Talk:Liberal Union (Germany)

RJFF (talk) 17:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

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.