Die Heimat

"National Democratic Party of Germany" redirects here. For other uses, see National Democratic Party of Germany (disambiguation).

For the journal, see Die Heimat (journal).

The Homeland Die Heimat
Party Chairman	Peter Schreiber
Founders	Waldemar Schütz Adolf von Thadden ...and others
Founded	28 November 1964 (1964-11-28)
Merger of	Deutsche Reichspartei DNVP (1962)
Headquarters	Carl-Arthur-Bühring-Haus, Seelenbinderstrasse 42, 12555 Berlin
Newspaper	Deutsche Stimme
Youth wing	Junge Nationalisten
Membership	3,000 (2022 est.)
Ideology	Neo-Nazism German Ultranationalism
Political position	Far-right
European affiliation	Alliance for Peace and Freedom
European Parliament group	Non-Inscrits
Colors	Gold   Brown (customary, as NPD)   White
Slogan	Die soziale Heimatpartei ('The Social Homeland Party')
Bundestag	0 / 630
Bundesrat	0 / 69
State Parliaments	0 / 1,821
European Parliament	0 / 96
Party flag
Website
die-heimat.de
Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

The Homeland (German: Die Heimat), formerly the National Democratic Party of Germany (German: Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), is a far-right, neo-Nazi and ultranationalist political party in Germany. It was founded in 1964 as successor to the German Reich Party (Deutsche Reichspartei, DRP). On 1 January 2011, the nationalist German People's Union merged with the NPD and the party name of the National Democratic Party of Germany was extended by the addition of "The People's Union". In June 2023, the party renamed itself to Die Heimat after a party vote. A splinter party, the National Democratic Party of Germany, emerged from party dissidents opposed to the change and retain the symbols and name of the NPD.

As a neo-Nazi organization, it has been referred to as "the most significant neo-Nazi party to emerge after 1945". The German Federal Agency for Civic Education, or BPB, has criticized the NPD for working with members of organizations which were later found unconstitutional by the federal courts and disbanded, while the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic security agency, classifies The Homeland as a "threat to the constitutional order" because of its platform and ideology, and it is under their observation. An effort to outlaw the party failed in 2003, as the government had many informers and agents in the party, some in high position, who had written part of the material used against them.

Since its founding in 1964, the party has never managed to win enough votes on the federal level to cross Germany's 5% minimum threshold for representation in the Bundestag; it has succeeded in crossing the 5% threshold and gaining representation in state parliaments 11 times, including one-convocation entry to seven West German state parliaments between November 1966 and April 1968 and two-convocation electoral success in two East German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 2004 and 2011. Since 2016, The Homeland has not been represented in state parliaments. Udo Voigt led the NPD from 1996 to 2011. He was succeeded by Holger Apfel, who in turn was replaced by Udo Pastörs in December 2013. In November 2014, Pastörs was ousted and Frank Franz became the party's leader and in 2024 he was succeeded by Peter Schreiber.

Voigt was elected the party's first Member of the European Parliament in 2014. The party lost the seat in the 2019 European Parliament election.

On 23 January 2024, the Federal Constitutional Court excluded the party from party funding for six years, arguing that it continued to oppose the fundamental principles that are indispensable for the free democratic constitutional state and aimed to eliminate them.

History

20th century

NPD logo until the end of 2010

In the 1950s, despite the lack of complete de-Nazification, early right-wing extremist parties in West Germany failed to attract voters away from the moderate government that had presided over Germany's recovery.

Adolf von Thadden, an artillery officer in World War II and Nazi Party member, was active in far-right politics in the West Germany and was elected to the Bundestag in 1949. Thadden supported Werner Naumann, an associate of Joseph Goebbels, after his arrest and included him on the Deutsche Reichspartei's (DRP) list of candidates for the 1953 election. However, the government removed Naumann as a candidate and the party only received around 1% of the vote. Thadden then worked with Wilhelm Meinberg, a Nazi Reichstag member and recipient of the Golden Party Badge, and Heinrich Kunstmann, who joined the Nazi Party before Adolf Hitler. Both Meinberg and Kunstmann served as chairs of the DRP. Thadden replaced Kunstmann as chair in 1961 after continued electoral failures. Thadden's DRP allied with the BHE and German Party (DP) for the 1951 Bremen elections as none of the parties were strong enough to win on their own. This alliance received 5.2% of the vote and gained 4 seats in the bürgerschaft.

On 28 November 1964, around 600 people met in the banqueting hall of the Döhrener Maschpark inn in Bonn at the invitation of Friedrich Thielen. The National Democratic Party of Germany was formed at this meeting and 437 of those in attendance became members although they were allowed to maintain their membership in other parties. Thielen was selected to be chair of the party. Thadden, who proposed the unification of Germany's far-right parties, was made deputy chair. The newspaper he co-owned, Deutsche Nachrichten became the NPD's newspaper. The DRP, BHE, DP, and German National People's Party merged into the NPD. The NPD was organized in 196 of 248 federal election districts by April 1965. The party's first convention was held on 7–9 May 1965 in Hannover with 1,007 delegates and 2,000 non-delegates in attendance while. The party's membership of 7,500 was far smaller than the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)'s 390,000 and Social Democratic Party's 700,000. 8 of the NDP's 18 national committee members were former members of the NSDAP.

Thadden believed that 30% of the national voting public were undecided and that 15% could be swayed to support the NPD in the 1965 federal election. He launched a national car convoy for the campaign, starting in Cologne. Thielen and other members of the party laid wreathes on the graves of Nazi war criminals at Landsberg Prison. High profile people joined the party, such as Olympic gold medalist Frank Schepke and rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. The NPD received 2% of the vote, below the 5% needed to gain seats and the 15% claimed in party propaganda.

Thadden served as chairman from 1967 to 1971. Owing to von Thadden's effective leadership the NPD achieved success in the late 1960s, winning local government seats across West Germany. A rise in unemployment from 105,000 in August 1966, to 673,000 in February 1967, helped the NDP grow and earn 8 seats in the Landtag of Hesse and became the third-largest party in the Landtag of Bavaria with 15 seats.

Helping pave the way for these NPD gains were an economic downturn, frustrations with the emerging leftist youth counter-culture, and the emergence of a tripartite Grand Coalition among the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (the CDU's present-day sister party), and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). The coalition government had created a vacuum in the traditional political right wing, which the NPD tried to fill. Additionally, the party benefited from hostility to the growing immigrant population and fears that the government would relinquish claims to the "lost territories" (pre-World War II German territory east of the Oder-Neisse River). However, the growing popularity of the Kiesinger cabinet and improvements in the economy, with unemployment falling to 576,000 in March 1967, harmed the NDP's electoral prospects.

In late 1967, Thielen wanted somebody other than Thadden to lead the party in Lower Saxony, but Thadden ignored this and was elected chair on 5 February. The former chair, Lothar Kühne, and Fritz Winkelmann sued stating that Thadden was in violation of the NDP's bylaws. The court ruled in Kühne's favor on 8 March, and restored him as chair. On 10 March, Thielen had Thadden expelled from the party alongside seven other members, but the next day Thadden used his allies in the executive committee to expel Thielen and Harbord Grone-Endebrock, an ally of Thadden, was made chair in Lower Saxony. Thielen broke away to form the Nationale Volkspartei (NVP), but only a few hundred of the NPD's 25,000 members joined him. Franz Florian Winter, the chair of the Bavarian affiliate, resigned a few months later stating that the party was under the control of right-wing extremists. At the NDP's 3rd national convention in November 1967, Thadden was elected chair by 93% of the delegates.

The NDP received 4.3% of the vote in the 1969 federal election, but failed to gain any seats. When the grand coalition fell apart, around 75 percent of those who had voted for the NPD drifted back to the center-right. During the 1970s, the NPD went into decline, suffering from an internal split over failing to get into the German Parliament. The issue of immigration spurred a small rebound in popular interest from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, but the party only saw limited success in various local elections.

2000s

Udo Voigt, former leader of the NPD, stands in front of a banner depicting Nazi leader Rudolf Hess. Hess, who died in prison in 1987, is considered a martyr by the NPD, and the party attempted to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

In the 2004 state election in Saxony, the NPD won 9.2% of the overall vote. After the 2009 state election in Saxony, the NPD sent eight representatives to the Saxony state parliament, having lost four representatives since the 2004 election. The NPD lost their representation in Saxony in the 2014 state election. They also lost all representation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the 2016 state election.

The NPD maintained a non-competition agreement with the German People's Union (DVU) between 2004 and 2009. The third nationalist-oriented party, the Republicans (REP), has so far refused to join this agreement. However, Kerstin Lorenz, a local representative of the Republicans in Saxony, sabotaged her party's registration to help the NPD in the Saxony election.

In the 2005 federal elections, the NPD received 1.6 percent of the vote nationally. It garnered the highest percent of votes in the states of Saxony (4.9 percent), Thuringia (3.7 percent), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (3.5 percent) and Brandenburg (3.2 percent), all formerly part of East Germany. In most other states, the party won around 1 percent of the total votes cast. In the 2006 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election, the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and thus achieved state representation there, as well.

The NPD had 5,300 registered party members in 2004. Over the course of 2006, the NPD processed roughly 2,000 party applications to push the membership total over 7,200. In 2008, the trend of a growing number of members has been reversed and the party's membership is estimated at 7,000.

In the 2014 European elections, Udo Voigt was elected as the party's first Member of the European Parliament.

In September 2019, NPD politician Stefan Jagsch was elected as representative of Altenstadt-Waldsiedlung. The unanimous election of the NPD politician by the local council led to irritation and horror in other parties, such as Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), whose local council members had voted for Jagsch.

Merger with DVU

Logo of the NPD after its merger with the DVU until 2013

At the 2010 NPD party conference at Bamberg it was announced that the party would ask its members to approve a merger with the German People's Union (DVU). After the merger on 1 January 2011, the combined party briefly used the name NPD – Die Volksunion (NPD - The People's Union). Between 2004 and 2009 the two parties had agreed not to compete against each other in elections. However, on 27 January 2011, Munich's Landgericht (regional court) in a preliminary injunction declared the merger null and void.

Logo of the NPD 2013–2023

Banning attempts

See also: NPD ban proceedings

In 2001, the federal government, the Bundestag, and the Bundesrat jointly attempted to have the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ban the NPD. The court, the highest court in Germany, has the exclusive power to ban parties if they are found to be "anti-constitutional" through the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. However, the petition was rejected in 2003 after it was discovered that a number of the NPD's inner circle, including as many as 30 of its top 200 leaders, were undercover agents or informants of the German secret services, like the federal Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. They include a former deputy chairman of the party and author of an anti-Semitic tract that formed a central part of the government's case. Since the secret services were unwilling to fully disclose their agents' identities and activities, the court found it impossible to decide which moves by the party were based on genuine party decisions and which were controlled by the secret services in an attempt to further the ban. The court determined that so many of the party's actions were influenced by the government that the resulting "lack of clarity" made it impossible to defend a ban. "The presence of the state at the leadership level makes influence on its aims and activities unavoidable," it concluded.

Horst Mahler, a former member of the far-left terrorist organization Red Army Faction, defended the NPD in court. In May 2009, several state politicians published an extensive document which they claim proves the NPD's opposition to the constitution without relying on information supplied by undercover agents. This move was intended to lead up to a second attempt to have the NPD banned.

In 2011, authorities were reportedly trying to link the party, and specifically 30-year-old national organization director Patrick Wieschke, to the so-called "Zwickau terrorist cell". This raised the possibility of another effort to outlaw the party. The cell had been implicated in a string of murders and the November robbery of a savings bank in Eisenach. Authorities were also pursuing a gun case against Ralf Wohlleben, former deputy chairman of the party's branch in Thuringia, though the latter case was reportedly unlikely to translate into a national-level challenge to the party's legal standing. The likelihood of success of renewed banning attempts has been questioned, given the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has over 130 informants in the party, some in high positions, raising the question of whether the party is effectively controlled by the government.

German officials tried to outlaw the party again in December 2012, with the interior ministers of all 16 states recommending a ban. The Federal Constitutional Court is yet to vote on the recommendation. In March 2013 the Merkel government said it would not try to ban the NPD.

German officials again tried to outlaw the NPD by submitting a request to the Federal Constitutional Court in 2016.

On 17 January 2017, the second senate of the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the attempt to outlaw the party. The reasoning behind the decision was that the NPD's political significance is virtually nonexistent at both the state and federal levels and that as such, the party had no chance of posing a significant threat to the constitutional order. It was also reasoned that outlawing the party would not change the mindset and political ideology of its members and supporters, who in the event of a ban could simply form a new movement under a different name. However, the Court also openly acknowledged that NPD is unconstitutional based on its manifesto and ideology, citing "links to neo-Nazism" and that "anti-semitism was a structural element of the party ideology" in its reasoning. The Court also indirectly suggested that state grants or other financial contributions should not be given to such parties to further their unconstitutional cause. This prompted calls by the public for the proposal of a constitutional amendment which would forbid unconstitutional parties' financing to the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. The proposal was criticized by the interior policy spokesman of Die Linke, who claimed that such a constitutional amendment could stand to serve as a politically dubious way to remove a political opponent. Constitutional law professor Hans Herbert von Arnim warned that such a constitutional amendment would apply to all extra-parliamentary parties, not just the NPD.

The German legislative bodies then created the possibility of a funding freeze for parties after the second NPD ban procedure failed in 2017. In 2019, the Bundestag, Bundesrat and federal government jointly submitted a proposal to exclude the NPD from state funding. In January 2024 the Federal Constitutional Court allowed the freezing of state funding for six years, saying that the party "aimed to undermine or eliminate the country's democratic system".

The German Federal Constitutional Court, in its verdict, considered the party's demand for a referendum on the reintroduction of capital punishment as anti-constitutional and incompatible with the liberal democratic basic order.

2023 renaming to Die Heimat

The party renamed itself to Die Heimat ("The Homeland") at the party congress in Riesa in early June 2023. 77% voted in favor of the name change. Shortly after this vote, many of those that were opposed to the name change founded a new party to continue under the old name, the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).

The Party did not run in the 2025 German federal election.