The Free Democratic Party (, FDP, ) is a liberal political party in Germany. The FDP was founded in 1948 by members of former liberal political parties in Germany before World War II, namely the German Democratic Party and the German People's Party. For most of the second half of the 20th century, when West Germany was a two-party country, the FDP as third party determined the balance of power in the Bundestag. It has been a junior coalition partner to both the Christian Democratic Union (1949–1956, 1961–1966, 1982–1998, and 2009–2013) and the Social Democratic Party (1969–1982 and 2021–2024).
After an all-time high result in 2009 and four years in government under CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a flip-flop stance towards nuclear power, in the 2013 federal election the FDP came up short of the 5 percent threshold, being left without representation in the Bundestag for the first time in its history. In the 2017 federal election, the FDP regained its representation in the Bundestag, receiving 10.6% of the vote. After the 2021 federal election the FDP was part of the governing Scholz cabinet in a "traffic light coalition" with the SPD and the Greens. Disastrous state election results and leader Christian Lindner's stance against public debt led to the November 2024 German government crisis and the February 2025 federal snap election. The FDP again came up short of the 5 percent threshold in that election and is currently out of the Bundestag. Already out of most state parliaments, in 2026 the party lost representation in its stronghold of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate where it had served as a junior coalition partner. In September, it was also wiped out in the state parliaments of Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin.
Apart from a brief progressive and social liberal period in the 1970s (Freiburger Thesen), the FDP has traditionally been positioned on the centre-right of the political spectrum. Since the 1980s, the party, consistently with its ordoliberal tradition, has pushed economic liberalism and has aligned itself closely to the promotion of free markets and privatization. The FDP is a member of the Liberal International, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and Renew Europe.
History
Predecessors
The history of liberal parties in Germany dates back to 1861, when the German Progress Party (DFP) was founded, being the first political party in the modern sense in Germany. From the establishment of the National Liberal Party in 1867 until the demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, the liberal-democratic camp was divided into a national-liberal and a left-liberal line of tradition. After 1918, the national-liberal strain was represented by the German People's Party (DVP), the left-liberal one by the German Democratic Party (DDP, which merged into the German State Party in 1930). Both parties played an important role in government during the Weimar Republic era, but successively lost votes during the rise of the Nazi Party beginning in the late-1920s. After the Nazi seizure of power, both liberal parties agreed to the Enabling Act of 1933 and subsequently dissolved themselves. During the 12 years of Hitler's rule, some former liberals collaborated with the Nazis (e.g. economy minister Hjalmar Schacht), while others resisted actively against Nazism, with some Liberal leaning members and former members of the military joining up with Henning von Tresckow (e.g. the Solf Circle).
Soon after World War II, the Soviet Union pushed for the creation of licensed anti-fascist parties in its occupation zone in East Germany. In July 1945, former DDP politicians Wilhelm Külz, Eugen Schiffer, and Waldemar Koch called for the establishment of a pan-German liberal party. Their Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) was soon licensed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, under the condition that the new party joined the pro-Soviet Democratic Bloc.
In September 1945, citizens in Hamburg—including the anti-Nazi resistance circle Association Free Hamburg—established the Party of Free Democrats (PFD) as a bourgeois left-wing party and the first liberal Party in the Western occupation zones. The German Democratic Party was revived in some states of the Western occupation zones (in the Southwestern states of Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern under the name of Democratic People's Party).
Many former members of DDP and DVP however agreed to finally overcome the traditional split of German liberalism into a national-liberal and a left-liberal branch, aiming for the creation of a united liberal party. In October 1945 a liberal coalition party was founded in the state of Bremen under the name of Bremen Democratic People's Party. In January 1946, liberal state parties of the British occupation zone merged into the Free Democratic Party of the British Zone (FDP). A similar state party in Hesse, called the Liberal Democratic Party, was licensed by the U.S. military government in January 1946. In the state of Bavaria, a Free Democratic Party was founded in May 1946.
In the first post-war state elections in 1946, liberal parties performed well in Württemberg-Baden (16.8%), Bremen (18.3%), Hamburg (18.2%) and Greater Berlin (still undivided; 9.3%). The LDP was especially strong in the October 1946 state elections of the Soviet zone—the last free parliamentary election in East Germany—obtaining an average of 24.6% (highest in Saxony-Anhalt, 29.9%, and Thuringia, 28.5%), thwarting an absolute majority of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) that was favoured by the Soviet occupation power. This disappointment to the Communists led to a change of electoral laws in the Soviet zone, cutting the autonomy of non-socialist parties including the LDP and forcing it to join the SED-dominated National Front, making it a dependent bloc party.
The Democratic Party of Germany (DPD) was established in Rothenburg ob der Tauber on 17 March 1947 as a pan-German party of liberals from all four occupation zones. Its leaders were Theodor Heuss (representing the DVP of Württemberg-Baden in the American zone) and Wilhelm Külz (representing the LDP of the Soviet zone). However, the project failed in January 1948 as a result of disputes over Külz's pro-Soviet direction.
Founding of the party
The Free Democratic Party was established on 11–12 December 1948 in Heppenheim, in Hesse, as an association of all 13 liberal state parties in the three Western zones of occupation.These regionally organised liberal parties were the Bremian Democratic People's Party (BDV) in the state of Bremen, the Democratic Party of Southern and Middle Baden (DemP) in the State of South Baden, the Democratic Party (DP) in the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Democratic People's Party of Northern Württemberg-Northern Baden (DVP) in the State of Württemberg-Baden, the Democratic People's Party of Southern Württemberg-Hohenzollern (DVP) in the State of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, the united Free Democratic Party (F.D.P.) of the British zone of occupation (consisting of five state associations), the Free Democratic Party (F.D.P.) in the Free State of Bavaria, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the State of Hesse, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of West Berlin. Cf. Almut Leh and Alexander von Plato, Ein unglaublicher Frühling: erfahrene Geschichte im Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945–1948, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung (ed.), Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1997, p. 77. As such, the party included former members of the pre-1933 German People's Party (DVP) which represented the more conservative and national tradition of German liberalism and members from the social liberal German Democratic Party (DDP). The proposed name, Liberal Democratic Party, was rejected by the delegates, who voted 64 to 25 in favour of the name Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The party's first chairman was Theodor Heuss, a member of the Democratic People's Party in Württemberg-Baden; his deputy was Franz Blücher of the FDP in the British Zone. The place for the party's foundation was chosen deliberately: the "Heppenheim Assembly" was held at the Hotel Halber Mond on 10 October 1847, a meeting of moderate liberals who were preparing for what would be, within a few months, the German revolutions of 1848–1849.
1949–1969: reconstruction of Germany
In the first elections to the Bundestag on 14 August 1949, the FDP won a vote share of 11.9 percent (with 12 direct mandates, particularly in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse), and thus obtained 52 of 402 seats. In September of the same year the FDP chairman Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In his 1954 re-election, he received the best election result to date of a President with 871 of 1018 votes (85.6 percent) of the Federal Assembly. Adenauer was also elected on the proposal of the new German President with an extremely narrow majority as the first Chancellor. The FDP participated with the CDU/CSU and the national-conservative German Party (DP) in Adenauer's coalition cabinet; they had three ministers: Franz Blücher (Vice-Chancellor), Thomas Dehler (justice), and Eberhard Wildermuth (housing).
On the most important economic, social and German national issues, the FDP agreed with their coalition partners, the CDU/CSU. However, the FDP offered to middle-class voters a secular party that refused the religious schools and accused the opposition parties of clericalization. The FDP said they were known also as a consistent representative of the market economy, while the CDU was then dominated nominally from the Ahlen Programme, which allowed a Third Way between capitalism and socialism. Ludwig Erhard, the father of the social market economy, had his followers in the early years of the Federal Republic in the CDU/CSU rather than in the FDP. The FDP won Hesse's 1950 state election with 31.8 percent of the vote, the best result in its history, through appealing to East Germans displaced by the war by including them on their ticket.
Up to the 1950s, several of the FDP's regional organizations were to the right of the CDU/CSU, particularly the Hesse, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia branches where Friedrich Middelhauve tried to foster a National Rally as a third bloc next to Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. This was criticized by the social liberals around Theodor Heuss who distanced himself from the "Nazi FDP" branches. Under the influence of the party's right wing, the Free Democrats campaigned against West Germany's denazification provisions and courted even former office-holders of the Third Reich with nationalist values. At their party conference in Munich in 1951, they demanded the release of all "so-called war criminals" and welcomed the establishment of the "Association of German soldiers" of former Wehrmacht and SS members to advance the integration of the Nazi forces in democracy. These FDP members were seen as part of the far-right extremist bloc, along with the German Party in West Germany, by US intelligence officials. The 1953 Naumann Circle, named after Werner Naumann, consisted of a group of former Nazis who tried to infiltrate the party. After the British occupation authorities had arrested seven prominent members of the Naumann Circle, the FDP federal board installed a commission of inquiry, chaired by Thomas Dehler, which particularly sharply criticized the situation in the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP. In the following years, the right wing lost power, and the extreme right increasingly sought areas of activity outside the FDP. In the 1953 federal election, the FDP received 9.5 percent of the party votes, 10.8 percent of the primary vote (with 14 direct mandates, particularly in Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Württemberg, and Bavaria) and 48 of 487 seats.