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The Republikaner and the German People's
Union
On the opposite end of the political spectrum from the Greens are two
parties of the far right, the Republikaner (Die Republikaner--REP), with
about 23,000 members, and the German People's Union (Deutsche Volksunion--DVU),
with 26,000 members. As of mid- 1995, these two parties had not gained
sufficient support to win seats in the Bundestag, but the DVU was represented
in Land parliaments in Bremen (with 6.2 percent of the vote in
1991) and Schleswig-Holstein (with 6.3 percent of the vote in 1992); the
Republikaner held seats in Baden-Wuerttemberg (with 10.9 percent of the
vote in 1992). The Republikaner received 2.1 percent of the vote in the
all-Germany election of December 1990 and 1.9 percent in the October 1994
election.
In the early 1990s, the rallying cry of the far right was "Germany for
the Germans." This slogan appeals to many Germans, particularly young,
male, rural, less educated, blue-collar workers who fear for their economic
future and regard the large pool of asylum-seekers as competitors for
housing, social programs, and jobs. These particular Germans are also
uneasy about greater integration within the European Union, which, in
their minds, requires Germany to forfeit too much of its identity and
share too much of its prosperity. According to some observers, the far
right's electoral support represents, in part, a protest vote against
the mainstream parties. German politicians repeatedly remark on the electorate's
Politikverdrossenheit --a deep disaffection with all things political.
Franz Schoenhuber, a one-time Bavarian television moderator and former
officer in the Nazi Waffen-SS, formed the Republikaner in 1983 from a
group of discontented members of the CSU. Schoenhuber published a book
in 1981 boasting of his experiences in the Waffen-SS but has staunchly
denied that his party has neo-Nazi leanings. Elected to the European Parliament
in 1989, Schoenhuber, over seventy years old in mid-1995, tried to portray
the party as a mainstream group that does not promote bigotry but merely
protects German national interests. The party platform speaks for itself.
In it, the Republikaner blame foreigners, who make up about 8 percent
of the German population, for the housing shortage, street crime, and
pollution. Among other things, the party has proposed banning Islamic
community centers from sponsoring political or cultural activities other
than prayer, and it has advocated putting asylum-seekers in collection
camps "to minimize the native population's existing and growing antipathy
toward foreign residents." The party platform also proposes creating separate
classes for foreign schoolchildren, and it rejects "the multicultural
society that has made the United States the world's largest showplace
of crime and latent racial conflict." Reportedly, the Republikaner attracted
about 5,000 new members in eastern Germany in 1992 and 1993. Schoenhuber
contends that support in the east comes from young Germans between twenty
and thirty years of age, whereas in the west support comes from members
of his own generation. Schoenhuber, the party's only nationally known
figure, was deposed as party leader in the fall of 1994 because he had
proposed that his party join forces with the more extreme DVU.
Gerhard Frey, the Munich publisher of two weekly neofascist newspapers,
Deutsche National-Zeitung (print run 63,000) and Deutsche
Wochen-Zeitung (20,000), founded the DVU in 1971. The DVU espouses
many of the views held by the Republikaner, but it goes one step further
in tacitly supporting violence against asylum- seekers and foreign workers.
Frey, over sixty years old in mid-1995, has sought to distance himself
from pro-Nazi sentiments while simultaneously insisting that most Germans
want to live in a racially pure country.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection
of the Constitution (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz--BfV), announced
in April 1992 that the DVU was under surveillance to determine if the
party met the legal definition of "antidemocratic," a classification that
would permit the government to ban it. A similar investigation of the
Republikaner was announced in December 1992. Such surveillance legally
can include government infiltration of the party, monitoring of mail and
telephone calls, and interrogation of party members. The BfV has classified
both parties as "right-wing extremist" and "constitutionally hostile."
* Christian Democratic Union/Christian
Social Union
* Social Democratic Party of Germany
* Free Democratic Party
* The Greens
* The Republikaner and the
German People's Union
* Party of Democratic Socialism
- The
Chancellor
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- Electoral System
- Political Parties
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the Chancellor, the President, parties, Bundestag)
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