Communist Party of Germany
Encyclopedia
The Communist Party of Germany ( – ) was a major political party in Germany
between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany
in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956. In the 1920s it was called the "Spartacists", since it was formed from the Spartacus League.
Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists opposed to the war, led by Rosa Luxemburg
, after her death the party forsook Luxemburgism
and became gradually ever more committed to Leninism
and later Stalinism
. During the Weimar Republic
period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag
and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany
, which it considered its main opponent. Banned by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler
, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses. The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in the first Bundestag
(West German Parliament) elections in 1949, but its support collapsed following the establishment of a communist state
in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.
In East Germany, the party was merged, by Soviet decree, with the Social Democratic Party
to form the Socialist Unity Party
which ruled East Germany until 1989-1990. It was banned in West Germany in 1956 by the Constitutional Court
. Some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the German Communist Party
(DKP), in 1969, which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed.
(SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of the war. Left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg
, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split, with the leftists forming the Independent Social Democratic Party
of Germany
(USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League
. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany. The leftists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League, formed the KPD at a founding congress held in Berlin in 30 December 1918 – 1 January 1919.
There were seven main reports given:
These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartakus League, however members of the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands also took part in the discussions
Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a violent revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued. Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske
formed a series of Anti-Communist paramilitary groups
, dubbed "The Freikorps
", out of demobilized World War I veterans. During the failed so-called Spartacist uprising
in Berlin
of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. according to Boris Nikolaevsky, Karl Liebknicht's brother claimed that Lenin through Radek arranged the murder to rid himself of serious rivals to leadership of the communist movement. The Party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany
(KAPD).
Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches
, Paul Levi
became the KPD leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin
, Paul Frölich
, Hugo Eberlein
, Franz Mehring
, August Thalheimer
, and Ernst Meyer
. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.
Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between more and less radical factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Zinoviev
and Stalin
in Moscow. Germany was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern
for "indiscipline." Further leadership changes took place in the early 1920s, and Party members accused of being Trotskyites were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler
, August Thalheimer
and Paul Frölich
set up a splinter Communist Party Opposition
.
In 1923 a new KPD leadership more favorable to the USSR was elected. This leadership, headed by Ernst Thälmann
, abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success.
During the years of the Weimar Republic
the KPD was the largest Communist party in Europe, and was seen as the "leading party" of the Communist movement outside the Soviet Union. It maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote, and gaining 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections. In the presidential election of the same year, Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%.
Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy – e.g. its denunciation of the SPD as "social fascists"
– that scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the Nazis
. These allegations were repudiated by supporters of the KPD: the right-wing leadership of the SPD, it was said, rejected the proposals of the KPD to unite for the defeat of fascism. The SPD leaders were accused of having countered KPD efforts to form a united front of the working class. For instance, after Papen's government carried out a coup d'état in Prussia, the KPD called for a general strike and turned to the SPD leadership for joint struggle. But the SPD leaders again refused to cooperate with the KPD.
and Dutch council communist
Marinus van der Lubbe
was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. After the fire, habeas corpus
was suspended. The Enabling Act, which legally gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, was passed by a Reichstag session held after all communist deputies had been arrested and jailed.
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. Thousands of Communists were imprisoned in concentration camps, including Thälmann. The most senior KPD leaders to escape were Wilhelm Pieck
and Walter Ulbricht
, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.
's Great Purge
of 1937-38 and executed, among them Eberlein, Heinz Neumann, Hermann Remmele, Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert, or sent to the GULAG
, like Margarete Buber-Neumann
. Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim
and Erich Mielke
, denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD
. Willi Münzenberg
, the KPD's propaganda chief, was murdered in mysterious circumstances in France in 1940. The NKVD is believed to have been responsible.
(SED), which became the ruling party in East Germany until 1990. A small sister party of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin
, operated in Berlin.
The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7% of the vote in the first Bundestag election
in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War
and imposition of a communist state
in East Germany soon caused a collapse in the party's support. At the 1953 election
the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats. The party was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
. The ban was due to the aggressive and combative methods that the party used as a "Marxist-Leninist party struggle" to achieve their goals. After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership refounded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party
(DKP), which still exists. Following German reunification
, however, many DKP members joined the new PDS
.
In 1968, a self-named "true successor" to the (banned) West German KPD was formed, the KPD/ML
(Marxist-Leninist), which followed maoist
ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with a Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating in the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another
party with this name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by members of the GDR leadership who were expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker
. The "KPD (Bolshevik)" split off from the East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of (more or less) active KPDs to at least 5. The Left
claims to be the historical successor of the KPD.
, whereby the leading body of the party was the Congress
, meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee
, which was elected at Congress, of one group of people who had to live where the leadership was resident and formed the Zentrale and others nominated from the districts they represented (but also elected at the Congress) who represented the wider party. Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.
The KPD employed around about 200 fulltimers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received the pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall".
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956. In the 1920s it was called the "Spartacists", since it was formed from the Spartacus League.
Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists opposed to the war, led by Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, after her death the party forsook Luxemburgism
Luxemburgism
Luxemburgism is a specific revolutionary theory within Marxism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. According to M. K...
and became gradually ever more committed to Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and later Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. During the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag
Reichstag (Weimar Republic)
The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...
and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, which it considered its main opponent. Banned by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses. The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in the first Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
(West German Parliament) elections in 1949, but its support collapsed following the establishment of a communist state
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.
In East Germany, the party was merged, by Soviet decree, with the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
to form the Socialist Unity Party
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
which ruled East Germany until 1989-1990. It was banned in West Germany in 1956 by the Constitutional Court
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court is a special court established by the Grundgesetz, the German basic law...
. Some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the German Communist Party
German Communist Party
The German Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist party in Germany.-History:The DKP was formed in West Germany in 1968, in order to fill the place of the Communist Party of Germany , which had been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956...
(DKP), in 1969, which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed.
Early history
Before the First World War the Social Democratic PartySocial Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
(SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of the war. Left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht
Karl Liebknecht
was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
and Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split, with the leftists forming the Independent Social Democratic Party
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany was a short-lived political party in Germany during the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of left wing members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany...
of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League
Spartacist League
The Spartacus League was a left-wing Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic...
. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany. The leftists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League, formed the KPD at a founding congress held in Berlin in 30 December 1918 – 1 January 1919.
There were seven main reports given:
- The crisis of the USPD — by Karl LiebknechtKarl Liebknechtwas a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
- Greeting speech — by Karl RadekKarl RadekKarl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
- The National Assembly — by Paul LeviPaul LeviPaul Levi was a German Jewish Communist political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919.-Early years:...
- Economical Struggles — by Paul Lange
- Our Program — by Rosa LuxemburgRosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
- Our Organazation — by Hugo EberleinHugo EberleinHugo Eberlein was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany , and then in the First Congress of the Comintern , where he held important posts until 1928, the result of his involvement with the Conciliator faction...
- International Conference — by Hermann Duncker
These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartakus League, however members of the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands also took part in the discussions
Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a violent revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued. Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske
Gustav Noske
Gustav Noske was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany . He served as the first Minister of Defence of Germany between 1919 and 1920.-Biography:...
formed a series of Anti-Communist paramilitary groups
Weimar paramilitary groups
Paramilitary groups were formed throughout the Weimar Republic in the wake of Germany's defeat in World War I and the ensuing German Revolution. Some were created by political parties to help in recruiting, discipline and in preparation for seizing power. Some were created before World War I....
, dubbed "The Freikorps
Freikorps
Freikorps are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during...
", out of demobilized World War I veterans. During the failed so-called Spartacist uprising
Spartacist uprising
The Spartacist Uprising , also known as the January uprising , was a general strike in Germany from January 5 to January 15, 1919. Its suppression marked the end of the German Revolution...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. according to Boris Nikolaevsky, Karl Liebknicht's brother claimed that Lenin through Radek arranged the murder to rid himself of serious rivals to leadership of the communist movement. The Party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany
Communist Workers Party of Germany
The Communist Workers Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and council communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany...
(KAPD).
Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches
Leo Jogiches
Leo Jogiches , also known by his party name of Leon Tyszka was a Marxist revolutionary active in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany....
, Paul Levi
Paul Levi
Paul Levi was a German Jewish Communist political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919.-Early years:...
became the KPD leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
, Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich was a journalist and left wing political activist who was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, Die Rote Fahne. A Communist Party deputy in the Reichstag on two occasions, Frölich was expelled from the Party in 1928, after which he...
, Hugo Eberlein
Hugo Eberlein
Hugo Eberlein was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany , and then in the First Congress of the Comintern , where he held important posts until 1928, the result of his involvement with the Conciliator faction...
, Franz Mehring
Franz Mehring
Franz Erdmann Mehring , was a German publicist, politician and historian.-Early years:Franz Mehring was born 27 February 1846 in Schlawe, Pomerania, the son of a bourgeois family.-Political career:...
, August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer was a German Marxist activist and theoretician.-Early years:August Thalheimer was born 18 March 1884 in Affaltrach, now called Obersulm, Württemberg, Germany.-Political career:...
, and Ernst Meyer
Ernst Meyer (German politician)
Ernst Meyer was a German Communist political activist and politician. He is best remembered as a founding member and top leader of the Communist Party of Germany and as the leader of that party's fraction in the Prussian Landtag...
. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.
Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between more and less radical factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
and Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in Moscow. Germany was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
for "indiscipline." Further leadership changes took place in the early 1920s, and Party members accused of being Trotskyites were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler
Heinrich Brandler
Heinrich Brandler was a German communist trade unionist, politician, revolutionary activist, and writer. Brandler is best remember as the head of the Communist Party of Germany during the party's ill-fated "March Action" of 1921 and aborted uprising of 1923, for which he was held responsible by...
, August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer was a German Marxist activist and theoretician.-Early years:August Thalheimer was born 18 March 1884 in Affaltrach, now called Obersulm, Württemberg, Germany.-Political career:...
and Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich was a journalist and left wing political activist who was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, Die Rote Fahne. A Communist Party deputy in the Reichstag on two occasions, Frölich was expelled from the Party in 1928, after which he...
set up a splinter Communist Party Opposition
Communist Party Opposition
The Communist Party of Germany was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence until 1939 or 1940...
.
The Weimar Republic years
Ernst Thälmann
Ernst Thälmann was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot in Buchenwald on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944...
, abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success.
During the years of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
the KPD was the largest Communist party in Europe, and was seen as the "leading party" of the Communist movement outside the Soviet Union. It maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote, and gaining 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections. In the presidential election of the same year, Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%.
Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy – e.g. its denunciation of the SPD as "social fascists"
Social fascism
Social fascism was a theory supported by the Communist International during the early 1930s, which believed that social democracy was a variant of fascism because, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model, it stood in the way of a complete and final transition to communism...
– that scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. These allegations were repudiated by supporters of the KPD: the right-wing leadership of the SPD, it was said, rejected the proposals of the KPD to unite for the defeat of fascism. The SPD leaders were accused of having countered KPD efforts to form a united front of the working class. For instance, after Papen's government carried out a coup d'état in Prussia, the KPD called for a general strike and turned to the SPD leadership for joint struggle. But the SPD leaders again refused to cooperate with the KPD.
The Nazi era
Soon after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fireReichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
and Dutch council communist
Council communism
Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...
Marinus van der Lubbe
Marinus van der Lubbe
Marinus van der Lubbe was a Dutch council communist convicted of, and controversially executed for, setting fire to the German Reichstag building on February 27, 1933, an event known as the Reichstag fire. ....
was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. After the fire, habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
was suspended. The Enabling Act, which legally gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, was passed by a Reichstag session held after all communist deputies had been arrested and jailed.
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. Thousands of Communists were imprisoned in concentration camps, including Thälmann. The most senior KPD leaders to escape were Wilhelm Pieck
Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck was a German politician and a Communist. In 1949, he became the first President of the German Democratic Republic, an office abolished upon his death. He was succeeded by Walter Ulbricht, who served as Chairman of the Council of States.-Biography:Pieck was born to...
and Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...
, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.
The Purge of 1937
A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
of 1937-38 and executed, among them Eberlein, Heinz Neumann, Hermann Remmele, Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert, or sent to the GULAG
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, like Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann , was a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany...
. Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim
Gustav von Wangenheim
Gustav von Wangenheim was a German actor, screenwriter and director.- Life :Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim in Wiesbaden, Hesse, to parents Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim and Minna Mengers...
and Erich Mielke
Erich Mielke
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist politician and Minister of State Security—and as such head of the Stasi —of the German Democratic Republic between 1957 and 1989. Mielke spent more than a decade as an operative of the NKVD during the rule of Joseph Stalin...
, denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg was a communist political activist. Münzenberg was the first head of the Young Communist International in 1919-20 and established the famine-relief and propaganda organization Workers International Relief in 1921...
, the KPD's propaganda chief, was murdered in mysterious circumstances in France in 1940. The NKVD is believed to have been responsible.
Postwar history
In East Germany, the Soviet occupation authorities forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity PartySocialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
(SED), which became the ruling party in East Germany until 1990. A small sister party of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin
Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin
Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin was a communist party in West Berlin. The party was founded on November 24, 1962 when the West Berlin local organization of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany was separated from the main party...
, operated in Berlin.
The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7% of the vote in the first Bundestag election
German federal election, 1949
The 1st German federal election, 1949, was conducted on 14 August 1949, to elect members to the Bundestag of West Germany. This was the first free election conducted in Germany since Adolf Hitler had become Reich Chancellor in 1933....
in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and imposition of a communist state
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
in East Germany soon caused a collapse in the party's support. At the 1953 election
German federal election, 1953
The 2nd German federal election, 1953, was conducted on September 6, 1953, to elect members to the Bundestag of West Germany.-Issues and Campaign:...
the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats. The party was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court is a special court established by the Grundgesetz, the German basic law...
. The ban was due to the aggressive and combative methods that the party used as a "Marxist-Leninist party struggle" to achieve their goals. After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership refounded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party
German Communist Party
The German Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist party in Germany.-History:The DKP was formed in West Germany in 1968, in order to fill the place of the Communist Party of Germany , which had been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956...
(DKP), which still exists. Following German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
, however, many DKP members joined the new PDS
Left Party (Germany)
The Party of Democratic Socialism was a democratic socialist political party active in Germany from 1989 to 2007. It was the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party , which ruled the German Democratic Republic until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing...
.
In 1968, a self-named "true successor" to the (banned) West German KPD was formed, the KPD/ML
Communist Party of Germany/Marxists-Leninists
The Communist Party of Germany/Marxist-Leninist , established on December 31, 1968, was an anti-revisionist pro-China party in West Germany that was later supportive of communist leader of Albania Enver Hoxha after the Sino-Albanian Split...
(Marxist-Leninist), which followed maoist
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with a Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating in the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another
Communist Party of Germany (1990)
Communist Party of Germany is a minor political party in Germany, one of several who claim the KPD name. It was founded in Berlin in 1990.The party chairman was Werner Schleese. He resigned in April 2006...
party with this name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by members of the GDR leadership who were expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....
. The "KPD (Bolshevik)" split off from the East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of (more or less) active KPDs to at least 5. The Left
The Left (Germany)
The Left , also commonly referred to as the Left Party , is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The Left is the most left-wing party of the five represented in the Bundestag....
claims to be the historical successor of the KPD.
Organisation
In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of Democratic CentralismDemocratic centralism
Democratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organization used by Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party...
, whereby the leading body of the party was the Congress
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different nations, constituent states, independent organizations , or groups....
, meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
, which was elected at Congress, of one group of people who had to live where the leadership was resident and formed the Zentrale and others nominated from the districts they represented (but also elected at the Congress) who represented the wider party. Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.
The KPD employed around about 200 fulltimers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received the pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall".
See also
- LuxemburgismLuxemburgismLuxemburgism is a specific revolutionary theory within Marxism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. According to M. K...
- Rosa LuxemburgRosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, Karl LiebknechtKarl Liebknechtwas a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
, Paul LeviPaul LeviPaul Levi was a German Jewish Communist political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919.-Early years:...
, Erich MielkeErich MielkeErich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist politician and Minister of State Security—and as such head of the Stasi —of the German Democratic Republic between 1957 and 1989. Mielke spent more than a decade as an operative of the NKVD during the rule of Joseph Stalin...
, Richard Müller (socialist)Richard Müller (socialist)Richard Müller was a German socialist and historian. Trained as a lathe-operator Müller later became a unionist and organizer of mass-strikes against World War I. In 1918 he was a leading figure of the council movement in the German Revolution... - RotfrontkämpferbundRotfrontkämpferbundRotfrontkämpferbund was a paramilitary organization of the Communist Party of Germany created on 18 July 1924 during the Weimar Republic. Its first leader was Ernst Thälmann...
- Spartacus League
- Communist Workers' Party of Germany
- Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition
- Union of Manual and Intellectual WorkersUnion of Manual and Intellectual WorkersThe Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers was a German trade union that was politically close to the Communist Party of Germany...
- Communist Party OppositionCommunist Party OppositionThe Communist Party of Germany was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence until 1939 or 1940...
- Socialist Workers' Party of GermanySocialist Workers' Party of GermanyThe Socialist Workers' Party of Germany was a political party in Germany. It was formed by a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD in the autumn of 1931. In 1931 the remnants of USPD merged into the party, and in 1932 some Communist Party dissenters joined the...
- German Revolution of 1918–1919
- German resistanceGerman ResistanceThe German resistance was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to Adolf Hitler or the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime...
- Hotel LuxHotel LuxHotel Lux was a hotel in Moscow that, during the early years of the Soviet Union, housed many leading exiled Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A number of them became leading figures in German politics in the postwar era...
, Moscow hotel where many German party members lived in exile