Page 107 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

2.2

THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC

UNION/CHRISTIAN SOCIAL
UNION AND SOCIAL LIBERALISM

Economic policy
ensured by the concept of the Social Market Economy
is the best social policy.
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(Konrad Adenauer, 1949)

In contrast to the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats in post-war
Germany were initially not organised as a national political party but
existed solely in the form of various parliamentary groups and former
parties, such as the Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP). In order to absorb
civic and liberal groupings and to include Catholic and Protestant
democrats in a common conservative and cross-confessional party, in all
four zones of occupation Christian-based communities of interest formed
on a regional level. The numerous newly founded parties, such as the
Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU), the Christlich-
Demokratische Partei (CDP), the Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), the Christliche
Union (CU), the Christlich-Soziale Volkspartei (CSVP), the Christliche
Volkspartei des Saarlandes (CVP), the Christlich-Soziale Unionspartei (CSUP),
the Christlich-Nationale Union (CNU), the Christlich-Demokratische Volksbund
(CDV) or the Christlich-Demokratische Block (CDB), were unified by a
commitment to Christian social responsibility in order to cope with the
prevailing social and economic situation in the aftermath of the Third
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Reich and the Second World War. Thus the early programmatic
discussions of the Christian Democrats were concerned with the
reestablishment of a liberal, democratic and humane social and economic
order. Based on Thomas Aquinas’ teaching and the Katholische Soziallehre
(Catholic social doctrine), the conviction that neither an evidently