Everything about Christian-democratic Union Of Germany totally explained
The
Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU —
Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands) is the second largest
political party in
Germany. A
center right Christian democratic party, the CDU is a member of the
European People's Party (EPP) and the
International Democrat Union (IDU).
The CDU doesn't operate in Bavaria; its role is played by the
Christian Social Union (CSU). The CDU cooperates with the CSU at the federal level; although each party maintains its own structure, the two form a common
caucus in the
German Parliament and don't run opposing campaigns. Their combination is generally referred to as
The Union.
Historiography
The CDU's early history and the role of Konrad Adenauer are the subject of
Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Adenauer and the CDU (1960). The party's first two decades in power are discussed in
Geoffrey Pridham, Christian Democracy in Western Germany (1977). The CDU's first period in opposition and its changing foreign policy are examined in (1989).
History
CDU was founded after
World War II with many members of the former
Centre Party, but with the goal to include not only Catholics, but also Protestants, in a common confessional,
liberal and conservative party. One of the lessons learned from the failure of the
Weimar Republic was that the disunity of the democratic parties was one major reason for the rise of the
Nazi Party. So people (partly from the
German Resistance) founded a new party without predecessor and called it a "Union" (the term "Union" doesn't refer to trade unions, which are called "Gewerkschaften" in the German language). The first CDU-leader in
Berlin,
Andreas Hermes was involved in the
July 20 plot and was arrested by
Nazi Germany as well als CDUs first leader and West Germany’s first chancellor
Konrad Adenauer a former member of Centre Party. Other CDU representatives came from the
DDP, the
DNVP and
DVP.
The CDU was the dominant party with
Konrad Adenauer as its leader from 1949 to 1963. Then in 1963,
Ludwig Erhard of the CDU succeeded Adenauer, preceding a recession in 1966. This caused the CDU to wane in power and consequently form a coalition with the SPD.
Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) then took power as chancellor of West Germany.
However, the SPD turned and formed a coalition with the FDP in 1969, and the CDU thus lost its leadership position for the next 13 years. It was during this time that the CDU developed new conservative economic and foreign policies. The FDP in turn developed a new coalition with the CDU in 1982 after a fall out with the SPD. By 1983, the CDU was back in power with
Helmut Kohl as the new Chancellor for West Germany. Its status was then shaken in the later half of the 1980s by an extreme
right-wing party called
Die Republikaner. The CDU was then revived in 1989 when the
Berlin Wall fell and the CDU regained popularity.
It was after the people of the GDR peacefully rebelled against their government that West Germany’s chancellor Kohl, with the strong support of the United States, called for the
reunification of Germany. On October 3, 1990, the
German Democratic Republic was abolished and its territory reannexed to Germany. The same year elections were held for the reunified country. Although Chancellor Kohl was reelected, the party lost much of its popularity because of an economic recession in the former GDR and a tax increase in the west. He was, however, victorious again in the
1994 election.
Helmut Kohl served as chairman until the party's electoral defeat in 1998, when he was succeeded by
Wolfgang Schäuble; Schäuble resigned in early 2000 as a result of a party
financing scandal and was replaced by
Angela Merkel. In the
1998 general election, the CDU polled 28.4% and the CSU 6.7% of the national vote. In 2002, CDU reached 29.5% and the CSU 9.0%. In 2005 early elections were called after the CDU dealt the governing
SPD a major blow, winning more than ten state elections, mostly with a landslide victory. A
Grand Coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD faced the challenge that both parties demanded the chancellorship. However, after three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal whereby Merkel would become Chancellor and the SPD would hold 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet and receive a majority of the most prestigious cabinet posts.
(External Link
),
(External Link) The coalition deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on
November 14.
(External Link) Merkel was elected Chancellor by the majority of delegates (397 to 217) in the newly assembled Bundestag on
22 November.
(External Link)
Policies
According to the CDU's website, the party is
non-denominational Christian-based, applying the principles of
Christian Democracy and serving to "unite Catholics and Protestants, Conservatives and Liberals, proponents of Christian social ideals, and men and women from various regions, social classes, and democratic traditions." The CDU believes that mankind has a responsibility to God in upholding the Christian ideals and caring for the environment. Parts of these beliefs include supporting the freedom and dignity of all persons including equal rights among women, men, and the disabled. The CDU supports the idea of a
social market economy. The party strives for a free and market-oriented
European Union and supports European integration. It strongly opposes the membership of
Turkey in the
European Union as Christians face persecution there and it doesn't feel that Turkey would be able to guarantee human rights for its Christian minority.
Traditionally, there have been three somewhat different strands of thought in the CDU, of roughly equal strength: Christian-social thinking as popular among the Catholic working class, emphasizing faith and social justice according to a Roman Catholic view of man; moderately Nationalist-conservative thinking as popular in most rural areas and small towns of Germany, emphasizing a defense of traditional German culture and values; and free-market economic liberalism as popular among business interests, emphasizing
economic freedom and self-determination. A very pronounced anti-
Marxism was common to all three groupings. Lately, the free-market element seems to have become stronger than the other two.
Opponents of the CDU are the social democratic
SPD, the post-communist
Left Party/PDS and the left-wing environmentalist
Bündnis'90/Die Grünen. The liberal
FDP party is considered to be the natural partner of any CDU government (although this was different in the past, when the CDU was more markedly conservative and the FDP more markedly liberal).
Internal Structure
Members
The CDU currently has 536,668 members (As of:
December 31,
2007)
25.4 % of members are female and 74.6 % male. The female proportion is higher in the new East Germany states with 29.2 % compared to the former states in
West Germany with 24.8 %.
Before 1966 membership totals in CDU organization were only estimated. The numbers after 1966 are based on the total from
December 31 of the previous year.
Data about state party group
| State group |
Chairman |
Members |
|
Günther Oettinger |
79,000 |
| Berlin |
Ingo Schmitt |
13,000 |
| Brandenburg |
Ulrich Junghanns |
7,000 |
| Bremen |
Bernd Neumann |
3,340 |
|
| Hamburg |
Michael Freytag |
9,920 |
|
| Hessen |
Roland Koch |
48,950 |
|
| Mecklenburg-Vorpommern |
Jürgen Seidel |
7,000 |
| Hannover (Lower Saxony) |
Christian Wulff |
55,752 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia |
Jürgen Rüttgers |
185,000 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate |
Christian Baldauf |
51.187 |
| Oldenburg |
Manfred Carstens |
13,600 |
| Saarland |
Peter Müller |
22,000 |
| Saxony |
Georg Milbradt |
15,000 |
| Saxony-Anhalt |
Thomas Webel |
9,000 |
| Schleswig-Holstein |
Peter Harry Carstensen |
30,000 |
| Thuringia |
Dieter Althaus |
13,000 |
Party strongholds
The traditional strongholds of the party are concentrated in rural and/or
Catholic regions such as
Eifel,
Münsterland,
Sauerland, the
Fulda district,
Schwaben,
Emsland,
Nordfriesland,
Vorpommern as well as areas in
Saxony, the
Thuringia Eichsfeld,
Taunus, and smaller cities such as
Baden-Baden,
Konstanz, and
Pforzheim. Only very small support exists in
Bremen,
Brandenburg, and East
Berlin.
Relationship with the CSU
Together with its sister party, the
CSU, which is only active in Bavaria, the CDU has formed a joint parliamentary group in the Federal Parliament (Bundestag). This joint group is called CDU/CSU or (informally) "the Union"; its basis is a binding agreement known as a
Fraktionsvertrag between the two parties.
The youth organisation for CDU and CSU is common:
Junge Union.
On issues of national importance and in national election campaigns the CDU and CSU closely coordinate their activities, but they remain legally and organizationally separate parties. The differences between the CDU and the somewhat more conservative CSU sometimes lead to friction between them. The most notable and serious such incident was in 1976, when the CSU under
Franz Josef Strauß ended the alliance with the CDU at a party conference in Wildbad Kreuth. This decision was reversed shortly thereafter when the CDU threatened to run candidates against the CSU in Bavaria.
The relationship of CDU to
CSU has historic parallels to previous
Christian Democratic parties in Germany, with the
Catholic Centre Party as the national Catholic party in
Germany with the
Bavarian People's Party as the local Bavarian variant.
Flag
There is now some, albeit sketchy, information about the history of CDU flags. This seems to be a very difficult story, as they obviously change their logo and their flag every four to five years or so. The last flag had been introduced around 1998. Recently the CDU introduced a new logo together with a whole new corporate identity (CI).
The main feature of the logo is, that it always has to be the same: a red inscription 'CDU' (new font) on a white rectangle of proportions 1:3. Any additional symbols (regional symbols) or text have to be outside the white rectangle. If shown on a coloured background this logo is usually shown on an orange field.
The flag is an orange field with the white rectangle at the bottom. The colours are defined in the CI as follows: orange RGB 255/153/0; red RGB 235/39/41.
Think-tank Konrad Adenauer Foundation
The
Konrad Adenauer Foundation is the think-tank of the CDU. It is named after the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and first president of the CDU. The foundation offers political education, conducts scientific fact-finding research for political projects, grants scholarships to gifted individuals, researches the history of
Christian Democracy, and supports and encourages European unification, international understanding, and development-policy cooperation. Its annual budget amounts to around 100 million Euro.
Special organizations
Notable suborganizations of the CDU are:
Chairpeople of the Christian Democratic Union, 1950-present
Konrad Adenauer 1950-1966
Ludwig Erhard 1966-1967
Kurt Georg Kiesinger 1967-1971
Rainer Barzel 1971-1973
Helmut Kohl 1973-1998
Wolfgang Schäuble 1998-2000
Angela Merkel 2000-
Parliamentary chairmen/chairwomen of the CDU/CSU group in the national parliament
Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo (1949-1955)
Heinrich Krone (1955-1961)
Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo (1961-1964)
Rainer Barzel (1964-1973)
Karl Carstens (1973-1976)
Helmut Kohl (1976-1982)
Alfred Dregger (1982-1991)
Wolfgang Schäuble (1991-2000)
Friedrich Merz (2000-2002)
Angela Merkel (2002-2005)
Volker Kauder (2005-)
German Chancellors from CDU
Konrad Adenauer (1949-1963)
Ludwig Erhard (1963-1966)
Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-1969)
Helmut Kohl (1982-1998)
Angela Merkel (2005- )Further Information
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