 She sat as a CDU member till April 1947, but with her sixtieth birthday looming on the horizon she did not then stand for election for a further term.The Christian Democratic Union CDU was in many ways a successor political party to the old "Catholic" Centre Party, but it was more broadly based.Across what remained of Germany there was a perception that the National Socialists had succeeded electorally because of political divisions between the more moderate parties and on the political left, and there was a shared determination on the part of the occupying powers to avoid a return to populism.