Talk:Volkskammer

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SDP or SPD?[edit]

we have no SDP in Germany the correct name is SPD

That's wrong: the newly founded East German Socialdemocrats called themself the "SDP" until re-union and the merger between SDP and SPD. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:45, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How were members (s)elected pre 1990[edit]

The article doesnt explain itself very well. It mentions "the first free elections on 18 March 1990" but doesnt explain how members were (s)elected prior to that. Were there elections and if so how were they "unfree" ?

It also states that "all opposition parties were effectively controlled by the dominant SED" but doesnt explain how with just under a quarter of the seats the SED were in a position to dominate letalone "control" the other parties ?

Were there any independent/non-party members or attempts to start new (or breakaway) parties by people unhappy with the nine existing ones ? 80.229.222.48 (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do my best to answer based on my limited knowledge.
The control of the Volkskammer, which met infrequently and only acted as a rubber stamp, was achieved through the use of the "unified ticket" of the National Front.
Basically, the SED brass decided how the next Volkskammer would look, selected the candidates from their own party, as well as the affiliated "mass organizations" like the trade union group etc. and put the entire slate to be "yea"-ed or "nay"-ed by them populace. Of course, with only the one slate running, it won handily. Most of the "other parties" were really extensions of the SED.
The parties that corresponded to West German ones, like the CDU, were allowed to exist by the SED to give their regime a sheen of legitimacy. They were forced to participate in the National Front scheme, and were heavily spied on. They basically were hamstrung shells of what they'd really be in a free political system. oknazevad (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

it's great that you know something about the east german political system, but it should be verifiable. without good citations to back it up, this article reeks of bias.174.22.79.41 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Separate page for 1990 election?[edit]

Would anyone object if I took the info about the 1990 election, which was a legitimate contested free election, and moved it to East German election, 1990? This article should be about the body as an abstract -- it seems more in keeping with Wikipedia style to have this election on its own page. --Jfruh (talk) 19:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops, I see the article does exist: East German general election, 1990. Should be linked to more thoroughly, I think. --Jfruh (talk) 03:35, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 26 June 2016[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. BHG makes a good case for the rename that has not been countered. As a bit of an aside, I generally agree with Bermicourt's comments in the discussion – though we generally prefer the most common name in English reliable sources, it is not always as simple as that, especially in cases where sources are sparse. Jenks24 (talk) 10:03, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]


– the English-language WP:COMMONNAME of the parliament of East Germany is "Volkskammer", used as a loanword.
The article was created by Morwen in 2003[1] as "Volkskammer". It was moved to "People's Chamber" in 2009[2] by Gryffindor, apparently without discussion, with the rationale "move to English name per Wiki convention on languages".
I believe that this good-faith move was based on mistaken understanding of policy. The policy at WP:COMMONNAME is to use the name most commonly used in English-language reliable sources ... and that may be an English translation of the name, or it may be a loanword from the original language. The decision is made on a case-by-case basis, so other articles on national parliaments in non-English-speaking countries include both translated titles (e.g. French Parliament, National Assembly (France), Federal Assembly (Austria), Hellenic Parliament, National Assembly (Serbia)) and untranslated (e.g. Norway's Storting, Denmark's Folketing, Germany's Bundestag and Reichstag, Spanish Cortes Generales, Ireland's Oireachtas and Dáil Éireann).
In this case, the common usage in English-language reliable sources is "Volkskammer".
* English-language Gbooks hits: Volkskammer: ~330, but People's Chamber: ~230
* English-language Google Scholar hits: Volkskammer+Germany: ~1000, but "People's Chamber"+Germany: ~340
* English-language JSTOR hits: ((Volkskammer) AND (Germany)): 227 hits, but (("People's Chamber") AND (Germany)): 110 hits.
I would also have searched Google News, but can't figure out how to restrict it to English-language results. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:26, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS Note that the phrase "People's Chamber" may also be used in a generic sense. To exclude those usages, the searches above all include the word "Germany". I also applied this to searches for "Volkskammer", to provide a fair comparison. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Just to clarify, if renamed this requested move would also lead to the renaming of Category:People's Chamber, Category:Members of the People's Chamber and Presidium of the People's Chamber for consistency? Calistemon (talk) 15:11, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment On Google Books "Volkskammer" + "East Germany" gets 4,080 and "Peoples Chamber" + "East Germany" gets 2,800. So both are common English names but on pure frequency it's about 4:3 in favour of Volkskammer. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:34, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • P.S. but I've never been clear about the weighting Wikipedia gives to WP:COMMONNAME vs. WP:USEENGLISH. Presumably if the results were 50/50 we'd go for the English name, but what about 55/45 in favour of the native name; does a common English name ever trump a slightly more common native name?? Bermicourt (talk) 20:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply @Bermicourt: I'm not sure what search you used on Gbooks, because you didn't post any links. I described how I did the searches, and posted links ... and note that I followed through to the end of the hits to find out how many there actually are, rather than relying on the wildly inaccurate "about" figure on the first page (which appears to be what you did).
        Translating my results into percentages, Volkskammer gets: 59% of Gbooks hits, 75% of Google Scholar hits, and 67% of JSTOR hits. Since peer-reviewed journals are the gold-standard for reliable sources, those Gscholar and JSTOR results are the ones to focus one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:08, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • PS @Bermicourt: I don't see any clash between WP:COMMONNAME and WP:USEENGLISH. Take a look at WP:USEENGLISH, which says The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable source. That's the same principle as WP:COMMONNAME ... and WP:USEENGLISH says further Where there is an English word, or exonym, for the subject but a native version is more common in English-language usage, the English name should be mentioned but should not be used as the article title.. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:40, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Gryffindor (talk) 10:13, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. @BrownHairedGirl: So frequency (in reliable English sources) is the sole criterion. I guess that's good where the subject is commonplace (as this one is). Where IME it becomes problematic is where there are just a few sources and you can see that the authors don't know how typically to translate words. For example, Rhine Valley is the usual English translation of Rheintal, but for a small valley such as Footal, there may be 5 English sources that use the native name and 3 that follow normal translation practice for better-known German rivers and call it "Foo Valley". I'd tend to opt for the latter. But then translation is more of an art than a science. Re your stats; well done - they seem to confirm that we should use the native name and I wouldn't have a problem with that in this case. Bermicourt (talk) 15:20, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Proposal for table change[edit]

Would anyone object if I place this table instead of the "typical slate" table? I saw it on the Dutch wikipedia. In this one you get a better sense of how the distribution of parliamentary seats remained constant throughout almost all legislatures. And you get an overview of all elections before 1990.

Election date Participation Agree Distribution of parliamentary seats
SED CDU LDPD DBD NDPD FDGB FDJ KB DFD SDA¹ VdgB VVN
19 October 1950 98,53% 99,9% 110 67 66 33 35 49 25 24 20 6 12 19
17 October 1954 98,51% 99,4% 117 52 52 52 52 55 29 29 18 12
16 November 1958 98,90% 99,9% 127 52 52 52 52 55 29 29 18 12
20 October 1963 99,25% 99,9% 127 52 52 52 52 68 55 35 22
2 July 1967 99,82% 99,9% 127 52 52 52 52 68 55 35 22
14 November 1971 98,48% 99,5% 127 52 52 52 52 68 55 35 22
7 October 1976 98,58% 99,8% 127 52 52 52 52 68 55 35 22
14 June 1981 99,21% 99,9% 127 52 52 52 52 68 55 35 22
8 June 1986 99,74% 99,9% 227 52 52 52 52 68 37 21 32 14

¹Eastern Bureau of the Social Democratic Party of Germany — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sgomag (talk • contribs) 19:20, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

--Sgomag (talk) 19:28, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since there have been no objections I just added the table. --Sgomag (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How voting worked -- description doesn't make sense[edit]

These two paragraphs, though immediately adjacent to each other, seem to contradict one another, or describe different processes:

The members of the chamber were elected in multi-member constituencies, with four to eight seats. To be elected, a candidate needed to receive half of the valid votes cast in their constituency. If, within a constituency, an insufficient number of candidates got the majority needed to fill all the seats, a second round was held within 90 days. If the number of candidates getting this majority exceeds the number of seats in the respective constituency, the order of the candidates on the election list decided who got to sit in the Volkskammer. Candidates who lost out on a seat because of this, would become successor candidates who would fill casual vacancies which might occur during a legislative period.

Only one candidate appeared on the ballot; voters simply took the ballot paper and dropped it into the ballot box. Those who wanted to vote against the candidate had to go to a special booth, without any secrecy...

If every ballot only has one name on it, then the process of electing multiple members for the constituency, as described in the first paragraph, doesn't really make sense. Did the voter get multiple ballot papers, one for each seat in the constituency? --Jfruh (talk) 03:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I remember (no, I wasn't there, but one reads stuff) voters had a choice. The party proposed a list of approved candidates. You could turn up at the polling station (and reported results indicate that almost everyone qualified to vote did) and vote for the party's list of candidates. Or you could vote against the party's list. You voted for the party list by placing your ballot paper in one ballot box. You voted against the party list by placing your ballot paper in a second ballot box. The two ballot boxes were generally placed far apart from one another. Voting against the party list involved wandering across to the "against" ballot box while the election officials looked on. So voters had a choice - to vote or not to vote. They almost all voted. And they had the choice of whether to vote for or against the party list. They almost all chose to vote for it. Clear as mud? If anyone knows a nice clear and reliable source - preferably accessible online - for the modalities of parliamentary elections in East Germany I would be grateful to known of it. And it might be helpful to include such a source with the "Volkskammer" wiki-entry. Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:53, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the nature of the yes/no "forced choice." My question is about the fact that the article says "only one candidate appeared on the ballot." If the ballot actually contained a list of party-approved candidates, then that works with the description of how the multimember constituency works. But I wanted to make sure that was the case, since the article specifically says one candidate. --Jfruh (talk) 03:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. My understanding - at least as regards general / national elections - is that "only one candidate appeared on the ballot" is an incorrect statement. They used a (perverted form of) the list system. But maybe there was an exception at some point of which I know nothing. And (repetitive, yes) if anyone knows a nice clear and reliable source - preferably accessible online - for the modalities of parliamentary elections in East Germany I would be grateful to known of it. Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:59, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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