The DKP considered itself a reconstitution of the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which had been banned by the
Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 for its aggressively militant opposition to the West German constitution. The new party was formed on 25 September 1968. The foundation was preceded by talks between former KPD functionaries and
Gustav Heinemann, the West German minister of justice, who explained to them that while a refounding of a banned party was not legally possible, Communists were free to form an entirely new party. Even though the close links to the banned KPD made the new party vulnerable to be declared illegal, no such declaration was requested by the German government as West German authorities
were liberalizing the attitude towards the
communist bloc and
East Germany in particular. The DKP remained on the political fringe, never winning more than 0.3% of the total votes in federal elections. It had relatively greater local support in the 1970s: it achieved up to 2.2% of the vote in
Hamburg, 3.1% in
Bremen and 2.7% in the
Saarland, yet still not enough to enter any Landtags. However, the party enjoyed some success in municipal elections, two patterns of municipalities can be identified in which the DKP was able to win seats: on the one hand working-class residential communities with a long left-wing tradition such as
Bottrop in the Ruhr area or
Mörfelden-Walldorf in Hesse, and on the other university towns such as
Marburg or
Tübingen. Following
German reunification, the DKP entered a steady decline. On 2 and 3 March 2013, the 20th party congress of the DKP took place in Mörfelden-Walldorf (
Hesse). The election for the party chairmanship between the incumbent Bettina Jürgensen and her challenger
Patrik Köbele came down to a tight contest, after a years-long dispute over direction within the party. Köbele won the election and wanted to position the party as "more militant and revolutionary, re-emphasizing the class struggle, class consciousness and the vanguard role of the Communist Party". "The distance to those forces that prefer reforms within the existing social system to anti-imperialist revolutionary rhetoric without social backing as a short-term goal will increase", Köbele emphasized when he took office. The DKP ended its observer status in the
Party of the European Left on 27 February 2016. The group around the former chairpersons , and the "architect of the reform course" in the party, Leo Meyer, organized itself in the "Communist Network" and in the association "Marxist Left" (MaLi). MaLi is the official "partner movement" of the European Left Party. In the course of the internal discussion about the party's orientation in relation to the (AMS), some, mainly young members, left the party and the youth organization SDAJ because they rejected the AMS. They initially founded the group "What next?", from which the Communist Organization (KO) emerged in mid-2018 and the
Communist Party (KP) emerged in 2024. ==Media==