The
German Communist Party ( , DKP) is a Marxist-Leninist communist party in Germany
.
History
It was
formed in West
Germany
in 1968, in order to fill the
place of the Communist Party
of Germany (KPD), which had been banned by the Federal
Constitutional Court
in 1956.
The party remained on the political fringe, never winning more than
0.3% of the total votes in federal elections.
It had relatively
greater localized support in the 1970s; it managed to get up to
2.2% in elections in the city state of Hamburg
, up to 3.1%
in elections in the city state in Bremen
, and up to
2.7% in elections in Saarland
.
During the
Cold War, the DKP received most of its
funds through covert transfers from the Socialist Unity Party of
Germany (SED), the East German
ruling party. Following
German reunification, the DKP entered a
steady decline. As of 2008, its membership has dropped to some
4,000, less than a tenth of its pre-Unification strength. The
average party member is 60 years old, and the party is practically
bankrupt.
Many members of the DKP left the party after the re-unification of
Germany and joined the newly formed
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), a
descendant of the SED. For the
2005 federal elections, the
DKP endorsed the ticket of the
Left
Party, successor to the PDS.
The DKP
received national public attention in early 2008 when Christel Wegner, elected to the parliament
of Lower
Saxony
on the list of the Left Party as the first DKP
state member of parliament, appeared to endorse the Berlin Wall
, the Stasi and other aspects
of the East German state in an interview. This caused
embarrassment to the national Left Party leadership. Wegner was
subsequently expelled from the party's parliamentary group and
denied having made the controversial endorsements a few days
later.
Media
The party operates a weekly newspaper,
unsere Zeit.
See also
Footnotes
- Deutsche Welle - Wahl 2005
- Aktuell
External links
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