|
View the H-German Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-German's October 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-German's October 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-German home page.
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (October 2006)
Frank Bösch. _Macht und Machtverlust: Die Geschichte der CDU_.
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002. 312 pp. Table of contents.
EUR 19.90 (paper), ISBN 3-421-05601-3.
Reviewed for H-German by Daniel Rogers, Department of History,
University of South Alabama
Learning from both Victory and Defeat
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has survived for over sixty years
and now serves as one of the most prominent symbols of German political
stability and democratic maturity. But this political party is a paradox.
Despite its swift rise to, and long hold on, power in Bonn (1949-69), it had
developed haphazardly at the end of World War II among former members
of the Catholic Center Party who despaired of the Center's chances in a
new age, among those genuinely committed to inter-confessional
cooperation and economic experimentation, and among some Protestants
who had nowhere else to go but might have sought out nationalist parties in
other eras. What bound them together was lack of a good alternative and
fear of the leftist (and godless) alternatives. Thus, for decades, the CDU
was unable to offer a specific, comprehensive, ideologically consistent
and rigorous program. Far from being a weakness, the lack of a program
aided the CDU in its successful effort to become a big-tent _Volkspartei_
rather than a narrow confessional grouping. But when the party lost
power, the lack of a strong program suddenly seemed the root of all evil.
With _Macht und Machtverlust_, Frank Bösch, author of a previous
history of the early CDU (_Die Adenauer CDU_, [2001]) has written
a brief, yet authoritative and nuanced history of the party. Bösch
analyzes the programmatic development of the party, its leadership, its
ties to social and interest groups, its finances and the role of women in
the party. Each chapter can stand alone as a distinct essay, although
connections are made to topics mentioned in previous chapters. As
Bösch's title suggests, the key to the party's development has been
the need to rule flexibly during long periods when it held the
chancellorship (1949-69 and 1982-98) and to rethink itself when it was
ousted for long periods (1969-82 and 1998-2002, when Bösch
published the book). Holding power and losing power have proven to
be catalysts for change in the party's program, leadership, finances
and its relationships to various groups. Rather than being a party
strictly committed to a particular ideology, region, confession or
other constant goals, the CDU has been a machine for acquiring
and retaining power and has often changed only when forced to do
so by the loss of elections.
As Bösch demonstrates, the CDU was satisfied with a less than full
and consistent program in its formative years. The party had been
badly divided over economics since its founding days, with some
advocating overtly socialist remedies and others (such as Konrad
Adenauer) rejecting what were viewed as collectivist or "materialist"
ideologies or approaches. Instead of a program, the CDU ended up
dominated by concept that was half-slogan, half-brand name: "social
market economy." The party's leader was a chancellor whose chief
electoral virtue was his lack of dynamism and ideological rigor, a
politician who could, for his first two terms, benefit from being cast
as "the Old Man." When Adenauer's third and fourth terms increasingly
focused on the single question, "when will he go?", the CDU was
forced to think not about a party program for the post-Adenauer years,
but about the identity of his replacement. When it got its new
chancellor, in the person of Ludwig Erhard--who had only joined the
party in order to become its chancellor candidate in 1963--it delayed
further the programmatic work: what need was there, when Erhard was
celebrated as the brains behind the economic miracle? Only with the
demise of the first Grand Coalition in 1969 did the party seek to devise
a new program, just in time for a younger generation led by Helmut Kohl
to exercise a decisive reformist influence. With the party's unexpected
and therefore disastrous defeat in the 1972 Bundestag elections, the way
was clear for Kohl's ascendancy and the adoption of the elaborate program
he supported. To accommodate the "spirit of the 1970s," the CDU's first
major program was "more social and more visionary" (p. 35); the party
presented itself as the representative of those such as the elderly and
single mothers who had no natural advocate in a system that favored
interest group politics.
While Bösch often writes with a certain sympathy for the CDU, the section
on party finances shows him at his most independent and critical. He is
scathing concerning finances and documents the shady practices of the
party from Adenauer's day through the financing scandal of the late 1990s.
The early CDU had a precarious financing system, much less effective than
that supporting the rival Social Democrats (SPD). The party therefore
cultivated large industry associations (_Verbände_) and individual
businesses. One of the CDU's dubious tactics was to publish a
financial newspaper that was then "sold" at exorbitant prices to businesses
that could in turn deduct the "subscription" as a business expense. The
industry associations not only financed the CDU, but pressured other
middle-class parties to collaborate with the party or eventually even to
merge with it. Adenauer's chief of staff, Hans Globke, was indispensable
for many other reasons, but none may have been more important than
his stewardship of party finances and fundraising. When state
financing of election campaigns was eventually introduced, it theoretically
violated the party's stand on the use of public money for political ends,
but eventually worked in the CDU's favor: it could now form coalitions
with the SPD previously been forbidden by the _Verbände_ as a
condition of their financial support.
Bösch's chapter on "social milieux" demonstrates how a key period in
the transformation of the CDU came in the 1970s. Even as the party was
threatened by the increasingly attenuated connection of many Germans
to their churches, the party could exploit a sense of unease or malaise
among middle-class Germans due to domestic terrorism, student protests
and the social reform legislation of the SPD-led governing coalition. By
the time of Kohl's impressive but unsuccessful campaign for the
chancellorship in the 1976 elections, the CDU was presenting itself as an
economically competent party, one that had not only broken its too-close
ties to the Catholic church but would also continue to help fend off
socialism. This chapter also shows how the CDU's loss in 1998 resulted
not only from weariness with Kohl's long rule, but also from a
European-wide phenomenon Bösch calls the "Verlust von langfristigen
Gesellschaftsbindungen" (p. 261), or more simply put, the effects of
generational transitions that did not redound to the favor of the CDU.
Bösch's final section, on women, thoroughly documents and
convincingly explains the absence of women from leadership roles in
the party prior to Angela Merkel's rise (even Merkel appears more
of an exception than a harbinger of change). This minimal role for
women is ironic, since during the party's formative decades it was the
massively disproportionate vote for the CDU by women that kept it in
power--an anomaly Bösch explains by calling attention to the party's
close ties to organized Christianity and the long history of German
women voting heavily for confessionally-associated parties. Part of the
reason for Kohl's survival after reunification in 1990 lay in his recognition
of the importance of women in the eastern CDU and his resulting moves
to give them more prominence within the party, even if such increased
visibility was still not proportional to women's contributions to the
party's electoral successes. For example, Kohl did not award any key
cabinet posts to women. At the beginning of this century, Merkel as party
chair was the exception, a solitary woman near the top. In the party's
parliametary _Fraktion_, for instance, not a single CDU committee chair
was a woman.
Bösch's book is a fine introduction to the structure of one of the three
ruling parties in today's Germany. Merkel's rise in particular is
presciently documented and her sudden prominence as the chancellor
candidate in 2005 seems only logical. Bösch's book is a reliable guide
to the change fortunes of the once and present leading party of Germany
The reliability of Bösch's work stems in large part from the impressive
research he conducted in the archives of the CDU, in newspapers and in
secondary sources. In a version updated to reflect the return to power in
2005, this book would continue to serve as a helpful introduction to the
structure and processes of the party. It is valuable not only for students
of German history, but for those interested in how political parties adapt
to both victory and defeat, for better and for worse.
Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact
the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|