1972 West German federal election
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Federal elections were held in
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
on 19 November 1972 to elect the members of the 7th
Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Common ...
. In the first
snap election A snap election is an election that is called earlier than the one that has been scheduled. Generally, a snap election in a parliamentary system (the dissolution of parliament) is called to capitalize on an unusual electoral opportunity or to ...
s since the resumption of democratic elections in 1949, the
Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Fo ...
became the largest party in parliament for the first time since
1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will b ...
, winning 230 of the 496 seats. The coalition with the Free Democratic Party was resumed.


Campaign

The Social-liberal coalition of
SPD The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been t ...
and FDP had lost its majority after several Bundestag MPs (like former FDP ministers
Erich Mende Erich Mende (28 October 1916 – 6 May 1998) was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was the leader of FDP from 1960 to 1968 and the vice-chancellor of West Germany from 1963 to 1966 ...
and
Heinz Starke Heinz Starke (27 February 1911 – 31 January 2001) was a German politician. He was born in Schweidnitz, Silesia. He was Minister of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1961–62. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1953 to 1980 repr ...
or SPD partisan Herbert Hupka) had left their party and become members of the CDU/ CSU opposition to protest against Chancellor Willy Brandt's ''Neue
Ostpolitik ''Neue Ostpolitik'' (German for "new eastern policy"), or ''Ostpolitik'' for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republ ...
'', especially against the ''de facto'' recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw. On 27 April 1972 the opposition had tried to have CDU leader
Rainer Barzel Rainer Candidus Barzel (20 June 1924 – 26 August 2006) was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as the 8th President of the Bundestag from 1983 to 1984. Barzel had been the leader of his parliamentary group ...
elected new chancellor in a
motion of no confidence A motion of no confidence, also variously called a vote of no confidence, no-confidence motion, motion of confidence, or vote of confidence, is a statement or vote about whether a person in a position of responsibility like in government or m ...
, but Barzel surprisingly missed the majority in the Bundestag by two votes. Rumours that at least one member of CDU/CSU faction had been paid by the East German '' Stasi'' intelligence service were confirmed by Markus Wolf, former head of the ''
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (german: ; german: , ) was the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security (''Stasi''), the main security agency of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), from 1955 to 1990. ...
'', in 1997. Nevertheless, the following budget debates revealed that the government's majority was lost and only the upcoming organisation of the
1972 Summer Olympics The 1972 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad () and commonly known as Munich 1972 (german: München 1972), was an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from 26 August to 11 September 1972. ...
in
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
delayed the arrangement of new elections. On 22 September 1972 Chancellor Brandt deliberately lost a vote of confidence, allowing President
Gustav Heinemann Gustav Walter Heinemann (; 23 July 1899 – 7 July 1976) was a German politician who was President of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He served as mayor of Essen from 1946 to 1949, West German Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, and Mini ...
to dissolve the Bundestag the next day. In the tense campaign, the CDU/CSU attacked Brandt as being too lenient towards Eastern Europe and having the wrong ideas on the economy. SPD and FDP benefited from the enormous personal popularity of the chancellor, laureate of the 1971
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...
. He gained the support by numerous celebrities of the West German culture and media scene (e.g. Günter Grass), expressed by the slogan ''Willy wählen!'' ("Vote for Willy!").


Results

Voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...
was 91.1%, the highest ever since 1949. In 1970 the
voting age A voting age is a minimum age established by law that a person must attain before they become eligible to vote in a public election. The most common voting age is 18 years; however, voting ages as low as 16 and as high as 25 currently exist ( ...
had been lowered from 21 to 18. The SPD celebrated their best result ever, representing the largest faction in the German parliament for the first time since the 1930 Reichstag elections. It enabled the party to nominate Annemarie Renger for
President of the Bundestag The president of the Bundestag (german: Präsident des Deutschen Bundestages or ) presides over the sessions of the Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany, with functions similar to that of a speaker in other countries. In the German orde ...
; she was the first Social Democrat and also the first woman to hold this office.


Results by state


Constituency seats


List seats


Post-election

On 14 December 1972 the Bundestag MPs of the social-liberal coalition re-elected Willy Brandt chancellor. His Cabinet Brandt II returned to government the next day, again with FDP chairman
Walter Scheel Walter Scheel (; 8 July 1919 – 24 August 2016) was a German statesman. A member of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP), he first served in government as the Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development from 1961 to 1966 and l ...
as vice-chancellor and foreign minister. Defeated Rainer Barzel resigned as CDU chairman on 9 May 1973; he was succeeded by
Helmut Kohl Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longes ...
. On 7 May 1974, Brandt would resign in the course of the
Guillaume Affair The Guillaume affair () was an espionage scandal in Germany during the Cold War. The scandal revolved around the exposure of an East German spy within the West German government and had far-reaching political repercussions in Germany, the most p ...
, after one of his personal aides had been unmasked as a ''Stasi'' agent. The coalition continued under his party fellow
Helmut Schmidt Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (; 23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Before becoming Ch ...
, while Brandt remained SPD chairman until 1987.


Further reading

*


Notes


References


External links


The Federal Returning Officer

Psephos
{{German federal elections Federal elections in Germany 1972 elections in Germany 1972 in West Germany November 1972 events in Europe