The Christian Democratic Union in Germany
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2 Between Concentration Movement and People’s Party: The Christian Democratic Union in Germany Ulrich Lappenküper SOCIETAL BASIS AND THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The German Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) is nowadays regarded as a ‘prototype’ of a people’s party. 1 It came into existence after the Second World War on a regional level, uniting political Catholicism and protestant liberals and conservatives. It can be seen as one of the few really new parties to have been founded in Germany. 2 I t was not easy for the CDU in the early days. After a narrow victory in the first parliamentary elections in 1949 the party had to cope with an enormous loss of support in the regions and a rapid drop in membership of 400,000. 3 The Federal Republic’s ‘founding crisis’ 4 greatly affected the party, which lost important regional elections and many members. The downward trend was stopped in 1953 by the ‘consolidation and concentration processes’ 5 in the party system resulting from the introduction of the 5 pe r cent clause. In 1954 the CDU had 215,000 members, in 1956 the number had risen to 245,000. 6 One year later, it achieved an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections for the first time in a coalition with the Bavarian Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU). In 1961, the CDU, which had in the meantime come to see itself as a ‘state party’, 7 suffered a slight loss of support but remained in power. Four years later in 1965, support increased once again and the CDU, under the leadership of Ludwig Erhard, achieved their second best result ever. Despite the break-up of the coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) a year later, the CDU/CSU managed to retain its leading position in 1969. As the Liberals entered into coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), however, the Christian Democrats in Parliament found themselves in opposition for the first time since 1949. 8 The CDU initially had the characteristics of a ‘concentration movement’ 9 with a strongly decentralized organization and a not very efficient party apparatus, which appeared to dissolve the old social, political and confessional contradictions. It was forged from diverse ideological and regional party traditions as well as the spirit o f opposition to the National Socialist dictatorship. In the relationship with the government and the parliamentary party the party had ‘hardly any independent political role’ 10 fo r quite some time. It operated rather in the shadow of the chancellor and party leade r Konrad Adenauer, who became the figurehead of the party. Only after the establishment of the post of secretary-general in 1967 did the party establish itself as a ‘federal party capable of independent action’. 11 Christian democracy in Europe since 1945 22 In its own self-image, the CDU was a people’s party.12 In the 1950s, however, the social structure of the party was characterized by an under-representation of workers and the dominance of self-employed people and the so-called old middle class. Only at the start of the 1960s did the CDU begin to move towards being a ‘membership party’. 13 There was also an imbalance in its confessional structure. It saw itself as being inter- confessional, but had far more Catholic members. Leading Christian Democrats tried to break out of the ‘confessional ghetto’ 14 by gaining support from protestant laymen and clerics. Their efforts met with some success, even if some protestants kept their distance from the CDU in protest against Adenauer’s policy of Western integration. 15 For the Catholics, the confessional aspect of politics counted far more than the national one. The Catholic Church, despite early scepticism, helped the party enormously. 16 When at the end of the 1950s the importance of the Christian dimension disappeared in the CDU programme and politics, a ‘dogmatic debate’ about the Christian foundation of the party flared up among the Catholics. 17 Adenauer, although a practising Catholic, had stressed the importance of the separation of politics and religion. 18 The confessional divide deepened in 1963 with the election o f Erhard as chancellor, a man who was a ‘frightful figure of the first degree’ 19 for the Catholic Church, and with the appointment of other protestant ministers such as Kai-Uwe von Hassel and Gerhard Schröder. Representatives of the Catholic camp under the leadership of Rainer Barzel initiated a debate about the role of the ‘C’ or the Christian dimension of the CDU, and in so doing hoped to reformulate what Christian politics was about. Their ideas were opposed by many Catholics, however, as the CDU was not a Gesinnungspartei in their eyes, but a Christian, social, conservative and liberal people’s party. 20 The discussion about the ‘capital C’ in the party ceased for a while when the party passed the Berlin Programme in 1968. It continued to base itself on Christian values, while remaining open to non-Christians. 21 The confessional divide was also reflected in the party’s structure. Membership afte r years of stagnation rose to 280,000 after 1963 and—after another phase of stagnation—to 300,000 in 1969. 22 Protestant under-representation decreased after the end of the 1950s; their proportion rose to 36.7 per cent in 1963. 23 The predominance of Catholics among the CDU voters was even less pronounced, so that by the mid-1960s the CDU had achieved a degree of inter-confessionalism it had never had before. This was soon to disappear again, however. 24 CHRISTIAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL ORDER After the Second World War, the Christian Democrats carried on the old German political Catholicism tradition of operating without ‘far-reaching theorems’. 25 Characteristic of their programme was its basis in Christian values and flexibility on concrete policy issues. Central to the new beginning was the condemnation of National Socialism and the abandoning of nationalism and centralism. Christian democracy was seen to be strongly rooted in the belief in the dignity and inalienable rights of the individual. 26 With respect to economic and social policy, the party first aimed at the middle ground between liberal individualism and Christian socialism, 27 as in the 1947 Between concentration movement and people's party 23 Ahlen Programme of the North Rhine-Westfalian CDU. 28 In 1948, however, there was a turnabout under the influence of the Frankfurt Economic Council and Ludwig Erhard towards the so-called social market economy which strove to combine classical liberalism with social responsibility. 29 After controversial debate the change of course in 1949 led to the Düsseldorfer Leitsätze, which defined the new direction as ‘the socially responsible version of the market economy’. While the plea for social fairness and social security for the economically weak remained valid in the Ahlener Programm, the socialization tendencies and the plea for a corporatist economic order were largely abandoned. 30 In October 1950, at the first West German federal party congress in Goslar, the CDU defined its ‘historic mission’ as cultural, European and social. It emphasize d ‘the God-given right to a homeland’, the aim of overcoming the division of Germany, the need to eradicate social suffering and ‘Europe’ both as an idea and as a political and economic force. 31 At the beginning of the 1960s, the party entered a new phase of domestic, societal and economic programmatic development against the background of radical political changes. Responding to the challenges of the time, Chancellor Erhard combined the ‘tried and tested’ with the completely new. With his ‘politics of the centre’ 32 he reverted to his 1957 motto, ‘prosperity for all’, 33 warning, however, against escalating materialism. At the CDU congress in March 1965, he announced his idea of an ‘organized society’ (formierte Gesellschaft) making the demands of organized interests compatible with the economically viable and stemming the power of interest groups, which he blamed for the deficiencies of pluralistically organized democracy. Conceived as a further development of the social market economy, it was designed as a new vision for modern industrial society that would fend off the destructive force of pluralism and avoid ideological and interest group-based fragmentation. The aims were a long-term budgetary policy, the activation of parliamentary work, the paring down of the influence of interest groups and the redirection of social policy. 34 The diffuse plan, which reflected the party’s anti- pluralistic prejudices, 35 did not get beyond the planning stage, however, due to the republic’s economic and foreign policy issues fully absorbing the chancellor’s attention. After the collapse of his government in autumn 1966, the CDU quickly distanced itsel f from Erhard’s visions and took on the long overdue task of giving the party a new basis, relevant to the time. After years of little programmatic debate, the party drafted a plan o f action which they passed in Berlin in 1968. In economic and fiscal policy, it distanced itself from the basic premises of Erhard’s economic philosophy and aligned itself to the ideas of the SPD, with which it had entered into coalition in December 1966. Convinced that the complexities of modern economies demanded careful planning of economic and budget development, the CDU now supported an active structural, cyclical and fiscal policy for the state. 36 The magic catchphrases, ‘global control’ (Globalsteuerung), ‘medium-term budgetary planning’, and ‘concerted action’, helped to chase away the shadow of the recession. 37 THE IDEA OF EUROPE AND PRACTICAL EUROPEAN POLITICS At the end of the 1960s, a similar alignment of the CDU with social democracy can be Christian democracy in Europe since 1945 24 observed in European policy.