Page 37 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

10 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

April 1947, the BCSV merged in the CDU Baden (CDUB), which was
licensed in March 1946. The Liberals in the French zone of occupation,
constituted of the Liberal-Demokratische Partei (LDP) and the Sozialer
Volksbund Hessen-Pfalz (SVHP) which both formed the Demokratische Partei
Rheinland-Pfalz (DPRP), appeared not before early 1947. However, the
development of political parties beyond the borders of the French zone
was hindered by the fact that visitors needed a special pass to enter that
was difficult to obtain and often intentionally issued late with the
consequence that appointments could not be met. The American and
British authorities pursued a middle course by declaring, on 6 August, that
the foundation of German parties (and unions) was to be fostered in their
zones of occupation, which consisted of the Länder Bavaria, Bremen,
Hesse, and Wuerttemberg-Baden and additionally, the boroughs of
Neukölln, Kreuzberg, Tempelhof, Schöneberg, Steglitz and Zehlendorf on
the one side, and the Länder Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-
Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, and the Berlin boroughs of Tiergarten,
Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and Spandau on the other side. Although
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further directives concretised the modus operandi concerning the
authorisation of political parties, the first political parties that were initially
co-operating through informal working committees were already formed
in May 1945. The first local and municipal reestablishments of the western
SPD organisation were initiated by Kurt Schumacher on 6 May 1945.
While the CDU, which initially appeared under different names, was
founded in Cologne on 17 June, and as Christlich-Demokratische Partei (CDP)
in Frankfurt on 15 September 1945 (later renamed CDU), it is difficult to
pinpoint the precise date of formation of the Bavarian CSU between 12
September and 13 October 1945. However, the CSU received provisional
permission by the Office of Military Government for Bavaria on 8 January
1946. The FDP, not offering a nationwide representation before the 11
December 1948, has its roots in the Partei Freier Demokraten (PFD) in
Hamburg, the LDP in Hesse, the SVHP in Rhineland-Palatinate, and the
Demokratische Volkspartei (DVP) in Wuerttemberg-Baden, which were
(re)established in September, and finally in its immediate predecessor, the
Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (DPD), founded on 17 March 1947.
Finally, the Niedersächsische Landespartei (NLP) appeared in Lower Saxony
and Bremen on 20 July 1945; the regional party was renamed Deutsche
Partei (DP) in July 1947. These formal organisations were approved on a
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zone-wide basis in both territories of occupation in September 1945. In
doing so, only ‘democratic’ parties, namely those that had continued to
exist in exile and/or had actively resisted the Third Reich, were initially
licensed. Essentially, despite an intended party pluralism in view of the
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exclusive domination of one governing party in the preceding years,