The DKP considered itself a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Germany, 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 in 1969 by former KPD functionaries in close cooperation with East Germany's ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party, from which the DKP received both political directives and – through covert transfers – most of its funds. The foundation was preceded by talks between former KPD functionaries and Gustav Heinemann, the West Germanminister 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 liable 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. Following German reunification, the DKP entered a steady decline. The DKP received national public attention in early 2008 when Christel Wegner, elected to the state parliament of Lower Saxony on the list ofthe Left Party as the first DKP member of a state parliament, allegedly endorsed the Berlin Wall, the Stasi and other aspects of the East German state in an interview. This caused embarrassment to the nationalLeft Party leadership. Despite denying that she made the controversial statements she was expelled from the Left Party faction a few days later. The DKP ended its observer status in the Party of the European Left on 27 February 2016. In late 2018 a split in the DKP and the SDAJ occurred, with a significant portion of its cadre in among others Weimar, Jena and Frankfurt leaving the DKP to form the Kommunistische Organisation. The main reason behind the split lied with a disagreement with the suggested reformism of the DKP's anti-monopolist political strategy.
