Why is East Frisia so red?

[Geoffrey Howe]

Why does it give such strong support to the SPD?

Original picture from Wikipedia

[LAKISYLVANIA]

I don't know. Dutch frisia however also is one of the strongest regions for the Dutch socialists & social democrats, but they made some losses their last election.

[palandio]

Calvinists. During the Post-war period Protestants that came from a Calvinist tradition* were reluctant to support the CDU with its partially Catholic DNA and many shifted their support to the SPD. Nowadays it's just that in East Frisia the SPD is the standard party whereas in the Catholic areas further south the CDU is the standard party. Traditional party strength is eroding in Germany, but it is eroding less fast in these small-town low-(internal)-migration areas. The industrial city of Emden is not so small-town-like, but still a natural stronghold for the SPD for structural reasons.

* Germany has a long history of government-ordered church unions between Lutherans and Calvinists, but communities on the ground of course still have their traditions. Other areas with Calvinist traditions are e.g. in Hesse-Kassel, Lippe and parts of the Palatinate, and look where the rural SPD strongholds are.

[palandio]

Addendum/Correction: Wikipedia says that East Frisia as a whole has 266k Lutherans and only 80k Calvinists (mostly in the West). Together they account for the highest percentage of Protestants in all of Germany. The point remains though that this is a very non-Catholic area, that the percentage of Calvinists is high by German standards and that the SPD is strongest in the Calvinist West of the area.

[ingemann]

Addendum/Correction: Wikipedia says that East Frisia as a whole has 266k Lutherans and only 80k Calvinists (mostly in the West). Together they account for the highest percentage of Protestants in all of Germany. The point remains though that this is a very non-Catholic area, that the percentage of Calvinists is high by German standards and that the SPD is strongest in the Calvinist West of the area.

Coastal North Sea Lutherans are often what other Lutherans historical called crypto-Calvinists, which are members of different Lutheran groups which have superficial similarities to fundamentalist Calvinists from the original Philippist (who the term was original coined against) to the Pietists and modern Lutheran revivalists.

[CumbrianLefty]

This isn't anything to do with the Frisian language then?

[palandio]

Addendum/Correction: Wikipedia says that East Frisia as a whole has 266k Lutherans and only 80k Calvinists (mostly in the West). Together they account for the highest percentage of Protestants in all of Germany. The point remains though that this is a very non-Catholic area, that the percentage of Calvinists is high by German standards and that the SPD is strongest in the Calvinist West of the area.

Coastal North Sea Lutherans are often what other Lutherans historical called crypto-Calvinists, which are members of different Lutheran groups which have superficial similarities to fundamentalist Calvinists from the original Philippist (who the term was original coined against) to the Pietists and modern Lutheran revivalists.

Pietists (like in Württemberg) and other Protestants influenced by the 19th century "Second Awakening" seem to be less SPD-friendly than other Lutherans, though.

[palandio]

This isn't anything to do with the Frisian language then?

Whereas West Frisian (in the Netherlands) seems to be alive, East Frisian has been extinct for centuries with the exception of up to 2,000 speakers in the community of Saterland, a Catholic CDU stronghold.

If you mean that there is a strong regional East Frisian identity and that this could have political implications, then probably to some degree yes.

[Alcibiades]

East Frisians do have quite a distinct regional and ethnic identity, I think - they fulfil a similar role in German jokes to the Irish in English jokes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a combination of the cultural peculiarities generated by these old confessional divisions* and the fact that it an industrial area and specifically is so with the sort of industries and employment structures that tend to be good news for the SPD. Quite a few previously very rural and relatively remote Protestant regions industrialised rapidly after the 1940s and changed their political tendencies - generally strong votes for the various liberal parties when they were relevant, very strong votes for nationalist and völkisch parties when they were - about as rapidly. Northern Hesse is another example: Kassel was always industrial and leftish, but the rest of the region was notoriously 'backwards' (if not to the extent of stereotypes about East Frisia, sure, but...) and right-wing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

_{*Which should not be so strange for British posters given that our - much less intense - own historic confessional divisions still drive a surprising amount of partisan identification and general attitudes to politics, even if we often forget that those are the roots.}

[Alcibiades]

It's a combination of the cultural peculiarities generated by these old confessional divisions* and the fact that it an industrial area and specifically is so with the sort of industries and employment structures that tend to be good news for the SPD. Quite a few previously very rural and relatively remote Protestant regions industrialised rapidly after the 1940s and changed their political tendencies - generally strong votes for the various liberal parties when they were relevant, very strong votes for nationalist and völkisch parties when they were - about as rapidly. Northern Hesse is another example: Kassel was always industrial and leftish, but the rest of the region was notoriously 'backwards' (if not to the extent of stereotypes about East Frisia, sure, but...) and right-wing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

_{*Which should not be so strange for British posters given that our - much less intense - own historic confessional divisions still drive a surprising amount of partisan identification and general attitudes to politics, even if we often forget that those are the roots.}

And of course the Hessen FDP was both of these things in its early days when it was very strong in the north of the state.

[H. Ross Peron]

Addendum/Correction: Wikipedia says that East Frisia as a whole has 266k Lutherans and only 80k Calvinists (mostly in the West). Together they account for the highest percentage of Protestants in all of Germany. The point remains though that this is a very non-Catholic area, that the percentage of Calvinists is high by German standards and that the SPD is strongest in the Calvinist West of the area.

Coastal North Sea Lutherans are often what other Lutherans historical called crypto-Calvinists, which are members of different Lutheran groups which have superficial similarities to fundamentalist Calvinists from the original Philippist (who the term was original coined against) to the Pietists and modern Lutheran revivalists.

Can you explain the crypto-Calvinist tendencies among these Lutherans? Also even if East Frisians don't speak Frisian, don't they speak Plattdeutsch along with many of the other inhabitants of coastal Niedersachsen?

[CumbrianLefty]

A dialect of Low Saxon is apparently spoken locally, yeah.