Christian Democratic Union of Germany
독일 기독교민주연합
Centre-right party founded across Germany after 1945 as an interdenominational Christian party of Catholics and Protestants. It came together at federal level in 1950 and, through the governments of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel, long served as the governing party of West and then reunified Germany. In Bavaria its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), takes its place.
In depth
According to the German-language source, Christian-democratic parties sprang up almost simultaneously and independently of one another in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich and elsewhere immediately after the collapse of the Nazi dictatorship in 1945. In Berlin the founding appeal 'Deutsches Volk!' was published on 26 June, and the party was formed in the Rhineland and Westphalia in September. Most signatories of the appeals had been persecuted by the Nazis, and the first chairman, Andreas Hermes, had been sentenced to death for involvement in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler before being freed in April 1945. The party set out to reach Protestants as well as Catholics, beyond the limits of the Catholic Centre Party, and drew in former Centre members such as Adenauer as well as conservatives and liberals.
The Ahlen Programme of 1947, shaped by the party in the British zone, called in the name of 'Christian socialism' for a departure from the capitalist order, but the Düsseldorf Guidelines of 1949 endorsed the social market economy. In the first Bundestag election of 1949 the CDU/CSU won 31.0%, just ahead of the SPD (29.2%), and Adenauer was elected the first chancellor by a majority of one vote on 15 September. The federal party was formed at a conference in Königswinter in May 1950 and confirmed at the first federal party congress at Goslar in October, where Adenauer was elected chairman. Committed to Western integration, the party won an absolute majority with the CSU in the 1957 election.
The party went into opposition for the first time when the SPD and FDP formed a coalition in 1969, and it opposed Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik and the Moscow and Warsaw treaties of 1970. Helmut Kohl became chancellor in 1982 and led reunification in 1990; on 1–2 October 1990 the East German CDU, a bloc party of the GDR, merged with the western party. After Kohl, Angela Merkel was chancellor from 2005 to 2021. In the 2025 federal election the CDU/CSU again became the largest group and formed a grand coalition with the SPD.