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Die Partei für Arbeit, Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative ("Party for Labour, Rule of Law, Animal Protection, Promotion of Elites and Grassroots Democratic Initiative"), or Die PARTEI ("The PARTY"), is a German political party. It was founded in 2004 by the editors of the German satirical magazine Titanic. It is led by Martin Sonneborn. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the party won a seat, marking the first time that a satirical party has won a seat to the European Parliament. With the 2019 European Parliament election, the party gained a second seat, held by Nico Semsrott. The party kept these two seats at the 2024 European Parliament election.
The PARTEI refers to itself as a haven for voters disappointed by other parties. It plans to engage in a (self-declared) "populism campaign" centering on:
Sonneborn explains this as follows: "Better that we get those votes than some sort of neo-Nazis." In order to achieve its majority, the PARTEI is willing to form a coalition with any other party other than the Free Democratic Party because "We don't form coalitions with joke parties."
It formed an "anti-constitutional platform" in an attempt to get the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to surveil PARTEI. The effort failed when the federal office refused, calling the PARTEI a frivolous political party. The goals of the anti-constitutional platform were:
According to Die PARTEI, political goals are overrated; on the other hand, PARTEI promises a "modern" version of politics—i.e., they will ask for popular opinion and, once in power, will do something completely different.
The party describes itself in the left-right politics scheme with "There cannot be anything, mustn't be anything and won't be anything left and right of the party!" (This is a reference to a famous sentence by Bavarian Minister-President Franz Josef Strauß: "There must not be a democratically legitimised party right of the CSU.")
The PARTEI often caricatures the slogans of other political parties in their own campaigns. Examples include "Hamburg – city in the North!", "overcome contents" (Inhalte überwinden), "Education starts with 'E'" (Bildung fängt mit 'B' an), "Youth crime – not with us!", and "A unicorn for everyone" (Einhorn für alle).
By using satirical ways of running a campaign or making politics, the PARTEI highlights problems in the established system. For instance, the PARTEI successfully effected reforms of German party financing by selling 100-euro notes (and two postcards) for €105. German political parties are funded by the federal government based on their election results, donations, membership numbers, and income from the sale of merchandise (e.g. t-shirts, stickers). The far-right Eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD) sold gold bars to its members, taking advantage of the fact that at the time the funding was based on revenue and not profit. This dramatically increased the AfD's federal funding. The PARTEI's campaign "Buy Money!" ("Geld kaufen!") led to a successful court decision and a change to party financing laws, closing the loophole.
Despite starting out as a purely satirical party intended to gather , Die PARTEI has since adopted some actual policy positions, including environmentalism, anti-authoritarianism, pro-Europeanism, and some others described as left-leaning. The party has also been described as Humanism. In their 2021 party program, Die PARTEI supports the implementation of universal basic income.
At the heart of the PARTEI's political efforts lies the aim of resurrecting the Berlin Wall and all other border fortifications along the border with the former German Democratic Republic. This goal has however been hidden away in the last point of the party manifesto and was characterized by party chairman Martin Sonneborn as merely a "populist vehicle". He held out the prospect of a referendum after the PARTEI's accession to power. In order to raise the necessary finances for the erection of the Wall members are requested to donate the proceeds of their savings contracts. Sonneborn described the project as follows: "I give you and all the German public my word of honor, I repeat—my word of honor—that under us there will be no order to shoot at the Wall". (This is a reference to a false statement by former East Germany SED party leader Walter Ulbricht who in 1961 claimed that "Nobody has the intention of building a wall" shortly before the wall was actually built and a reference to "Waterkant-Gate" of politician Uwe Barschel.)
The territory of the former GDR is thus to become a "Special Cultivation Zone" separated from the rest of Germany by edificial means in order to emphasize the visionary idea of such a zone and is to benefit from a de-bureaucratized and streamlined administrative system. Additionally, the PARTEI is demanding health care reform, protection of natural resources and a program for reduction of working time as an alternative to Agenda 2010, an unpopular set of labor market reforms introduced under Chancellor Schroeder in 2003. It also supports improved co-determination rights for citizens, in particular it demands that a new constitution be passed on the basis of wide-ranging discussions, to be ratified by the people (in line with article 146 of the constitution).
Titanic has a history of participating in election campaigns. For the 2002 German federal election it set up a stand claiming to be the Free Democratic Party and shouted racist slogans. In January 2003, Titanic staff pretended to be candidates of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Hesse. For the 2003 elections in Bavaria it surrendered in the name of the Bavarian Social Democrats ( "SPD: Wir geben auf").
One campaign tactic was to auction its advertising times in German television (all German political parties are allotted TV time for campaign spots for free) on eBay. An allusion to a scandal of masked advertising on public television, the (mostly satirical) TV spots were presented in the corporate design of a German airline company, Hapag-Lloyd Express (HLX).
Nominating candidates only in the cities of Hamburg and Berlin, the PARTEI gained 10,379 votes (0.022% of all votes on national level).
In July 2009, Roderich Egeler, Bundeswahlleiter (Federal Returning Officer) and president of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, denied official party status and the approval for participation in the 2009 federal election. He criticised lack of seriousness and organisation within the party. He claimed his decision was based on a fax by Die PARTEI which expressed that there is just one single Landesverband (organisation in one of the states). Die PARTEI rejoined that no such fax existed and announced legal action. T-shirts saying "Where is my vote, Bundeswahlleiter?" were sold as part of a protest campaign and the party demanded that Egeler resign after he did not revise his decision.
On 13 August 2009, a movie called Die PARTEI – Der Film was released in theaters.
On 3 November 2009, the party launched a challenge to the validity of the 2009 federal elections at the Bundestag. Die PARTEI also saw itself validated by Bundestag President Norbert Lammert's maiden speech in which he criticized the election registration process, because "representatives of the established parties decide whether or not to register the competition". The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's report on Germany's 2009 elections suggested reforming election registration in order to allow unregistered parties to appeal before elections. On 6 December 2010, the party filed an official complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court. It was officially accepted in February 2011 but ultimately the court rejected it in April 2011 on the grounds that the party chairman as the complainant did not have the necessary right to complain.
Die PARTEI participated in state elections in Berlin, Hamburg and Baden-Württemberg in 2011. In the 2011 Hamburg state election held on 20 February 2011, Die PARTEI won 23,994 votes (0.7% of the total). In St. Pauli the party came in sixth place, winning 1,450 votes (4.9%), after SPD (37.4%), Greens (21.5%), The Left (20.1%), Pirate Party (6.7%) and CDU (5.8%). In five districts (Hammerbrook, St. Pauli, Sternschanze, Veddel and Kleiner Grasbrook) the PARTEI beat the well-established FDP. The PARTEI did best in the Kleiner Grasbrook district, where it attracted 39 votes, or 5.3%, drawing level in the district with Germany's largest party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
In November 2020 MP Marco Bülow (former member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany) joined the PARTEI, which entered the Bundestag for the first time in its history.
Its campaign slogan was "For Europe, Against Europe", which Sonneborn explained that the PARTEI was inclusive—it welcomed the 70% of Germans opinion polls said were not interested in Europe, "But we also say yes to Europe so everybody opposed to or in favour of Europe can vote for us". Specific campaign pledges included promising to "build a wall around Switzerland, put Chancellor Angela Merkel on a show trial in the Berlin Olympic stadium and to frack the rotund politicians Sigmar Gabriel and Peter Altmaier for cheap gas".
In late 2014, after the now defunct Eurosceptic parliamentary group, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy briefly ceased to exist, due to no longer meeting the criteria of 7 different countries being represented, The EFDD approached Sonneborn with the offer of joining their group. Sonneborn told The EFDD that he would only join if the group renamed itself “Sonneborn’s EFDD".
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the PARTEI won nearly 900,000 votes or 2.4% of the national vote, thus winning two seats which are held by Martin Sonneborn and the Kabarett artist Nico Semsrott. Semsrott left the party in January 2021 over a design draft for a T-Shirt Sonneborn had shared and which contained a racial slur.
In the 2024 European Parliament election, the PARTEI slightly underperformed their 2019 result, winning 1.95% of the national vote. The party remained at 2 seats in the European Parliament, with Martin Sonneborn and Sibylle Berg as their MEPs.
During the 2009/10 legislature, the PARTEI student organization was able to advance its own man to the post of the President of the Düsseldorf student parliament. In the 2010/11 legislature, the PARTEI student organization now controls the post of assistant President of the student parliament at the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, their LISTE standing for "List for Integration, Freedom from university fees, Technology and Promotion of Elites"). On 20 April 2011, Tobias M. Bölz, chairman of LISTE at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology was elected to the chairmanship of the executive committee of the student body, having been president of the student parliament in the previous legislative period.
The Hintner Youth's uniform, with its blue shirt, gray trousers and red scarf are reminiscent of East Germany's Pioneer Organization and the Free German Youth (FDJ).
Sub-organizations
The LISTE – the PARTEI student organization
Between 2005 and 2009, the PARTEI's student organizations began to make themselves felt in student parliaments in Bochum, Aachen, Berlin, Dortmund and Düsseldorf. In most cases the groups branded themselves as List for Grass-Roots Democratic Initiatives, Education, Animal Breeding and Promotion of Elites (German acronym LISTE— Liste für basisdemokratische Initiative, Studium, Tierzucht und Elitenförderung). The student organization has 8,000 members nationwide, according to its own reports.
The Hintner Youth
In line with the motto, "We need a children's and youth wing, because we need a children's and youth wing!", the Hintner Youth, named after the PARTEI's general secretary Thomas Hintner, was founded on 5 June 2005, during the state conference in Mannheim. The Hintner Youth's official greeting is, "Hi Hintner!", alluding to the Nazi Party's Hitler Youth and Hitlergruss.
The PARTEI school
The PARTEI runs a school in Schwerin, which by allusion to the official SED schools is simply known as the "PARTEI school". The school's purpose is not only to improve PARTEI official's political literacy but also to provide general educational programs, including IT and foreign languages. The school's director is Heike Zeilinger, with Ulf Mittelstädt and Michael Padefke as heads of the individual departments. According to the PARTEI the school has no real estate of its own.
State organizations
The chairpersons of the German states are:
Baden-Württemberg Peter Mendelsohn Bavaria Maximilian Hartl Berlin Sabine Kiele & Marie Geissler Brandenburg Lars Krause Bremen Kea Rachel Glaß Hamburg Dirk Kotte Hesse Christian Scheeff Lower Saxony Sarah Ellen Herfort Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Eric Adelsberger North Rhine-Westphalia Mark Benecke Rhineland-Palatinate Kevin Wilhelm Saarland Jimmy Both Saxony Steffen Retzlaff Saxony-Anhalt Martin Bochmann Schleswig-Holstein Jannis Langmaack Thuringia Eggs Gildo
Election results
European Parliament
Federal parliament (Bundestag)
Berlin Parliament
See also
Notes
Literature
External links
Categories: Official Website, 2004 Establishments In Germany, Anti-fascist Organisations In Germany, Environmental Organisations Based In Germany, Humanist Parties, Joke Political Parties In Germany, Parties Represented In The European Parliament, Political Parties Established In 2004, Political Parties In Germany, Pro-european Political Parties In Germany, Universal Basic Income In Germany, Political Parties Supporting Universal Basic Income
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