Centre Party (Germany)

German Centre Party

Deutsche Zentrumspartei
German Centre Party Deutsche Zentrumspartei
Federal Chairman	Christian Otte
Founder	Joseph Görres
Founded	13 December 1870 (original form); 1945 (current form);
Headquarters	Straberger Weg 12 41542, Dormagen, NRW
Youth wing	Windthorstbund
Paramilitary wing	Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (1924–1930)
Membership	600 (2022 est.)
Ideology	Christian democracy; Social conservatism
Political position	Centre-right; Late 1920s to 1945:; Right-wing; 1870 to late 1920s:; Centre to centre-right
Religion	Catholicism
Colours	Black White Blue
Bundestag	0 / 736
Bundesrat	0 / 69
State parliaments	0 / 1,884
European Parliament	0 / 96
Heads of State Governments	0 / 16
Website
	www.zentrumspartei.de
	Politics of Germany; Political parties; Elections;

The Centre Party (German: Zentrum), officially the German Centre Party (German: Deutsche Zentrumspartei) and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Christian democratic political party in Germany. It was most Influential in the German Empire and Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf waged by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party name Zentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.^[5]

For most of the Weimar Republic, the Centre Party was the third-largest party in the Reichstag and a bulwark of the Republic, participating in all governments until 1932. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in early 1933, the Centre Party was among the parties who voted for the Enabling Act, which granted legislative powers to Hitler's government. Nevertheless, the party was pressured into dissolving itself on 5 July, as the Nazi Party became the only legally permitted party in the country shortly thereafter.

After World War II, the party was reconstituted, but could not rise again to its former importance, as most of its members joined the new interdenominational Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and, in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The Centre Party continued on as a marginal party and concentrated its efforts on regional politics, mainly based in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The party was unrepresented on the German federal level from 1957 to 2022, when Federal representative Uwe Witt and European representative Jörg Meuthen defected from the AfD and joined the Centre Party.

^ Fogarty, Michael P. (1957). Christian Democracy in Western Europe: 1820–1953. Routledge Revivals. ISBN 978-1-351-38672-2.
^ Allinson, Mark (30 October 2014). Germany and Austria since 1814. Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-4441-8652-9. Zentrum: Roman Catholic party which moved from the political centre to the right in the late 1920s.
^ Bookbinder, Paul (27 October 2016). "Weimar Political Parties". Facing History and Ourselves. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
^ Clive Ponting, ed. (1998). Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century. Chatto & Windus. p. 306. In Germany the short-lived Weimar Republic was, after an initial burst of enthusiasm for the Social Democrats, dominated by the conservative Catholic Zentrum and other parties of the centre-right.
^ David Blackbourn, "The Political Alignment of the Centre Party in Wilhelmine Germany: A Study of the Party's Emergence in Nineteenth-Century Württemberg," Historical Journal Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec. 1975), pp. 821-850 in JSTOR

[1] Fogarty, Michael P. (1957). Christian Democracy in Western Europe: 1820–1953. Routledge Revivals. ISBN 978-1-351-38672-2.

[2] Allinson, Mark (30 October 2014). Germany and Austria since 1814. Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-4441-8652-9. Zentrum: Roman Catholic party which moved from the political centre to the right in the late 1920s.

[3] Bookbinder, Paul (27 October 2016). "Weimar Political Parties". Facing History and Ourselves. Retrieved 23 December 2019.

[4] Clive Ponting, ed. (1998). Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century. Chatto & Windus. p. 306. In Germany the short-lived Weimar Republic was, after an initial burst of enthusiasm for the Social Democrats, dominated by the conservative Catholic Zentrum and other parties of the centre-right.

[5] David Blackbourn, "The Political Alignment of the Centre Party in Wilhelmine Germany: A Study of the Party's Emergence in Nineteenth-Century Württemberg," Historical Journal Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec. 1975), pp. 821-850 in JSTOR

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