National Democratic Party of Germany
The Homeland, formerly called The National Democratic Party of Germany, is a far-right, neo-Nazi and ultranationalist political party in Germany. It was founded in 1964 as successor to the German Reich Party. Party statements also self-identified the party as Germany's "only significant patriotic force". On 1 January 2011, the nationalist German People's Union merged with the NPD and the party name of the National Democratic Party of Germany was extended by the addition of "The People's Union".
As a neo-Nazi organization, it has been referred to as "the most significant neo-Nazi party to emerge after 1945". The German Federal Agency for Civic Education, or BPB, has criticized the NPD for working with members of organizations which were later found unconstitutional by the federal courts and disbanded, while the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic security agency, classifies The Homeland as a "threat to the constitutional order" because of its [|platform and ideology], and it is under their observation. An effort to outlaw the party failed in 2003, as the government had many informers and agents in the party, some in high position, who had written part of the material used against them.
Since its founding in 1964, the party has never managed to win enough votes on the federal level to cross Germany's 5% minimum threshold for representation in the Bundestag; it has succeeded in crossing the 5% threshold and gaining representation in state parliaments 11 times, including one-convocation entry to seven West German state parliaments between November 1966 and April 1968 and two-convocation electoral success in two East German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 2004 and 2011. Since 2016, The Homeland has not been represented in state parliaments. Udo Voigt led the NPD from 1996 to 2011. He was succeeded by Holger Apfel, who in turn was replaced by Udo Pastörs in December 2013. In November 2014, Pastörs was ousted and Frank Franz became the party's leader. Voigt was elected the party's first Member of the European Parliament in 2014. The party lost the seat in the 2019 European Parliament election. In June 2023, the party renamed itself to Die Heimat after a party vote.
On 23 January 2024, the Federal Constitutional Court excluded the party from party funding for six years, arguing that it continued to oppose the fundamental principles that are indispensable for the free democratic constitutional state and aimed to eliminate them.
History
20th century
In the 1950s, despite the lack of complete de-Nazification, early right-wing extremist parties in West Germany failed to attract voters away from the moderate government that had presided over Germany's recovery.Adolf von Thadden, an artillery officer in World War II and Nazi Party member, was active in far-right politics in the West Germany and was elected to the Bundestag in 1949. Thadden supported Werner Naumann, an associate of Joseph Goebbels, after his arrest and included him on the Deutsche Reichspartei's list of candidates for the 1953 election. However, the government removed Naumann as a candidate and the party only received around 1% of the vote. Thadden then worked with Wilhelm Meinberg, a Nazi Reichstag member and recipient of the Golden Party Badge, and Heinrich Kunstmann, who joined the Nazi Party before Adolf Hitler. Both Meinberg and Kunstmann served as chairs of the DRP. Thadden replaced Kunstmann as chair in 1961 after continued electoral failures. Thadden's DRP allied with the BHE and German Party for the 1951 Bremen elections as none of the parties were strong enough to win on their own. This alliance received 5.2% of the vote and gained 4 seats in the bürgerschaft.
On 28 November 1964, around 600 people met in the banqueting hall of the Döhrener Maschpark inn in Bonn at the invitation of Friedrich Thielen. The National Democratic Party of Germany was formed at this meeting and 437 of those in attendance became members although they were allowed to maintain their membership in other parties. Thielen was selected to be chair of the party. Thadden, who proposed the unification of Germany's far-right parties, was made deputy chair. The newspaper he co-owned, Deutsche Nachrichten became the NPD's newspaper. The DRP, BHE, DP, and German National People's Party merged into the NPD. The NPD was organised in 196 of 248 federal election districts by April 1965. The party's first convention was held on 7–9 May 1965 in Hannover with 1,007 delegates and 2,000 non-delegates in attendance while. The party's membership of 7,500 was far smaller than the Christian Democratic Union 's 390,000 and Social Democratic Party's 700,000. 8 of the NDP's 18 national committee members were former members of the NSDAP.
Thadden believed that 30% of the national voting public were undecided and that 15% could be swayed to support the NPD in the 1965 federal election. He launched a national car convey for the campaign starting in Cologne. Thielen and other members of the party laid wreathes on the graves of Nazi war criminals at Landsberg Prison. High profile people joined the party, such as Olympic gold medalist Frank Schepke and rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. The NPD received 2% of the vote, below the 5% needed to gain seats and the 15% claimed in party propaganda.
Thadden served as chairman from 1967 to 1971. Owing to von Thadden's effective leadership the NPD achieved success in the late 1960s, winning local government seats across West Germany. A rise in unemployment from 105,000 in August 1966, to 673,000 in February 1967, helped the NDP grow and earn 8 seats in the Landtag of Hesse and became the third-largest party in the Landtag of Bavaria with 15 seats.
Helping pave the way for these NPD gains were an economic downturn, frustrations with the emerging leftist youth counter-culture, and the emergence of a tripartite Grand Coalition among the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, and the centre-left Social Democratic Party. The coalition government had created a vacuum in the traditional political right wing, which the NPD tried to fill. Additionally, the party benefited from hostility to the growing immigrant population and fears that the government would relinquish claims to the "lost territories". However, the growing popularity of the Kiesinger cabinet and improvements in the economy, with unemployment falling to 576,000 in March 1967, harmed the NDP's electoral prospects.
In late 1967, Thielen wanted somebody other than Thadden to lead the party in Lower Saxony, but Thadden ignored this and was elected chair on 5 February. The former chair, Lothar Kühne, and sued stating that Thadden was in violation of the NDP's bylaws. The court ruled in Kühne's favour on 8 March, and restored him as chair. On 10 March, Thielen had Thadden expelled from the party alongside seven other members, but the next day Thadden used his allies in the executive committee to expel Thielen and Harbord Grone-Endebrock, an ally of Thadden, was made chair in Lower Saxony. Thielen broke away to form the Nationale Volkspartei, but only a few hundred of the NPD's 25,000 members joined him., the chair of the Bavarian affiliate, resigned a few months later stating that the party was under the control of right-wing extremists. At the NDP's 3rd national convention in November 1967, Thadden was elected chair by 93% of the delegates.
The NDP received 4.3% of the vote in the 1969 federal election, but failed to gain any seats. When the grand coalition fell apart, around 75 percent of those who had voted for the NPD drifted back to the centre-right. During the 1970s, the NPD went into decline, suffering from an internal split over failing to get into the German Parliament. The issue of immigration spurred a small rebound in popular interest from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, but the party only saw limited success in various local elections.
2000s
In the 2004 state election in Saxony, the NPD won 9.2% of the overall vote. After the 2009 state election in Saxony, the NPD sent eight representatives to the Saxony state parliament, having lost four representatives since the 2004 election. The NPD lost their representation in Saxony in the 2014 state election. They also lost all representation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the 2016 state election.The NPD maintained a non-competition agreement with the German People's Union between 2004 and 2009. The third nationalist-oriented party, the Republicans, has so far refused to join this agreement. However, Kerstin Lorenz, a local representative of the Republicans in Saxony, sabotaged her party's registration to help the NPD in the Saxony election.
In the 2005 federal elections, the NPD received 1.6 percent of the vote nationally. It garnered the highest percent of votes in the states of Saxony, Thuringia, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg, all formerly part of East Germany. In most other states, the party won around 1 percent of the total votes cast. In the 2006 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election, the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and thus achieved state representation there, as well.
The NPD had 5,300 registered party members in 2004. Over the course of 2006, the NPD processed roughly 2,000 party applications to push the membership total over 7,200. In 2008, the trend of a growing number of members has been reversed and the party's membership is estimated at 7,000.
In the 2014 European elections, Udo Voigt was elected as the party's first Member of the European Parliament.
In September 2019, NPD politician Stefan Jagsch was elected as representative of Altenstadt-Waldsiedlung. The unanimous election of the NPD politician by the local council led to irritation and horror in other parties, such as Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, the centre-left Social Democrats, and the liberal Free Democratic Party, whose local council members had voted for Jagsch.