right to freely choose occupations, marriage partners,

work and fair wages.

4. Right to private property within the bounds of duty and

social responsibilities, [solidarity and subsidiarity—

CRB]

5. Right to security against arbitrary attack.

6. Right to public and private worship, including charity.

7. Right of citizens in a democracy to a hearing of their

personal opinions on duties and services that are given

them and the right to avoid being forced to obey

without a hearing.

The Rights of the State in Relation to its Citizens

The state may not infringe on personal autonomy, but otherwise may take any other measures to ensure the well being of all citizens.

Note. From Die geistlichen Grundlagen der politischen

Parteien [The Spiritual Bases of the Political Parties] (pp.

115-117) by R. Barzel, 1948. Bonn: Gotz Schwippert.

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