Talk:German Free-minded Party

Odd translation

Free-minded sounds bizarre in English and it's the kind of thing one would expect of someone who takes the naive view that, in order to translate German into English, all you need to do is feed the German, bit by bit, into some online translating machine. What is the name normally used by English-speaking historians for this party? Freethinkers' Party?? Norvo (talk) 23:47, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The German Free-minded Party as a centre-left/left-wing party

Okay, even though I had not really the time to go into that much detail, I'm posting it now anyway to stop that stupid edit war.

Personally (as a German who holds a degree in political science and history), I'd rather classify the German Progress Party, the German Free-minded Party, the Free-minded People's Party, and the Progressive People's Party as parties of the „Centre“ or maybe as „Centre to Centre-left“. „Centre-left“ is a bit of a stretch IMO, but still reasonably acceptable. In no way I'd regard the categorization as „Left-wing“ as acceptable though. So, I was willing to accept the „Centre-left“ label as sort of a compromise, especially if we follow the „what's now considered Centre, was in fact Centre-left back then“ logic (even though it's still a matter of debate why we should follow this logic in the first place). Anyone who's come to this page to edit it since January of 2013 seems to broadly agree with that view, because that's how long this party had been classified as „Centre-left“ here. What exactly is the reason for suddenly changing it after five years?

The aforementioned four social-liberal parties of the German empire era are considered direct precursors of the present-day FDP. The FDP is obviously very much removed from being anything remotely „Left-wing“, since the respective Wikipedia page lists it as „Centre to centre-right“.

Then there's the matter of overall consistency on Wikipedia. For instance, the original German People's Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_People%27s_Party_(1868)) is generally considered to be the MOST left-wing of all the social-liberal parties of the German empire, and certainly more left-wing than any of the four parties mentioned in the first sentence of this post. Still, for some reason you chose to not edit THAT page to list it as „Left-wing“, creating the incorrect impression that the German People's Party was more right-wing than the German Free-minded Party, when it was in fact not.

Although I guess you can't really change the German People's Party to „Left-wing“ too since that page lists outside sources for its categorization as „Centre-left“. It also lists a source that it was most left-wing of the social-liberal parties of the time. If there are sources that the German People's Party was the most left-wing liberal party and if there are also sources for the categorization as a centre-left party, it seems logical that the German Free-minded Party and the Free-minded People's Party can't really be listed as „Left-wing“.

The Free-minded People's Party (along with the smaller Free-minded Union and the even smaller German People's Party) is also considered the primary precursor to the Progressive People's Party (founded in 1910), and the Progressive People's Party was then the main precursor to the German Democratic Party (founded in 1918). The Free-minded People's Party is currently listed as „Left-wing“, the Progressive People's Party is listed as „Centre-left“, and the German Democratic Party is listed as „Centre“ around here though. In the case of the German Democratic Party there's also an outside source given for that categorization.

Are we really supposed to assume that the merger with the smaller Free-minded Union (which currently is categorized as „Centre“) changed the party in such a radical manner, that it moved from being „Left-wing“ to „Centre“ over the course of a timespan of just eight years, only to basically stay that way from 1918 until the present day (since the FDP is listed as „Centre to centre-right“)? What exactly are the main differences between the platform of the Free-minded People's Party of 1910 and the platform German Democratic Party of 1918 to warrant the indication of such a radical and swift change move to the Centre here?

The point I'm trying to make is that you can't just randomly change pages after they had been this way for many years without taking into account the overall context, or without adjusting a couple of more Wikipedia pages too (I'd obviously be opposed to the latter as well too).

Finally, I don't appreciate to threaten or bully me with things like „you may get banned“, and I ask you refrain from such threats in the future. Thanks.

==Political positions of the social-liberal parties during the German empire==

The political positions provided in the infoboxes for the various social-liberal parties of the German Empire era are all over the place on Wikipedia and don't really make much sense right now. There are :currently only two parties where actual academic sources are cited for their positioning:

1) The German People's Party of 1868 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_People%27s_Party_(1868)) is currently listed as "centre-left" with two sources provided for that. In addition, the same article :also mentions that it was "the most leftist among non-Marxist parties and closest to the social democracy", with a separate source cited for that as well. If we don't ignore these sources we must assume :that no other social-liberal party can be more left-wing as that one.

2) The German Democratic Party of the Weimar Republic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Democratic_Party), which had eventually merged all social-liberal parties into one, is currently listed as :"centre", with an academic source cited for that as well.

The complete genealogy of the social-liberal parties was as follows:

Prior to 1884: German Progress Party (currently listed as "centre-left" here), Liberal Union (a more left-oriented split from the centre-right National Liberal Party and currently listed as "centre-:right"), and German People's Party as the smallest and the most left-wing of the three (split off from the German Progress Party and listed as "centre-left")

1884: German Progress Party ("centre-left") and Liberal Union ("centre-right") merge to form the German Free-minded Party (listed as "left-wing"), German People's Party remains separate - the reason why :the merger of a centre-left with a centre-right party should temporarily produce a left-wing party is not specified on Wikipedia

1893: German Free-minded Party is split up again into the Free-minded People's Party ("left-wing") and the Free-minded Union ("centre"). This is pretty much a restoration of the earlier parties which had :merged to form the Free-minded Party. German People's Party continues to remain separate.

1910: Free-minded People's Party, Free-minded Union, and German People's Party merge to form the Progressive People's Party ("centre-left").

1918: The Progressive People's Party and a a more left-oriented splinter faction of the National Liberal Party form the German Democratic Party ("centre").

Please also note the following timeline from the German Wikipedia which basically orders all the liberal parties from the right-wing (top) to the left-wing (bottom) and gives an overview of the electoral :results of the all the parties: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Liberales_Lager_Kaiserreich_Wahlergebnisse.png

For the reasons given under the summary of the academic sources for the German People's Party and the German Democratic Party at the top of this post, and the apparent contradiction of political :positionings after the 1884 merger (and to some extent the 1893 split), I'd propose the following changes to clean this up a bit:

(the more left-oriented social-liberals)

German Progress Party: remains "centre-left"

Free-minded People's Party: changed from "left-wing" to "centre-left"

German People's Party: remains "centre-left"

(the more right-oriented social-liberals)

Liberal Union: changed from "centre-right" to "centre"

Free-minded Union: remains "centre"

(mergers of the various social-liberal factions)

German Free-minded Party: changed from "left-wing" to "centre to centre-left" (maybe it could also be listed as "centre-left", since the German Progress Party was the more dominant component of the two :precursor parties)

Progressive People's Party: changed from "centre-left" to "centre to centre-left" (maybe alternatively as "centre-left", for the reason given above and because the German People's Party was also a :"centre-left" party)

German Democratic Party: remains "centre"

I will now change all the political positions provided in the infoboxes as I have suggested here. If anyone has significant objections to that the alternative I'd propose is to remove the political :positions altogether except for the German People's Party (1868) and the German Democratic Party, where outside sources are cited for the positioning.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.179.143.45 (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2018 (UTC)