page_title: Free Democratic Party (Germany)
section_title: 1949–1969: reconstruction of Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Free Democratic Party (Germany) / History / 1949–1969: reconstruction of Germany
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Wahlplakat der FDP zur Bundestagswahl 1949 mit der Forderung nach Beendigung der Entnazifizierung. English: "Schlußstrich drunter!" – FDP campaign poster before the 1949 Bundestag elections in Hesse calling for a halt on De-nazification
context_page_description: The Free Democratic Party is a liberal political party in Germany. The FDP is led by Christian Lindner.
  The FDP was founded in 1948 by members of former liberal political parties which existed in Germany before World War II, namely the German Democratic Party and the German People's Party. For most of the German Federal Republic's history, it has held the balance of power in the Bundestag. It was a junior coalition partner to the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In the 2013 federal election, the FDP failed to win any directly elected seats in the Bundestag and came up short of the 5 percent threshold to qualify for list representation, being left without representation in the Bundestag for the first time in its history. In the 2017 federal election, the FDP regained its representation in the Bundestag, receiving 10.6% of the vote.
  Predominantly classical-liberal, the FDP supports human rights, civil liberties, and internationalism. The party is traditionally considered centrist or centre-right. Since the 1980s, the party has pushed economic liberalism and has aligned itself closely to the promotion of free markets and privatization.
context_section_description: In the first elections to the Bundestag on 14 August 1949, the FDP won a vote share of 11.9 percent (with 12 direct mandates, particularly in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse), and thus obtained 52 of 402 seats. In September of the same year the FDP chairman Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In his 1954 re-election, he received the best election result to date of a President with 871 of 1018 votes (85.6 percent) of the Federal Assembly. Adenauer was also elected on the proposal of the new German President with an extremely narrow majority as the first Chancellor. The FDP participated with the CDU/CSU and the DP in Adenauer's coalition cabinet: they had three ministers: Franz Blücher (Vice-Chancellor), Thomas Dehler (Justice) and Eberhard Wildermuth (housing).
  On the most important economic, social and German national issues, the FDP agreed with their coalition partners, the CDU/CSU. However, the FDP recommended to the bourgeois voters a secular party that refused the religious schools and accused the opposition parties of clericalization. The FDP said they were known also as a consistent representative of the market economy, while the CDU was then dominated nominally from the Ahlen Programme, which allowed a Third Way between capitalism and socialism. Ludwig Erhard, the "father" of the social market economy, had his followers in the early years of the Federal Republic in the Union rather than in the FDP.
  The FDP won Hesse's 1950 state election with 31.8 percent, the best result in its history, through appealing to East Germans displaced by the war by including them on their ticket.
  Up to the 1950s, several of the FDP's regional organizations were to the right of the CDU/CSU, which initially had ideas of some sort of Christian socialism, and even former office-holders of the Third Reich were courted with national, patriotic values. The FDP voted in parliament at the end of 1950 against the CDU- and SPD- introduced de-nazification process. At their party conference in Munich in 1951 they demanded the release of all "so-called war criminals" and welcomed the establishment of the "Association of German soldiers" of former Wehrmacht and SS members, to advance the integration of the nationalist forces in democracy. The 1953 Naumann-Affair, named after Werner Naumann, identifies old Nazis trying to infiltrate the party, which had many right-wing and nationalist members in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. After the British occupation authorities had arrested seven prominent members of the Naumann circle, the FDP federal board installed a commission of inquiry, chaired by Thomas Dehler, which particularly sharply criticized the situation in the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP. In the following years, the right wing lost power, and the extreme right increasingly sought areas of activity outside the FDP. In the 1953 federal election, the FDP received 9.5 percent of the party votes, 10.8 percent of the primary vote (with 14 direct mandates, particularly in Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Württemberg and Bavaria) and 48 of 487 seats.
  In the second term of the Bundestag, the South German Liberal democrats gained influence in the party. Thomas Dehler, a representative of a more left-liberal course took over as party and parliamentary leader. The former Minister of Justice Dehler, who in 1933 suffered persecution by the Nazis, was known for his rhetorical focus. Generally the various regional associations were independent and translated so different from country to country accents in liberal politics. After the FDP had left in early 1956, the coalition with the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia and made with SPD and center a new state government, were a total of 16 members of parliament, including the four federal ministers from the FDP and founded the short-lived Free People's Party, which then up was involved to the end of the legislature instead of FDP in the Federal Government. The FDP first took it to the opposition.
  Only one of the smaller post-war parties, the FDP survived despite m
caption: "Schlußstrich drunter!"—FDP election campaign poster before the 1949 Bundestag election in Hesse calling for a halt on denazification
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