Communist Party, Germany

Communist Party, Germany The German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) was founded in 1919 by the Spartakist group under Luxemburg and Liebknecht, it acquired a mass following through the merger with the independent Socialist Party in 1920. It was able to increase its support from 3.5 million to almost six million votes in 1932, but immediately upon coming to power, Hitler had the Communists harassed, prosecuted, imprisoned, and even killed.

After World War II, the KPD was quickly re-established with Soviet help, but as it became apparent that the party did not command a majority in Soviet-occupied Germany, a merger was forced with the SPD to form the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Socialist Unity Party). In response to these events, in West Germany the KPD soon became isolated and its support dwindled into insignificance. It was banned in 1956. In 1968 the (West) German Communist Party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP) was founded, which, despite considerable East German financial support, failed to gain electoral success.

Meanwhile, in East Germany, the SED quickly brought other parties under state control so that it won every election until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In response to East Germany's imminent first democratic elections in March 1990, the SED changed its name to the PDS (Partei des Democratischen Sozialismus, Party of Democratic Socialism) and transformed itself into a radical socialist party with claims to express the grievances of the former East German population in a political system that has been dominated by Germans from the West. As a result, the party has been able to poll between 15 and 25 per cent in East German local and state elections, and it was able to enter national parliament in 1995. At the state level, it supported the SPD government in Saxony-Anhalt from 1994, and it entered a government coalition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1998. A milestone was reached in late 2001, when the Communists returned to power in Berlin as part of a coalition with the SPD. Participation in state governments gave the PDS considerable bargaining power at national level, as many national laws required assent from the second parliamentary chamber which was composed of state representatives.

http://www.pds-online.de