Free Democratic Party

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Free Democratic Party

political party, Germany

Also known as: FDP, Freie Demokratische Partei

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: May 18, 2025 • Article History

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German:: Freie Demokratische Partei

Date:: 1948 - present

Areas Of Involvement:: individualism; free trade

Related People:: Theodor Heuss; Hans-Dietrich Genscher

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Free Democratic Party (FDP), centrist German political party that advocates individualism, capitalism, and social reform. Although it has captured only a small percentage of the votes in national elections, its support has been pivotal for much of the post-World War II period in making or breaking governments, by forming coalitions with or withdrawing support from larger parties.

The Free Democratic Party (FDP) was established in December 1948 at a conference attended by delegates from liberal parties in the American, British, and French zones of occupation. The following year, in West Germany’s first democratic elections, the FDP captured 11.9 percent of the vote and joined a coalition government with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). However, it left the coalition in 1957, when it won less than 8 percent of the national vote, and the CDU and its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union (CSU), secured an absolute majority in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German national legislature. In 1961, when the CDU-CSU coalition lost its overall majority, the FDP, which had won nearly 13 percent of the vote in that year’s elections, exacted the promise that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer would resign after two years as the price of its cooperation in a new coalition. The FDP’s disillusionment with the policies of the new chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, motivated its withdrawal from the coalition with the CDU-CSU in November 1966 and prompted the formation of a grand coalition between the CDU-CSU and its chief rival, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). In 1969 the FDP joined forces with the SPD to overcome the CDU-CSU plurality in the Bundestag and to elect as chancellor the SPD leader, Willy Brandt. The FDP remained in coalition with the SPD until 1982, after which the FDP again joined a coalition government with the CDU-CSU (FDP ministers resigned over opposition to the SPD’s proposed budget deficit for 1983).

From the 1970s to the early ’90s the FDP was led (either officially or informally) by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who served as Germany’s foreign minister from 1974 to 1992. Genscher’s prominent role in German reunification helped the party win 11 percent of the vote and 79 seats in the Bundestag in 1990—its highest levels since 1961. During the 1990s, however, the party’s support slipped, and, though the FDP was able to maintain its representation in the Bundestag, it failed to win 5 percent of the vote—the minimum required for representation—in several state elections in 1992–94. Throughout the 1990s the FDP reassessed its policies, emphasizing environmental issues to combat the appeal of the Green Party and putting forth a more assertive foreign policy and more conservative economic policies. The FDP remained in a governing coalition with the CDU-CSU until 1998, when the government was replaced by a coalition of the SPD and the Green Party.

Germany

Also known as: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Deutschland, Federal Republic of Germany

Written by Lawrence G. Duggan, Thomas Henry Elkins•All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Jun 11, 2025 • Article History

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Stolberg, GermanyVillage built along a single street (*Strassendorf*); Stolberg, Germany.

Germany, country of north-central Europe, traversing the continent’s main physical divisions, from the outer ranges of the Alps northward across the varied landscape of the Central German Uplands and then across the North German Plain.

One of Europe’s largest countries, Germany encompasses a wide variety of landscapes: the tall, sheer mountains of the south; the sandy, rolling plains of the north; the forested hills of the urbanized west; and the plains of the agricultural east. At the spiritual heart of the country is the magnificent east-central city of Berlin, which rose phoenixlike from the ashes of World War II and now, after decades of partition, is the capital of a reunified Germany, and the Rhine River, which flows northward from Switzerland and is celebrated in visual art, literature, folklore, and song. Along its banks and those of its principal tributaries—among them the Neckar, Main, Moselle, and Ruhr—stand hundreds of medieval castles, churches, picturesque villages, market towns, and centers of learning and culture, including Heidelberg, the site of one of Europe’s oldest universities (founded in 1386), and Mainz, historically one of Europe’s most important publishing centers. All are centerpieces of Germany’s thriving tourist economy, which brings millions of visitors to the country each year, drawn by its natural beauty, history, culture, and cuisine (including its renowned wines and beers).

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See article: flag of Germany

Audio File: Anthem of Germany (see article)

Head Of Government:: Chancellor: Friedrich Merz

Capital:: Berlin³

Population:: (2025 est.) 83,433,000

Currency Exchange Rate:: 1 USD equals 0.870 euro

Head Of State:: President: Frank-Walter Steinmeier

The name Germany has long described not a particular place but the loose, fluid polity of Germanic-speaking peoples that held sway over much of western Europe north of the Alps for millennia. Although Germany in that sense is an ancient entity, the German nation in more or less its present form came into being only in the 19th century, when Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck brought together dozens of German-speaking kingdoms, principalities, free cities, bishoprics, and duchies to form the German Empire in 1871. This so-called Second Reich quickly became Europe’s leading power and acquired colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. That overseas empire was dismantled following Germany’s defeat in World War I and the abdication of Emperor William II. Economic depression, widespread unemployment, and political strife that verged on civil war followed, leading to the collapse of the progressive Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler. After gaining power in 1933, Hitler established the Third Reich and soon thereafter embarked on a ruinous crusade to conquer Europe and exterminate Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, and others.

The Third Reich disintegrated in 1945, brought down by the Allied armies of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, and other countries. The victorious powers divided Germany into four zones of occupation and later into two countries: the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), separated for more than 40 years by a long boundary. In East Germany this boundary was, until the fall of its communist government in 1989, marked by defenses designed to prevent escape. The 185 square miles (480 square km) of the “island” of West Berlin were similarly ringed from 1961 to 1989 by the Berlin Wall running through the city and by a heavily guarded wire-mesh fence in the areas abutting the East German countryside. Although Berlin was a flashpoint between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the city declined in national and international significance until 1989–90, when a popular and peaceful uprising toppled the East German government and soon after restored a united Berlin as the capital of a reunified Germany.

Modern Berlin: Blending history with modernityOverview of Berlin.
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Since World War II, Germany has made great efforts to both commemorate the victims and redress the crimes of the Holocaust, providing strong material and political support for the state of Israel and actively prosecuting hate crimes and the propagation of neo-Nazi doctrine; the latter became an issue in the 1990s with the rise in Germany of anti-immigrant skinhead groups and the availability of Hitler’s Mein Kampf over the Internet. Clearly, modern Germany struggles to balance its national interests with those of an influx of political and economic refugees from far afield, especially North Africa, Turkey, and South Asia, an influx that has fueled ethnic tensions and swelled the ranks of nationalist political parties, particularly in eastern Germany, where unemployment was double that of the west. Tensions became especially acute in the second decade of the 21st century, when more than one million migrants entered Germany in the wake of the revolutions of the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War.

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How did Berlin become the capital of reunified Germany?Overview of the decision to make Berlin—rather than Bonn—the capital of reunified Germany.
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The constitution of the republic, adopted in 1949 by West Germany, created a federal system that gives significant government powers to its constituent Länder (states). Before unification there were 11 West German Länder (including West Berlin, which had the special status of a Land without voting rights), but, with the accession of East Germany, there are now 16 Länder in the unified republic. The largest of the states is Bavaria (Bayern), the richest is Baden-Württemberg, and the most populous is North Rhine–Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen).

Matters of national importance, such as defense and foreign affairs, are reserved to the federal government. At both the state and federal levels, parliamentary democracy prevails. The Federal Republic has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community (see European Union). During the four decades of partition, the Federal Republic concluded a number of agreements with the Soviet Union and East Germany, which it supported to some extent economically in return for various concessions with regard to humanitarian matters and access to Berlin. West Germany’s rapid economic recovery in the 1950s (Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle”) brought it into a leading position among the world’s economic powers, a position that it has maintained.

Much of Germany’s post-World War II success has been the result of the renowned industriousness and self-sacrifice of its people, about which novelist Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, remarked, “To be a German is to make the impossible possible.” He added, more critically,

For in our country everything is geared to growth. We’re never satisfied. For us enough is never enough. We always want more. If it’s on paper, we convert it into reality. Even in our dreams we’re productive.

This devotion to hard work has combined with a public demeanor—which is at once reserved and assertive—to produce a stereotype of the German people as aloof and distant. Yet Germans prize both their private friendships and their friendly relations with neighbors and visitors, place a high value on leisure and culture, and enjoy the benefits of life in a liberal democracy that has become ever more integrated with and central to a united Europe.