Fighting liberals

Since the inception of the party in 1948, Germany's Free Democrats have based themselves on the political idea of liberalism.

"Unfortunately the FDP has more recently abandoned its founding principle," said Gerhart Baum, a prominent and long-standing member. At the end of the 1970s Baum was Germany's interior minister and today campaigns for human rights as a lawyer.

"The FDP's decision to reduce itself to a party that only cares about reducing taxes was a fatal move. This course of action has to be stopped immediately," said Baum.

The old values of the party must be recalled to life, he adds. Liberalism was always about the freedom of citizens to act with the least possible influence from the state. The liberals always demanded responsibility from the individual - who was to receive all the chances offered by the free market economy.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), one of the powerful voices of the liberal movement, placed his faith more in the individual than in the "collective mediocrity." And the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), one of vanguards of the movement, said governments proclaimed that the legitimacy of government depended solely on whether it guaranteed the rights of the individual.

These, he said, were the right to ownership, life and freedom. Notice that he mentioned others values than just ownership - values, incidentally, that made it into the American Declaration of Independence.

In Germany the liberalist movement began only after the first (failed) revolution in 1848. At that time the pressing values were freedom of speech and opinion, the protection from state violence and suffrage. The path to a true liberal society was not far, however.

In the German Empire, the national liberal party was the most important political force for more than two decades. In the Weimar Republic - a phase of democracy from 1919 to 1933 - a schism emerged within the party between left-wing and right-wing tendencies. These poles and the fight between them characterized the beginnings of the FDP in post-World War II Germany.

Liberalist successes

The social-liberalist forces in the FDP played a significant role in those successes that were to become long-lasting influences in the Federal Republic of Germany. Liberals helped formulate not only the politically moderate constitution, but also the capitalist market economy - due in large part to their support of the conservative Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard who helped shape Germany's post-war economy.

The mixture between free market economy and social protections played a significant role in the "Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle) that paved the way for Germany's return to prosperity and to its becoming a global economic power.

The FDP also prevented the rise of a two-party system in Germany - made up of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD) - something seen today, for instance, in the United States. "Liberalism stands for the pluralism of society," said Baum.

FDP politicians, such as the long-time foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher or former President Walter Scheel, supported then Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD) during the years of convergence with the Soviet Union, culminating in the policy of "Glasnost" conceived by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Genscher warned Chancellor Helmut Kohl - who followed Brandt in office - to take Gorbachev's policy seriously. At the time, Kohl had instead compared Gorbachev to Nazi-demagogue Josef Goebbels. Without the liberalist Genscher, in other words, Germany's reunification would have been much more difficult.

From crisis to record results

Genscher, who embodied liberalist values and enjoyed years as one of Germany's most popular politicians, decided to step down in 1992. After his departure the party took on new personalities but lost state election after state election.

This decline in success ended in the second-worst federal election results in the party's history in 1998, when the FDP was forced into the opposition after almost three consecutive decades of being involved in a governing coalition.

The FDP's new party chairman, Guido Westerwelle, was given the task of reinventing the party and changing its image from a "party for the better earners" to one that embodied the interests of the new generation.

In an attempt to increase the party's popularity, the new campaign included such intiatives like Westerwelle appearing on the TV series "Big Brother" or his new ride, a blue and yellow painted "Guidomobile." This was all part of "Project 18," a drive aimed at securing 18 percent of the popular vote in the 2001 general election.

FDP results, though well below the goal of 18 percent, went up at the general election in 2005. In 2009, the party achieved its best result ever, obtaining 14.6 percent of the vote. The triumph more than met the prerequisite for a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU, and the two parties were set to once again implement liberal political ideas.

Freefall

There was one problem, however. For years Westerwelle had already been fighting with the fact that other parties in Germany's spectrum had taken liberal values as their own.

The SPD, for instance, with its "Agenda 2010," had begun an initiative to reconstruct the welfare state and liberalize the market economy. The Green Party, meanwhile, had begun to shape itself as the party that represented the interests of "the people." The FDP saw its only chance in formulating a clear objective: lowering taxes for Germany's middle class.

Despite the success of the 2009 election, the FDP overlooked with its exclusive and obstinate insistence on tax breaks the impossibility of this demand. In the face of a mountainous debt crisis the German people were no longer able to take the FDP's stance seriously.

Furthermore, neo-liberal slogans such as "freedom instead of security" had the effect of scaring away voters who were looking for stability in times of financial upheaval.

Course change failure?

The FDP party convention in May of this year was seen as a chance to once again reinvent the party in the face of crisis. The emphasis was to be placed once again on traditional liberal values, on "responsibility and prudence" instead of power politics.

The future of the party was to be carried by these values and by a new, younger generation of politicians in the wake of Guido Westerwelle's more than 10 years as chairman. But the trio of new party leader Philipp Rösler, general secretary Christian Lindner and federal Health Minister Daniel Bahr took a hard hit this week with Lindner's shock resignation.

The FDP's ambitions have gone unrecognized thus far by German voters. In the seven state elections that took place this year, the liberals failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle required to enter parliament - an abominable and embarrassing failure. According to the latest opinion polls, the FDP would have no chance of entering federal parliament if an election were to be called in the near future.

The results of Friday's referendum - on whether to force Merkel's eurozone rescue policy - have cast more doubt on the party's ability to resurrect itself. Though 54 percent of those who voted confirmed Merkel's course, the total number of votes was below one-third of all party members, the number required to make the vote valid.

Authors: Wolfgang Dick, Michael Gessat / glb
Editor: Martin Kuebler