German Centre Party Deutsche Zentrumspartei | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Federal Chairman | Christian Otte |
| Founder | Joseph Görres |
| Founded |
|
| Headquarters | Straberger Weg 12 41542,Dormagen,NRW |
| Youth wing | Windthorstbund [de] |
| Paramilitary wing | Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (1924–1930) |
| Membership |  600 (2022est.) |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Centre[4] tocentre-right[5] |
| Religion | Catholic Church |
| Regional affiliation | Bavarian People's Party |
| Colours | Black White Blue |
| Bundestag | 0 / 736 |
| Bundesrat | 0 / 69 |
| State parliaments | 0 / 1,884 |
| European Parliament | 0 / 96 |
| Heads of State Governments | 0 / 16 |
| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
www | |
Flag used until 1933 | |
TheCentre Party (German:Zentrum), officially theGerman Centre Party (German:Deutsche Zentrumspartei) and also known in English as theCatholic Centre Party, is aChristian democraticpolitical party inGermany. It was most influential in theGerman Empire andWeimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled theKulturkampf waged by ChancellorOtto von Bismarck against theCatholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in theReichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party nameZentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.[6]
For most of the Weimar Republic, the Centre Party was the third-largest party in the Reichstag and a bulwark of the Republic, participating in all governments until 1932. FollowingAdolf Hitler's rise to power in early 1933, the Centre Party was among the parties who voted for theEnabling Act, which granted legislative powers to Hitler's government. Nevertheless, the party was pressured into dissolving itself on 5 July, as theNazi Party became the only legally permitted party in the country shortly thereafter.
AfterWorld War II, the party was reconstituted, but could not rise again to its former importance, as most of its members joined the new interdenominationalChristian Democratic Union (CDU) and, in Bavaria, theChristian Social Union (CSU). The Centre Party continued on as a marginal party and concentrated its efforts on regional politics, mainly based in the state ofNorth Rhine-Westphalia. The party was unrepresented on the German federal level from 1957 to 2022, when Federal representativeUwe Witt and European representativeJörg Meuthen defected from theAfD and joined the Centre Party.
The Centre Party belongs to the political spectrum of "Political Catholicism" that, emerging in the early 19th century after the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, had changed the political face of Germany. Many Catholics found themselves in Protestant dominated states.
The first major conflict between theCatholic Church and a Protestant state was the "Colonian Church conflict", when thePrussian government interfered in the question ofmixed marriages and the religious affiliation of children resulting from these. This led to serious aggressions against the Catholic population of theRhineland andWestphalia and culminated in the arrest of theArchbishop of Cologne. At that time, one of the founding fathers of Political Catholicism was journalistJoseph Görres, who called upon Catholics to "stand united" for their common goals, "religious liberty and political and civil equality of the denominations". The conflict relaxed after 1840, withFrederick William IV's accession to the throne.
TheGerman revolutions of 1848–1849 brought new opportunities for German Catholics. In October, the bishops had their first meeting in 40 years inWürzburg and the local "Catholic Federations" assembled inMainz to found the "Catholic Federation of Germany". In theNational Assembly, which was convened to draw up a German constitution, a "Catholic club" was formed. This was not yet a comprehensive party, but a loose union aimed at protecting the Church's liberties in a future Germany, supported by many petitions from the "[Pope] Pius federations for religious liberty". The later demise of theNational Assembly proved to be a major setback for Political Catholicism.
In theKingdom of Prussia, the revisedconstitution of 1850 granted liberties, which in parts even exceeded those of theFrankfurt draft constitution, yet two years later the minister for culture, von Raumer, issued decrees directed mainly against theJesuits. In reaction this led to a doubling of Catholic representatives in the subsequent elections and the formation of a Catholic club in theLandtag of Prussia. In 1858, when the "New Era" governments ofWilhelm I adopted more lenient policies, the club renamed itself "Fraction of the Centre" in order to open itself up to include non-Catholics. This name stemmed from the fact that in the Landtag the Catholic representatives were seated in the centre, between the Conservatives on the right and the Liberals on the left. Faced with military and constitutional issues, where there was no definite Church position, the group soon disintegrated and disappeared from parliament after 1867.
Growinganti-Catholic sentiment and policies, including plans for dissolving all monasteries in Prussia, made it clear that a reorganisation of the group was urgently needed in order to protect Catholic minority rights, enshrined in the 1850 constitution, and to bring them over to the emerging nation state.
In June 1870,Peter Reichensperger called on Catholics to unite and, in October, priests, representatives of Catholic federations and the Catholic gentry met atSoest and drew up an election programme. The main points were:
There were also more general demands such as for a more federal, decentralised state, a limitation of state expenditure, a just distribution of taxes, the financial strengthening of the middle classes and the legal "removal of such evil states, that threaten the worker with moral or bodily ruin". With such a manifesto, the number of Catholic representatives in the Prussian Diet rose considerably. In December 1870, they formed a new "Centre" faction, also called the "Constitution Party" to emphasise its adherence to constitutional liberties.
Three months later, early in 1871, the Catholic representatives to the new national parliament, theReichstag, also formed a "Centre"faction. The party not only defended the Church's liberties, but also supportedrepresentative government andminority rights in general, in particular those ofGerman Poles,Alsatians, andHannoverians. The Centre's main leader was the Hannoverian advocateLudwig Windthorst and other major figures includedKarl Friedrich von Savigny,Hermann von Mallinckrodt,Burghard Freiherr von Schorlemer-Alst, the brothersAugust Reichensperger andPeter Reichensperger,Franz von Ballestrem andGeorg Count Hertling. The party was named the Centre Party due to the fact that in Parliament the Catholics sat between the Liberals on the left and the Conservatives on the right as opposed to the party adhering tocentrism in the modern context.
Also in other German states Catholic parties were formed, cooperating with the Prussian Centre Party in the Reichstag:
The Catholic People's Party was formed in theGrand Duchy of Baden in 1869, and merged into the Centre Party in 1888.[7]
In the age of nationalism, Protestant Germans, whether Conservative (likeOtto von Bismarck) or Liberal, accused the Centre ofUltramontanism or having a greater loyalty towards the Pope than to the German nation. After theFirst Vatican Council, Bismarck launched theKulturkampf ("cultural struggle") against the Catholic Church. Catholics fought back vigorously and with near-unanimity. The Centre party gained greater support from the Catholic population. Following Bismarck's1879 turn fromfree trade toprotectionism and from theNational Liberal party to theConservative parties, he also abandoned the unsuccessfulKulturkampf.[8][9] The Centre party remained a party of opposition to Bismarck, but after his resignation in 1890, it frequently supported the following administrations' policies in theReichstag, particularly in the field of social security.
The Kulturkampf had reinforced the Catholic character of the Centre Party, but even during itLudwig Windthorst had defended the party against Bismarck's accusation of being a "denominational party" in describing the Centre as "a political party with a comprehensive political programme and open to anyone, who accepts it". However, few Protestants took up this offer and the Centre remained, by the composition of its members, politicians and voters, an essentially Catholic party.
Loyal to thePope in church matters, the Centre party steered a course independent of the Holy See on secular matters. This became apparent in the "septennat dispute" of 1886. Since the Centre Party rejected Bismarck's military budget, the Chancellor negotiated with the Holy See and promised to abolish someKulturkampf-related laws and to support the Pope in theRoman question, if the Vatican persuaded the Centre Party to accept his bill. Despite this agreement, the Centre Party rejected the budget and Bismarck called new elections. He also published the letters with the Vatican, intending to drive a wedge between Catholic voters loyal to the Pope and the Centre Party with the slogan: "The Pope against the Centre!" Windhorst managed to avert this by reaffirming the Party's autonomy, which the Pope had accepted, and by interpreting the published letters as expressions of papal confidence in the party.
As the Kulturkampf declined, debates about the character of the party emerged culminating in the Centre dispute, in 1906, after Julius Bachem had published the article "We must get out of the tower!" He called upon Catholic politicians to fulfill Windthorst's word and get out of their perpetual minority position by an effort to increase Protestant numbers among their representatives in parliament. His proposal was met with passionate opposition by the greater part of Catholic public, especially since it also included theChristian trade unions and other Catholic organisations. No side could win the upper hand, when the outbreak ofWorld War I ended the dispute.
After the war, there were many proposals on how the reform the party.Heinrich Brauns published the Cologne Program (Kölner Programm), which proposed the re-formation of the Zentrum under a new name (Christliche Volkspartei, CVP). This proposal was rejected, with only a few regions adopting it for the1919 election; the party instead adopted the Berlin Guidelines (Berliner Leitsätze), which were more moderate but failed at making the Zentrum attractive for Protestant voters too.[10]Adam Stegerwald, leader of theChristian trade unions, made another attempt at transcending the party's exclusively Catholic character and uniting Germany's fragmented party spectrum. In 1920 he advocated the formation of a broad Christian middle-party, that would transcend denominations and social classes and which could push back theSocial Democrats' influence.
The Polish minority in the German Empire formed one of the largest Catholic groups, but the Centre Party pursued ananti-Polish course causing enmity between it and Polish minority.[11]
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With theGerman entry into World War I, the party also used the debates aboutwar bonds to push for a repeal of the last remnants of anti-Jesuit laws. In 1916, the Reichstag adopted a resolution introduced by the Centre Party, calling on the government to follow theOberste Heeresleitung (OHL)'s recommendation on the use of submarines. The OHL's policy of resumingunrestricted submarine warfare was supposed to break the deadlock of the war but instead led to theUnited States entry into the war.[12] As the war continued, many of the leaders of the Centre's left wing, particularlyMatthias Erzberger, came to support a negotiated settlement, and Erzberger was key in the passage of theReichstag Peace Resolution of 1917.
The same year, the Centre'sGeorg von Hertling, formerlyMinister-President ofBavaria, was appointed Chancellor, but he could not overcome the dominance of the military leadership ofHindenburg andLudendorff. When a parliamentary system of government was introduced in October 1918, the new chancellorMax von Baden appointed representatives from the Centre party, the Social Democrats and the left-liberals as ministers.
After the fall of the monarchy in theGerman Revolution of 1918–1919, conflict arose between the party and the new Social Democratic government.Adolf Hofmann, theFree State of Prussia minister for culture, attempted to decree a total separation of church and state, forcing religion out of schools. This stirred up a wave of protest among the Catholic population, and bishops, Catholic organisations and the Centre Party itself united to combat the "red danger". This conflict bridged internal tensions within the party and secured its continual existence despite the turmoil of the revolution. The party however was weakened by its Bavarian wing splitting off and forming theBavarian People's Party (BVP), which emphasisedautonomy of the states and also took a more conservative course.[13]
In the1919 elections for theWeimar National Assembly, the Centre Party gained 91 representatives, being the second largest party after theSocial Democratic Party (SPD). The Centre'sConstantin Fehrenbach was elected president of the National Assembly. The party actively cooperated with Social Democrats and left-liberalGerman Democratic Party (DDP) in drawing up theWeimar Constitution, which guaranteed what the Centre had been fighting for since its founding: equality for Catholics and autonomy for Catholic Church throughout Germany. The party was less successful in the school question. Although religious education remained an ordinary subject in most schools, the comprehensive, inter-denominational schools became default.
The Centre Party, whose pragmatic principles generally left it open to supporting either a monarchical or republican form of government, proved one of the mainstays of theWeimar Republic, continuing the cooperation with SPD and DDP in theWeimar Coalition. This combination, however, lost its majority in the1920 elections. The formation of the new Christian People's Party in Rhineland (May 1920) caused considerable concern among the Centre leadership. Seeing the exodus of conservative Catholics caused by a sharp left turn of the Centre at the end of war,Adam Stegerwald proposed his "Essen program"[14] (September 1920) that promised Germany to become "Christian, democratic, German, and social" and a plan to form a broad-based Christian party.[15]
The party was an ideologically diverse coalition of Catholic politicians, comprising republicans likeMatthias Erzberger andJoseph Wirth as well as right-wingers likeFranz von Papen. As a result of the party's flexibility, it participated in every government between 1919 and 1932, both with parties to their left and to their right. The Centre mainly provided the ministers for finance and labour and, on four occasions, the Chancellor. However, this also damaged the party's prospects because it was increasingly associated with all of the conflicts, problems, and failures of the Republic. The Centre had a share of the odium attached to the so-called "Weimar Establishment" which was blamed, especially on the right, for the German defeat in World War I in theStab-in-the-back myth, as well as for the humiliations of the Versailles Treaty and reparations. Erzberger himself, who had signed the armistice, was assassinated by right-wing extremists in 1921.
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The parties of the Weimar Coalition (Social Democrats, Centre and the left-liberalGerman Democratic Party (DDP)) were the base of the Weimar Republic but lost their majority in the 1920 elections. After this, majority governments were rare as they required the support of the Weimar Coalition and the national liberalGerman People's Party (DVP). Social Democrats and DVP found it hard to agree on economic policy while Social Democrats disagreed with the Centre Party on issues like religious schools or a nationwideConcordat with the Holy See.
Following the 1920 elections, the Centre'sConstantin Fehrenbach formed a minority government in a coalition with the DDP and the DVP. In May 1921 the Weimar Coalition once again joined forces with the Centre'sJoseph Wirth as Chancellor, but this minority government collapsed again in November 1922. After this, the Centre participated in the non-affiliatedWilhelm Cuno's "government of the economy", together with both liberal parties and theBavarian People's Party (BVP).
In August 1923, the DVP'sGustav Stresemann formed aGrand Coalition administration, comprising the Centre, both Liberal parties and the Social Democrats, which lasted until November, when the Social Democrats left the coalition and the Centre'sWilhelm Marx became chancellor of a cabinet of the remaining parties. In January 1925 the non-affiliatedHans Luther was appointed chancellor and formed a coalition between the Centre, both Liberal parties, the BVP and, for the first time, the right-wingGerman National People's Party (DNVP). The Centre, the BVP and the DNVP jointly supported legislation to expand religious schools.
In the same year, Wilhelm Marx was the Centre's candidate in thepresidential elections. In the second round, combining the support of the Weimar coalition parties, he gained 45.3% of the vote and finished a close second to the victorious right-wing candidatePaul von Hindenburg with 48.3%. In May 1926 Chancellor Luther resigned and Marx again assumed the chancellorship. In June 1928, thegeneral elections resulted in losses for the government parties and in gains for the Social Democrats and theCommunists. The Grand Coalition of 1923 was revived, this time including the BVP and the Social DemocratHermann Müller became chancellor.
During the years of the Weimar Republic, debates about the Catholic character of the party, as described above, persisted. The left-wing of the party, led by Erzberger and Wirth, had close ties to the Catholic workers' associations led byJoseph Joos.[16] Some politicians on the right wing of the party, includingHeinrich Brauns andFranz von Papen, advocated a move towards the right and a closer cooperation with the national movements.[17] The middle-ground emphasised their loyalty to the Church and rejected both extremes. To mediate the tension between the wings and to strengthen their ties with the Bishops, the party in September 1928 did not elect the two favouritesJoseph Joos andAdam Stegerwald, but rather the clericLudwig Kaas as chairman.
In 1930, theGrand Coalition fell apart.Heinrich Brüning, from the moderate-conservative wing of the party, was appointed as Chancellor with a cabinet that, apart from the missing Social Democrats, was virtually unchanged. Brüning was confronted with economic crises exacerbated by theGreat Depression and had to tackle the difficult tasks of consolidating both budget and currency when faced with rising unemployment, and of also negotiating changes to thewar reparations payments. His course of strict budget discipline, with severe cuts in public expenditure, and tax increases made him extremely unpopular among the lower and middle classes as well as among thePrussian Junkers.
In 1930, Brüning's failure to gain a majority for his policies in parliament prompted him to callearly elections, in which the four parties of the former Grand coalition lost their majority. After this, Brüning based his administration entirely on the support of the presidentialdecrees ("Notverordnung") through article 48 of the Constitution. This allowed him to circumvent parliament, as long as the Social Democrats - who feared another election - tolerated this practice. For this way of government based on both the President and cooperation of parliament, Brüning coined the term "authoritarian democracy".
By this time, the party had become increasingly ambivalent toward democracy. Many elements of the party, including Kaas, had come to believe that only an authoritarian regime could protect the position of the Church.[18]
The Centre consistently supported Brüning's government and in 1932 vigorously campaigned for the re-election ofPaul von Hindenburg, calling him a "venerate historical personality" and "the keeper of the constitution".Hindenburg was re-elected againstAdolf Hitler, but shortly afterwards dismissed Brüning on 30 May 1932.
President Hindenburg, advised by GeneralKurt von Schleicher, appointed the Catholic noblemanFranz von Papen as Chancellor, a member of the Centre's right wing and former cavalry captain. The intention was to break the connection of the Centre with the other republican parties or to split the party and integrate it into a comprehensive conservative movement. However, the Centre refused to support Papen's government in any way and criticised him for "distorting and abusing good old ideals of the Centre, acting as the representative of reactionary circles". Papen forestalled being expelled by leaving the party.
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Following Brüning's resignation, the Centre Party entered the opposition. Though they also opposed theNazi Party, their energies were directed mainly against the renegade Papen. Some Centre politicians were soothed by Hitler's strategy of legality into downplaying the Nazi threat.[19]
In regard to the government, the Centre Party rejected a "temporal solution", such as Papen's presidial cabinets, and rather advocated a "total solution", i.e., a government according to the rules of the constitution. Since the Centre considered Papen's administration of being "in a dangerous way dependent onradical right-wing parties", chairmanLudwig Kaas advised the President to recognise this connection by basing the government on a coalition with the rising right-wing parties, the "logical result of current development". This would force the radicals to "take their share in responsibility" and "acquainting them with international politics". The Centre would then act as the party of opposition to this administration.[20]
As Papen was faced with almost uniform opposition by the parties, he had theReichstag dissolved. In the subsequent elections, the Centre Party campaigned on two fronts, against both the Papen government and National Socialists and reaffirmed their stance as the "constitution party" opposed to "any measure contrary to constitution, justice and law" and "unwilling to yield to terror". TheJuly 1932 elections brought further losses to the mainstream parties and gains to the extremist parties. The National Socialists supplanted the Social Democrats as the largest party in theReichstag.
AsCommunists and National Socialists together had won the majority of seats, no government coalition could be formed without one of them. Papen tried to justify his authoritarian style of government by pointing out that parliament could no longer function properly. Countering this reasoning, the Centre and the BVP tried to re-establish a working parliament by cooperation with the National Socialists, since the three parties together had attained 53% of the seats. When Papen called upon the people to "reject the dictatorship of a single party", the Centre Party agreed "without reservation", but it also stated that "with the same resolution we reject the dictatorship of the nameless party, now in power … even if cloaked with the illusion of non-partisanship".
After Papen failed to get Hitler's support for his administration, the Centre began their own negotiations with the National Socialists. They started in the state ofPrussia, where theWeimar Coalition had just lost its majority. An alternative majority could not be found and the Papen administration had seized this opportunity to assume control of Germany's largest state in the "Prussian coup" via presidential decree. Now, the National Socialists proposed to end this direct rule by forming a coalition with the Centre Party, promising an equal share in government. Since this went too far for the Centre's national leadership, the negotiations were transferred to the national level, whereHeinrich Brüning conferred withGregor Strasser. During that period the anti-Nazi polemics ceased in order not to disturb the negotiations. Since the NSDAP was the larger party, the Centre was willing to accept a Nazi as Chancellor, provided he could gain the trust of the President, which at that time seemed quite a difficult task.
The negotiations were bound for failure, since the aims of the two groups were largely incompatible. The Centre argued that the vote of July had "called Hitler not to dictatorship but to responsibility, to getting in line with law and constitution". They hoped to "build a strong government without touching the substance of the constitution", to create "clear responsibilities" and to "preclude anti-constitutional experiments". The Centre advocated a return to Brüning's "authoritarian democracy", which they considered up to the times and tested by experience, against Papen's "omnipotent state and independent leadership", while the Nazis would only accept a coalition that would serve their purpose of achieving total dominance. Not expecting a successful conclusion, Hitler used the Centre negotiations in order to put pressure on the Papen administration.
The negotiations were also met with criticism from within the Centre Party. Some rejected them as "currying favour with the National Socialists" and giving credence to Hitler's strategy of legality. Catholic journalistsFritz Gerlich andIngbert Naab dismissed as "illusionary" the attempt to "uphold the constitution and the legal order" with a man such as Hitler with his "unconditional propensity to evil". Instead of "driving out the devil by Belzebub", the Centre should act as the parliament's conscience. The party leadership answered their critics by calling it a "duty of conscience" to try to achieve a constitutional government. Though Papen did not expect the negotiations to succeed, he was nonetheless concerned as a success would have led to a presidential crisis, as Hindenburg was unwilling to have a coalition parties dictate the administration. In September he ended all speculations by dissolving the Reichstag again, almost immediately after its first meeting.
Papen's act did not end the negotiations between the Centre and the NSDAP. In fact, it made further meetings possible, since the Centre Party's leadership blamed the failure not on the parties' incompatibility but on Papen calling for new elections. Since the NSDAP vote dropped again in theelections of November 1932, the Centre Party considered their strategy successful and resumed negotiations, this time under the slogan of forming a "Notgemeinschaft" ("community of need"), even though the Centre, BVP, and NSDAP together no longer formed a majority in parliament.
Kaas advised President Hindenburg not to continue Papen's "administration of conflict"; he advocated "national concentration including the National Socialists", but did not comment on an alternative Chancellor, since he considered that the "personal prerogative of the President". Hindenburg's negotiations with Hitler failed, but so did Kaas's attempt to form a coalition in parliament. By avoiding a clear statement, Hitler managed to pin the blame for this failure on the DNVP'sAlfred Hugenberg, who had rejected Kaas's proposals.
Since the cabinet had refused to support Papen's planned coup d'état by a permanent dissolution of the Reichstag, in December Hindenburg appointed GeneralKurt von Schleicher as Chancellor. Schleicher tried to form a "Querfront" (an alliance involving willing members of both left-wing and right-wing parties), which failed. Schleicher then revived Papen's proposed coup d'état, which the Centre Party refused to condone, as did the other parties. Under these circumstances, Hindenburg refused to back the coup, and Schleicher accordingly resigned on 28 January 1933.[21]
Meanwhile, Papen had formed an intrigue to oust his successor. He conferred with Hugenberg andindustrial magnates and bankers during a feverish night in which the outcome was unclear to all participants. On 30 January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor with Papen as Vice-Chancellor and Hugenberg as minister for economics.
Though seeing their adversaries Papen and Hugenberg join forces with Hitler, the Centre Party still did not give up building a broad coalition government. Since the new administration was still lacking a majority in parliament, the Centre was ready to support it, either by toleration or by coalition. Hitler intended to minimise non-Nazi participation, but feigned a willingness to cooperate with the Centre and blamed Papen and Hugenberg for denying cabinet posts to the Centre. When Kaas requested a broad outline of his government's objectives, Hitler used the questionnaire presented by Kaas to declare the talks a failure and obtain the President's approval for calling for new elections for the third time in about half a year.
Theseelections in March 1933 were already marred by theSA's terror, after theReichstag fire and civil rights had been suspended by President Hindenburg through theReichstag Fire Decree. Still the Centre Party campaigned hard against the Hitler administration and managed to preserve their former vote of roughly 11 per cent. The government parties NSDAP and DNVP however jointly won 52 per cent of the vote. This result shattered the Centre Party's hopes of being indispensable for obtaining a majority in parliament. The party was now faced with two alternatives – either to persist in protesting and risk reprisals like Communists and Social Democrats, or to declare their loyal cooperation, in order to protect their members. As shown by subsequent events, though deeply uncomfortable with the new government, the party opted for the latter alternative.[22][page needed]
The government confronted the newly elected Reichstag with theEnabling Act that would have vested the government with legislative powers for a period of four years. As the bill required a two-thirds majority in order to pass and the coalition parties only controlled 340 of the 647 seats (52.5 percent), the government needed the support of other parties.[23]
The Centre Party, whose vote was going to be decisive, was split on the issue of the Enabling Act. Chairman Kaas advocated supporting the bill in parliament in return for government guarantees. These mainly included respecting the President's Office retaining veto power, religious liberty, its involvement in culture, schools and education, theconcordats signed by German states and the existence of the Centre Party. Via Papen, Hitler responded positively and personally addressed the issues in his Reichstag speech but he repeatedly put off signing a written letter of agreement.
Kaas was aware of the doubtful nature of such guarantees but when the Centre Party assembled on 23 March to decide on their vote, Kaas advised his fellow party members to support the bill, given the "precarious state of the party". He described his reasons as follows: "On the one hand we must preserve our soul, but on the other hand a rejection of the Enabling Act would result in unpleasant consequences for fraction and party. What is left is only to guard us against the worst. Were a two-thirds majority not obtained, the government's plans would be carried through by other means. The President has acquiesced in the Enabling Act. From the DNVP no attempt of relieving the situation is to be expected."[24]
According to English historianRichard J. Evans, the main reason why the Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act despite questioning the sincerity of Hitler's guarantees was because of the intimidation that it was subjected to. The party was further pressured by the fact that on 26 June 1933, all of the Reichstag and Landtag deputies of theBavarian People's Party were placed in custody by Heinrich Himmler. This was also followed by the Nazi troops forcefully disbanding the Catholic trade unions, and Catholic civil servants being threatened with dismissals. In light of the increasing oppression, most members of the Centre Party believed that they were powerless to prevent the NSDAP from gaining power.[25] Evan wrote:
Yet the party wanted a Concordat not least because of the massive intimidation to which it had been subjected since the end of February 1933. This included violent attacks on Centre Party meetings during campaigning for the elections of 5 March 1933, during one of which the Centre Party politician and former government ministerAdam Stegerwald was severely beaten by Nazi stormtroopers (on 22 February). One after another in the spring and early summer of 1933, Catholic lay organisations were being forcibly closed down or merged with their Nazi counterparts, Catholic journalists and newspaper editors were arrested, especially if they had attacked the Nazi-led coalition government in print, and leading Catholics were brutally mistreated by the SA. (...) Not surprisingly, it was fear of the complete destruction of its lay organisations and the reversal of all the progress that Catholic laymen had made towards gaining equality of status with Protestants that provided the major impetus behind the agreement of the Centre to dissolve itself in return for a Concordat in which the new regime would commit itself – with how little sincerity would soon become apparent – to preserving the integrity of the Catholic community and its institutions.
— Richard J. Evans,The Third Reich in History and Memory, (2015), pp. 87-88
A considerable number of parliamentarians opposed the chairman's course, among these former ChancellorsHeinrich Brüning,Joseph Wirth and former ministerAdam Stegerwald. Brüning called the Act the "most monstrous resolution ever demanded of a parliament" and was sceptical about Kaas's efforts: "The party has difficult years ahead, no matter how it would decide. Sureties for the government fulfilling its promises have not been given. Without a doubt, the future of the Centre Party is in danger and once it is destroyed it cannot be revived again."
The opponents also argued thatCatholic social teaching ruled out participating in acts of revolution. The proponents argued that a "national revolution" had already occurred with Hitler's appointment and the presidential decree suspending civil rights. The Enabling Act would contain the revolutionary forces and move the government back to a legal order. Both groupings were not unaffected by Hitler's self-portrayal as a moderate seeking cooperation as opposed to the more revolutionary SA led byErnst Röhm. Even Brüning thought it would be "decisive which groups of the NSDAP will be in power in the future. Will Hitler's power increase or will he fail, that is the question."
In the end the majority of Centre parliamentarians supported Kaas's proposal. Brüning and his followers agreed to respect party discipline by also voting in favour of the bill. The Reichstag assembled under turbulent circumstances. SA men served as guards and crowded outside the building to intimidate any opposition while the Communist and some Social Democratic members of the Reichstag had been imprisoned and were thus prevented from voting. In the end, the Centre voted as planned in favour of the Enabling Act, as did all the other parties apart from the SPD. The act was passed on 23 March 1933.
The passing of the Enabling Act did not, as Kaas had suggested, prevent the Centre Party's demise. As promised during the negotiations, a working committee chaired by Hitler and Kaas was supposed to inform about further legislative measures. However, it met only three times (31 March, 2 and 7 April) without any major impact. At that time, the Centre Party was weakened by massive defections by party members. Loyal party members, in particular civil servants, and other Catholic organisations were subject to increasing reprisals, despite Hitler's previous guarantees. The party was also hurt by a declaration of the German bishops that, while maintaining their opposition toNazi ideology, modified the ban on cooperation with the new authorities.[26][27]
The issue of the concordat prolonged Kaas's stay in Rome, leaving the party without an effective chairman: On 5 May Kaas finally resigned from his post and the party now elected Brüning as his successor. The party adopted a tempered version of theleadership principle; pro-Centre papers now declared that the party's members, or "retinue", would fully submit itself to Brüning. It was not enough, however, to relieve the growing pressure that it and other parties faced in the wake of the process ofGleichschaltung. Prominent members were frequently arrested and beaten, and pro-Centre civil servants were fired. As the summer of 1933 wore on, several government officials — including Papen — demanded that the Centre either dissolve or be closed down by the government.
By July, the Centre was the only non-Nazi party that still even nominally existed; the SPD and KPD had been banned outright, while the others had been browbeaten into dissolving themselves. On 1 July, Papen and Kaas agreed that as part of the concordat, German priests would stay out of politics. As it turned out, the party dissolved on 5 July — much to the dismay ofCardinal Pacelli, who felt the party should at least have waited until after the conclusion of negotiations. The day after, the government issued a law outlawing the formation of new political parties, thereby making the NSDAP the only legally permitted party in Germany.
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After the war, the party was refounded, but it was confronted with the emergence of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU), a new party formed as a Christian party comprising both Catholics and Protestants. As many former Centre party politicians, such asKonrad Adenauer, were founding members or joined the CDU, and CardinalJosef Frings of Cologne endorsed the new party, the party lost its position as the party of the Catholic population. For some time, however, the party managed to hold on to regional strongholds inNorth Rhine-Westphalia. In 1945, itsRudolf Amelunxen had been the new state's first Minister-President, and it participated in the state government until 1958, when it left the state parliament. Until 1959, the Centre was also represented in the state parliament ofLower Saxony.
On the national level, in theelections of 1949, it won ten seats in the firstBundestag. However, in1953, the party (with the aid from the regional CDU) only retained three seats. In1957, largely due to the massive CDU landslide that year, the party dropped out of the Bundestag completely and it did not return until 2022.
This demise is at least partly because ofHelene Wessel. In 1949, she was one of the Centre's representatives in the Bundestag and also was elected chairwoman of the party, the first woman ever to lead a German party. In 1951, she vocally opposed Adenauer's policy ofWest German rearmament and joined forces with the CDU'sGustav Heinemann, the former Minister of the Interior. The two formed theNotgemeinschaft zur Rettung des Friedens in Europa ("Emergency Community to Save the Peace in Europe"), an initiative intended to prevent rearmament. Wessel resigned from her post and in November 1952 left the party. Immediately afterwards, Wessel and Heinemann turned theNotgemeinschaft into a political party, theAll-German People's Party (Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei, GVP), that failed badly in the elections of 1953. In 1957, the GVP dissolved, and most members joined the SPD.
Meanwhile, the survivors of the Centre Party tried to forge an alliance of small parties of Christian persuasion, to offer an alternative to disappointed CDU/CSU voters, but they gained only the support of theBavaria Party. The two parties joined forces under the nameFederal Union [de], first in parliament since 1951 and in the 1957 the general elections, but the results were disappointing.
In 1988, the right wing of the party split off and formed the "Christian Centre Party". In 2003 the evangelical "Christian Party of Germany" (CPD) joined the Centre Party.
Since its demise on the national level, the party focuses on local politics, while maintaining the same positions as in the post-war period. The party is represented in some city councils inNorth Rhine-Westphalia andSaxony-Anhalt. Despite its marginal numbers, the party emphasises continuity to its history by sometimes referring to itself as the "oldest political party of Germany". According to its statutes the official name of the party isDeutsche Zentrumspartei – Älteste Partei Deutschlands gegründet 1870 (German Centre Party – Oldest Party in Germany founded in 1870).[28]
The current chairman of the party isKlaus Brall. The party is affiliated with theEuropean Christian Political Movement.
In 2022, formerAlternative for Germany memberUwe Witt joined the party while still holding his seat in theBundestag. It is the first time since 1957 that the party has held a seat in the Bundestag.[29] Witt subsequently left in August of the same year.[30]
The party also got its first representation in theEuropean Parliament on 10 June 2022, when the formerAfD co-chairmanJörg Meuthen joined the party.[31] However, Meuthen left the party in September 2023.[32]
Although the party's ideology has shifted throughout its existence, it has consistently presented itself through aChristian democratic andpolitically Catholic profile. It was seen to occupy thepolitical centre,[33] although the party is considered to have shifted towards the right of centre in early 1930s under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas.[34]The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic argues that while "Until recently, historians considered Kaas to have been an... ominous indication of the Centre’s shift to the right", the party's position was "more nuanced", as it continued to accept the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic and its constitution, and Kaas strove to reconcile both the left-leaning and right-leaning wings of the party.[35]
The party adopted a new program in 2008 in which it stated rejection for the traditional left and right divide of politics and called for a "value-oriented" platform guided by the principles of Christianity andBasic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. The party supports the traditional family unit and is generally opposed toabortion. It has given support toright to life movements in Germany.[36][37]
During the Weimar era, the Centre Party was socially and economically heterogenous and included groups of various political views and interests, including republicans and monarchists,[38] and was considered to represent the entire "political microcosm of Weimar Catholic society". It included industrial workers and smallholders, broad middle class (including both the agrarian and urban middle classes), as well as entrepreneurs, civil servants and clerics, and lastly a small but influential group of Catholic aristocracy. The uniting element of the factions of the Centre Party was commitment toPolitical Catholicism.[39] The party had a left wing, represented by politicians such asConstantin Fehrenbach,[40]Matthias Erzberger,Joseph Wirth, as well as Catholic workers' associations and Catholic trade unions, led by the Centre's laborist politicians such asAdam Stegerwald.[41]
Left-wing factions of the Centre Party were committed to republicanism and pressured the Zentrum to identify itself as a pro-republican party; however, the party instead adopted a vague label of being a "constitutional party", which was "ready to collaborate with any legal government" of any form of the government.[38] The leftists of the Centre Party also promoted cooperation with theSPD and advised Weimar Catholics to join theReichsbanner; some left-wing Centre factions were also supportive of cooperation with right-wing nationalist trade unions on pragmatic basis.[41] Along with "republican-democratic" wings of the party, the Centre Party also had socialist factions. Catholic socialism was promoted by politicians such asHeinrich Mertens andVitus Heller, as well as the Catholic priestWilhelm Hohoff, who argued that Marx's criticism of capitalism is consistent withCatholic social teaching, and believed that the atheism of socialism "was not an essential ingredient but only a transient phase". The Catholic socialists of the Centre Party presented various positions, such as promoting a "third way" between capitalism and socialism based on the papal encyclicalQuadragesimo anno, or advocating economical socialism with a strongly religious character, rejecting the secular currents of socialism and social democracy.[42]
In stark contrast to pro-parliamentary and pro-republican factions of the Centre, there were also anti-republican and anti-democratic factions, which argued that Weimar democracy promoted anti-Catholic values such as secularism, individualism and materialism. The party's right wing was represented by figures such as the cardinalMichael von Faulhaber or Hermann Port, who sought cooperation with conservative parties. Because of the extreme ideological heterogeneity of the party, it simultaneously participated in pro- and anti-republican coalitions on the local level.[43] In attempt to solve internal dissent, the party would increasingly appoint Catholic priests and clerics to leading positions, as opposed to non-clerical politicians associated with certain interest groups witin the party. This practice led to the appointment of figures such asLudwig Kaas in 1928.[44] The party then became subject to the broader shift to the right of the Weimar society in late 1920s caused by theGreat Depression and dissatisfaction with the Weimar political system, which also included the Catholic groups.[45]
In an updated policy platform in 2022, the Centre Party declares its objective is to protect the "Christian-Jewish roots of Europe and defend the free-democratic basic order of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany." The party supports asocial market economy, keeping national debt low and strong social security systems. The party supports the integration of immigrants residing legally in Germany while protecting German national identity and ensuring compulsory laws for immigrants to learn German, understand German culture and undergo a values test before acquiring citizenship. It also calls for stronglaw and order and national security policies to combat violent crime and terrorism and supports German membership ofNATO.[46]
| Election year | Constituency | Party list | Seats won | +/– | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |||
| 1867–1868 | 315,777 | 9.6 | 36 / 382 | 36 | ||
| 1871 | 724,000 | 18.6 | 63 / 382 | 37 | ||
| 1874 | 1,446,000 | 27.9 | 91 / 397 | 28 | ||
| 1877 | 1,341,300 | 24.8 | 93 / 397 | 2 | ||
| 1878 | 1,328,100 | 23.1 | 94 / 397 | 1 | ||
| 1881 | 1,182,900 | 23.2 | 100 / 397 | 6 | ||
| 1884 | 1,282,000 | 22.6 | 99 / 397 |  1 | ||
| 1887 | 1,516,200 | 20.1 | 98 / 397 | 1 | ||
| 1890 | 1,342,100 | 18.6 | 106 / 397 | 8 | ||
| 1893 | 1,468,500 | 19.1 | 96 / 397 | 10 | ||
| 1898 | 1,455,100 | 18.8 | 102 / 397 | 6 | ||
| 1903 | 1,875,300 | 19.8 | 100 / 397 | 2 | ||
| 1907 | 2,179,800 | 19.4 | 105 / 397 | 5 | ||
| 1912 | 1,996,800 | 16.4 | 91 / 397 | 14 | ||
| 1919 | 5,980,216 | 19.67 | 91 / 423 |  | ||
| 1920 | 3,845,001 | 13.6 | 64 / 459 | 27 | ||
| May 1924 | 3,914,379 | 13.4 | 65 / 472 | 1 | ||
| December 1924 | 4,118,849 | 13.6 | 69 / 493 | 4 | ||
| 1928 | 3,712,152 | 12.1 | 61 / 491 | 8 | ||
| 1930 | 4,127,000 | 11.81 | 68 / 577 | 7 | ||
| July 1932 | 4,589,430 | 12.44 | 75 / 608 | 7 | ||
| November 1932 | 4,230,545 | 11.93 | 70 / 584 | 5 | ||
| March 1933 | 4,424,905 | 11.25 | 73 / 647 | 3 | ||
| November 1933 | Banned.National Socialist German Workers Party sole legal party. | |||||
| 1936 | ||||||
| 1938 | ||||||
| 1949 | 727,505 | 3.1 | 10 / 402 | 63 | ||
| 1953 | 55,835 | 0.2 | 217,078 | 0.8 | 3 / 509 | 7 |
| 1957[a] | 295,533 | 1.0 | 254,322 | 0.9 | 0 / 519 | 3 |
| 1961 | did not participate | |||||
| 1965[b] | 11,978 | 0.0 | 19,832 | 0.1 | 0 / 518 | |
| 1969 | — | — | 15,933 | 0.0 | 0 / 518 | |
| 1972 | did not participate | |||||
| 1976 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||
| 1983 | ||||||
| 1987 | 4,020 | 0.0 | 19,035 | 0.1 | 0 / 519 | |
| 1990 | did not participate | |||||
| 1994 | 1,489 | 0.0 | 3,757 | 0.0 | 0 / 672 | |
| 1998 | 2,076 | 0.0 | — | — | 0 / 669 | |
| 2002 | 1,823 | 0.0 | 3,127 | 0.0 | 0 / 603 | |
| 2005 | 1,297 | 0.0 | 4,010 | 0.0 | 0 / 614 | |
| 2009 | 369 | 0.0 | 6,087 | 0.0 | 0 / 622 | |
| 2013 | did not participate | |||||
| 2017 | ||||||
| 2021 | ||||||
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats won | +/– |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1920 | 21,262 | 13.88 | 17 / 120 | 17 |
| 1923 | 21,114 | 12.81 | 15 / 120 | 2 |
| 1927 | 26,096 | 14.27 | 18 / 120 | 3 |
| 1930 | 30,230 | 15.28 | 11 / 72 | 7 |
| 1933 | 31,336 | 14.63 | 10 / 72 | 1 |
| 1935 | 31,522 | 13.41 | 10 / 72 | |
| Election year | Votes | % | Seats won | +/– |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1922 | 92,252 | 47.7 | 16 / 30 | – |
| 1924 | 3,246,511[47] | 42.8 | 14 / 30 | 2 |
| 1928 | 129,162 | 46.4 | 14 / 30 | |
| 1932 | 156,615 | 43.2 | 14 / 30 | |
Promoting the political and cultural ideals of Germany's Catholic minority, the Zentrum had been the spearhead of Political Catholicism ever since its founding in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In addition, the Centre remained a republican party opposed to the anticonstitutional right. Nowhere was this clearer than in the overwhelming support that Catholics lent to Hindenburg's re-election as President in 1932 in order to block the candidacies of Adolf Hitler and the Stahlhelm leader, Theodor Duesterberg.
However, having agreed the wording of the proposed law, the SPD and KPD failed to persuade centrist 'bourgeois' parties like the DDP or the Zentrum officially to join them, giving the referendum campaign a distinctly sectarian aura from the outset. [...] The republican paramilitary organization the Reichsbanner, which leaned strongly towards the SPD but also had supporters from the centrist DDP and Zentrum in its ranks and was therefore officially obliged to stay neutral in the referendum, also found itself in a deeply uncomfortable position in 1926, with some left-wing and even moderate branches coming out in defiance for a 'yes' vote.
"As a consequence, the Zentrum's right-of-center position both aided and hindered the Church hierarchy's efforts to counter extremist movements.
Über einem Foto einer Abtreibungsklinik ist der Schriftzug „Abtreiben macht frei" zu lesen – in Anlehnung an die Aufschrift „Arbeit macht frei" über dem Tor des Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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