Berlin is the capital city of Germany, a metropolis of over six million people, ranking among the largest cities in Europe. It has a long and proud tradition of art, culture, science, architecture, and enough history to fill volumes. And for the last century, it has earned an enduring nickname - Red Berlin.
The transformation of Berlin from the relatively modest seat of Hohenzollern power to a world-class metropolis began after the unification of Germany in 1871. As the city became increasingly industrial, working-class neighbourhoods began to develop around the city centre. The new residents were forced to live in cramped tenements and subsist off starvation wages. In this environment, trade unions and the labour movement thrived, and the Berlin working-class developed a strongly socialist consciousness; the Social Democrats won some of their early Reichstag victories in Berlin. By the turn of the century, the party dominated the city in national elections. On a local level however, the three-class franchise stifled the power of the electorate, and they were mostly powerless to influence the course of their city's governance.
Berlin was granted the status of a province within Prussia in 1881, having previously only been a municipality within Brandenburg. At the time of the revolution, it already contained two million within its borders and was close to bursting, with satellite suburbs spilling into the Brandenburg countryside. With the revolution came universal suffrage and proportional representation, and the first round of municipal elections in 1919 set the tone for the next century: the Independent Social Democrats narrowly edged out the SPD for a plurality of 33%. The city limits were greatly expanded by the Greater Berlin Act passed in 1920, which doubled the city's population to four million by taking in the surrounding towns and a swath of countryside for good measure. This proved a wise decision as the city continued to grow relentlessly in the following decades, developing a nearly contiguous urban area across its territory, broken only by the many lakes and green spaces which lace their way through the outskirts of the city.
Though it cultivated a reputation for decadence and excess during the early republic, many of Berlin's residents still suffered chronically poor living and working conditions - as evidenced by the sharp rise of the Communist Party, who established the city as their centre of operations. This was especially true in the traditional working-class areas where the SPD had put down roots decades earlier; Wedding and Neukölln became known for their communist activism and the red banners flying from apartments. The party's popularity only grew as it sharpened its opposition to the republic and the Social Democrats, reflecting the Bolshevik orthodoxy which was increasingly hostile to the European socialist mainstream. In the 1929 elections, they became the second-largest party on the city council with almost 25% of the vote.
The ascendancy of the Communists pushed the local Social Democrats, who were closely tied to the moderate Prussian government of Otto Braun, closer to the parties of the centre and right. As Berlin had only a small Catholic presence, this mainly meant the DVP and DDP. Though the parties of the left held a clear majority overall, the opposition of the Communists meant that the SPD were unable to garner the support to lead the city government. They were instead forced to give their support to an increasingly awkward minority administration of the liberal parties. Nonetheless, the prerogatives of the municipal government were limited, with most power residing with the state government. That changed in 1941.
Though the Communist Party largely opposed Prussian federalisation due to the centralist orthodoxy of the Bolsheviks, the Berlin branch had pushed hard for it, knowing that they stood a real chance of taking power in the future. If Berlin acquired the status of a federal state, the Communists had the opportunity to reshape one of the continent's biggest cities in accordance with their goals - at least the little ones that didn't involve revolution. The other parties were keenly aware of this and, while the liberals and conservatives generally supported federalism on principle, it mostly remained a theoretical until the SPD officially switched their position in 1938.
It was now only a matter of time until federalisation became a reality. The clock had started ticking. Alarm bells began ringing throughout the Berlin establishment. From then until Prussia officially federalised three years later, the SPD and the bourgeois parties devoted most of their energy to devising a scheme to prevent the Communists from achieving power, ideally forever. They knew that, at the very least, they would be able to shape the new state constitution. They ultimately settled on a unique solution, inspired by the Swiss model of consensus governance: the city government would be a microcosm of the parliament, with its partisan makeup determined by the votes each party received in the general election. Meanwhile, the Mayor would be elected by absolute majority vote in parliament. This meant that, even if the Communists broke into government, they would be forced to share power - and, in all likelihood, would never be able to claim the mayoralty for themselves. In most other aspects, the constitution was in line with others across Prussia, though it also adopted the Hanseatic styling of the existing German city-states, with the city government dubbed the Senate and ministers known as Senators. The parliament, however, retained its traditional name
Stadtverordnetenversammlung (which in English is loosely but mercifully translated as the Berlin Assembly.)
The inaugural state elections finally delivered a plurality for the Communist Party, but it was too late. The new constitution went into force and they won just four spots in the eleven-member Senate. After deliberation between the other parties, Karl Trucksaess of the DVP was elected Mayor. The Communists decried it as an outrage to democracy and staged demonstrations. The SPD performed poorly in the elections, falling to second place with under a quarter of the vote, but the DNVP too had suffered losses, with the liberal parties emerging as the main winners. Still, the SPD held balance of power in the Senate and found the new arrangement more than satisfactory, able to secure desirable cabinet positions during negotiations. Years of cooperation with the right-of-centre had brought all the parties closer together, and they soon found themselves emulating the Swiss to a greater extent than originally planned. Berlin, long the centre of political chaos and violence in Germany, found itself governed by one of the country's most harmonius coalitions.
The anti-communist majority did their best to give the Communists the most worthless portfolios they could find: on one occasion, KPD co-chairman Paul Schwenk was assigned the sole duty of overseeing the maintenance of public parks. For their part, the Communists spent most of their time seething at the opportunity they had been robbed of and at the trouble that the whole debacle had caused with the national party leadership, who viewed the Berlin association as an embarrassment.
"An outrage to democracy"? Are you joking? You sound like you've been reading fucking Kautsky. You want into the Rotes Rathaus? What for, so you can order the next Blutmai? Jesus Christ, get a grip.
And so things carried on throughout the 40s and into the 50s. Despite constant reprimands from the national executive, the Berlin Communists held onto the dream of getting into government for real. But this approach was flawed - as a party who marketed themselves as opposing the system, their apparent desperation to take part in it soured their appeal. Their performance sank as radical workers switched their allegiance or, more often, stopped voting altogether. Attendance at the Communists' famed mass demonstrations dwindled. The situation was not helped by conflicts in the German communist movement which caused the effective dissolution of the national KPD in the late 50s, leaving the Berlin branch marooned.
With the Communists sinking, the 50s and 60s were dominated by simultaneous competition and cooperation between the Assembly majority. The SPD clawed back its position as the largest party in the city, leveraging its influence as the voice of the workers in the Senate. They supported moderate reforms to the city's structure, delegating some competences to the borough administrations, though making sure that Communist power remained curtailed. Like the Communists, the monarchist and völkisch movements collapsed during this period, leading the Berlin DNVP to split between a conservative mainstream and a radical minority who quickly fell into irrelevance. The new
Bürgerliche Partei (Civic Party) drew a wide swath of affluent voters, significantly damaging the DVP, whose national-liberal flavour no longer seemed so novel. By the late 60s, it appeared that the city was shaping up to become a two-horse race between the SPD and Civics, complemented by the floundering KPD and the small DDP representing the social liberal centre. But history had other plans.
The emergence of the student movement irreversibly transformed Berlin politics. As a continental hub for education, arts, and youth, the city erupted with a fervor seen in few other places in Europe. The established parties, dominated by older generations, struggled to respond. In the 1970 election, protest and student lists won 25% of votes between them, to the detriment of almost everyone. While the new deputies quickly fell into bickering and obscurity, the true ramifications of the movement were still over the horizon. As demonstrations and activism cooled, the New Left began to emerge as a new political current. This had a profound influence on two groups in particular: the Communist Party and the Alliance for Peace and Justice, later the Justice Party.
The latter came directly out of the grassroots movement. After most of the other groups crashed and burned, the more reform-oriented leaders among the New Left were joined by a handful of experienced dissidents from established forces. Their joint list debuted at a modest 6% in the 1975 election. They won no Senators, but the result was a breakthrough and they brought new perspectives to the Assembly - not just sentiment, but concrete proposals. They championed municipalism and delegation of powers to the city boroughs, which the existing parties largely opposed, and called for sustainable and ecological development. In the following years they added women's and queer rights to their list of causes. The most significant factor in their success, however, was outreach among the increasingly diverse Berlin electorate. They explicitly appealed to non-ethnic Germans and non-Christians, who by this point made up a significant minority of the population but remained unrepresented in politics. This enabled them to grow rapidly and build a community presence rivaling that of the major parties.
The Communists looked on in envy as the newcomers accomplished what they had been slowly losing the ability to do for decades. The older veterans, embittered by the party's many failures, had long resigned themselves to irrelevance. By this point the party held two Senate positions and were on the brink of falling to just one. But the younger generation who still believed in the cause were electrified by student movement and the rise of the New Left, adamant that the Communist Party could become a mass movement once more. From the beginning of the 70s they passionately argued their case before the leadership, insisting that this was their last chance to turn things around. Eventually the elders relented and granted the activists responsibility for local election campaigning in boroughs like Neukölln and Kreuzberg. They engaged directly with voters, holding events and meetings, campaigning not for proletarian revolution but better living and working conditions, social security, and wages. They called out the Social Democrats for their collaboration with the bourgeois parties and abandonment of the workers. They promptly achieved their best results since the 50s.
Their success was undeniable. The young activists began picking up prominent positions in the party. In the 1975 state election, they helped pioneer an engagement-based campaign and achieved a modest swing after years of terminal decline. Then, in a break with tradition, they took part in cabinet formation talks for the first time. This was a source of major contention both within the party and among the conservative parties, but the SPD were open to it, hoping that they could secure an ally on the left to support their proposals. The Communists were given modest portfolios, but entrusted with real responsibility for the first time. And to their credit, the new Red Senators committed themselves to constructive governance and carried out their tasks dutifully. The new arrangement was not without its issues - the Communist Senators were no longer pariahs, but they were still outcasts and firebrands. They caused no shortage of headaches for the government and were frequently decried them as impossible to work with. But the experiment was a success, and the cabinet completed its full term without crisis. The Communists counted a few small victories during that time, particularly in cooperating with the SPD to block conservative proposals and secure funding for public housing projects.
By the time of the 1979 election, things had noticeably changed in Berlin. The Communist and Justice parties surged at the expense of the major parties. Though the weakened Social Democrats remained in first place, Berlin was now a fluid multi-party system. The Assembly subsequently voted to expand the Senate to 13 members to accommodate, giving the Justice Party two members and balance of power. In the following years, the Communists pushed for left-wing reforms while the SPD settled into the role of a facilitator of centre-left compromise. The bourgeois parties defended the rich and business, while the Justice Party served as the voice of the maligned and downtrodden minorities. The slow erosion of the liberal vote by the Civic and Justice camps compelled the DDP and DVP to merge into the Berlin Democrats, who immediately began going toe to toe with the Civic Party.
The five-party system has remained largely stable ever since, sharing power with varying degrees of harmony. Enduring population growth caused the government to expand the Senate again to 15 members at the turn of the millennium. The Communist Party has continued to moderate with time and has long left behind their revolutionary Bolshevik roots. The party holds solidly left-wing positions and particularly champions public housing, welfare, and healthcare. Their popularity grew alongside election turnout during the 1990s, they have been the most popular party in most elections since 1994. Despite this, and a consistently left-wing majority in the Assembly and Senate, they remain something of a black sheep among the other parties and have only held the mayoralty on two brief occasions. Instead, the more moderate left parties typically head the government during high points of left-wing popularity. This role has been increasingly filled by the Justice Party since the late 2000s, as their popularity continues to grow and their agreeable social-liberal economic platform draws approval from the Democrats and Civic Party.
During the 2017-22 period, the Democrats led the Senate with their mayor Christoph Meyer, supported by the Civic and Justice parties. The 2022 election delivered a clear plurality for the Communists, while the Justice Party moved into second place and the Democrats, Civic Party, and SPD all declined, with the latter recording their worst ever result. Much of these losses flowed to Capital Interest, a new populist party founded by Köpenick mayor Oliver Igel. It is primarily concerned with delegating more powers to the boroughs and investing in the suburban areas of the city, particularly in the east. Its economic positions are comparable to those of the Justice Party and Democrats. During government formation, the Democrats ceded the Mayor's seat to Antje Kapek of the Justice Party. The Communists extracted favourable cabinet positions due to their first-place result but ultimately voted against Kapek for Mayor, while Capital Interest abstained.
The consensus system gives Berlin politics a unique dynamic among German states. Parties rarely put forward lead candidates, instead relying on reputation, policy accomplishments, and the profiles of their Senators to attract votes. The administrative borders of the city have remained largely static since the passage of the Greater Berlin Act. The city is divided into twenty boroughs, which also double as electoral districts, with seven located in the old city proper and the remainder sprawling out in various directions. The electoral system uses open lists, giving voters a greater degree of control over the Assembly to make up for their relative lack of influence over the Senate. The model of consensus governance has been studied extensively by scientists and observers who consider it a curiosity in a country where politics often remains polarised. While many remain dissatisfied with the lack of competition, the established parties view the risks of constitutional reform as greater than the benefits, fearing the consequences if they were to give up their perpetual voice. Other states have at times considered adopting a similar system for their cabinets, but none have yet done so.
TLDR: the Communist Party's strength in Berlin compels the SPD to band together with the conservative parties to craft a constitution specifically designed to screw the Communists out of power by dividing cabinet positions based on vote share. After a few decades of being shunned and sinking, the Communists reform into a progressive socialist party influenced by the New Left and begin working within the system to become the strongest party in the city. Meanwhile, the social-progressive Justice Party becomes a major force around the same time, competing with the liberal Democrats and conservative Civic Party, as well as the Social Democrats, who have lost much of their popularity. In the current day, the consensus government is a messy but functional system which generates an endless stream of inter-party machinations.