Joy and disappointment lie side by side on the evening of March 18, 1990. The leader of the East CDU, Lothar de Maizière, stretches his arm almost shyly in the victory sign in East Berlin. The faces of the actors in Alliance 90, on the other hand, reflect concern. In the first free elections to the GDR People's Chamber, the group, in which young civil rights groups such as "New Forum" and "Democracy Now" have come together, only got a slim 2.9 percent of the votes.
In retrospect, Anna Kaminsky, director of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, says that the vast majority of the population voted for rapid unification of divided Germany. The then opposition member Rainer Eppelmann, today honorary chairman of the foundation, adds: "The people knew what they were doing when they clearly rejected the forces of the old regime."
March 18, 1990 is a historic day. Eppelmann summarizes that democracy has finally triumphed over the SED dictatorship. For the first time, GDR citizens really had the choice between candidates from different parties. Four months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, masses of people poured into the polling stations - certainly with the new awareness that their own opinion counted and that the result was not certain beforehand.
Around 93 percent of those entitled to vote cast their votes – a number that has never before been reached in a national democratic election in Germany. But the expectations were different: some hoped for reunification and the rapid DM, others for socialist reforms.
Then came the sensation: Contrary to many forecasts, the electoral alliance Allianz für Deutschland, which was the only one that had clearly spoken out in favor of rapid reunification, won. The longstanding GDR bloc party Ost-CDU alone achieved a strong 40.8 percent; together with the new groups Democratic Awakening (DA) and German Social Union (DSU), the alliance reached 48 percent.
After almost 40 years of dictatorial power, the loser was the SED state party, which was renamed the PDS. With its chairman Gregor Gysi as the top candidate, it ended up in third place with just 16.4 percent. That was even less than the only other free election the SED had ever faced – in Greater Berlin in 1946, when it received 19.8 percent with massive support from the Soviet occupying power
The SPD, which had been ahead in polls for a long time, came in second with 21.9 percent, well behind the Alliance. The then co-founder of the East SPD, Markus Meckel, is still disappointed today. Led by the West CDU, there was a "smear campaign against the SPD" during the election campaign, "like we could never have dreamed of," writes Meckel in his recently published memoirs "Zu wandern die Zeiten".
An attempt was made "to move us in an infamous way close to the SED," says Meckel. Just under a week after the election, it became known that East SPD chairman Ibrahim Böhme had been a Stasi informer since 1969. The leader of the "Democratic Awakening", Wolfgang Schnur, had already been exposed as an unofficial employee of the GDR secret service.
Leading West German politicians got involved in the GDR election campaign. At a rally in front of 100,000 people, Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) promised an exchange rate of 1:1 from GDR to D-Mark for small savers. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) offered to help the new government as an “uninterested advisor” – if “there are no communists in it”.
Some critics thought that West German politicians had campaigned in the GDR as if they were all-German elections. The result met with mixed reactions: Otto Schily, a Green Party politician at the time, held up a banana in front of the television cameras as a comment on the victory of the Alliance for Germany. The SPD chancellor candidate at the time, Oskar Lafontaine, complained that many GDR citizens probably meant that if they voted “Kohl, the money would flow”.
A number of members of the opposition complained that their courage had not been rewarded. It was a drama for the civil rights activists, says the CDU man de Maizière in retrospect. He was elected prime minister on April 12, 1990, formed a grand coalition with the SPD and the Liberals, and negotiated economic, monetary and social union with the federal government. Five and a half months after the only free People's Chamber election, German unity was complete.
On the evening of November 9, 1989, thousands of people stormed the Wall after Günter Schabowski announced new travel regulations. Lothar de Maizière reports on the moving events.
What: Reuters
"There was no alternative to the rapid reunification of Germany," says the 80-year-old. The GDR was not competitive and was enormously indebted. But the East German de Maizière called for equal footing in talks. In Moscow, for example, he insisted that he did not come to receive orders, emphasizes the short-term politician. "I rely on a freely elected People's Chamber," he said to Mikhail Gorbachev.
In the East SPD there had been heated arguments about participation in the government. Meckel, who after Böhme's exposure de facto led the party together with Wolfgang Thierse and Richard Schröder, ensured cooperation with Allianz in a coalition. Meckel wanted to help shape the unit. The pastor became the only democratically legitimized GDR foreign minister.
The Bundestag also discussed the fall of the Wall in a debate. The critical sides of the GDR and the post-reunification period were also dealt with.
What: WELT/ Max Hermes
Today Meckel criticizes that the impression was created that West German politicians had brought about German unity. “The fact that unity is the result of negotiations between two democratic governments has fallen behind to this day. That doesn't happen in the German culture of remembrance. I criticize that sharply,” says Meckel.
Lothar de Maizière thinks that the freely elected People's Chamber was the most industrious parliament that Germany has ever had. In just under half a year, more than a hundred often fundamental laws were passed. Among them, on August 23, 1990, the accession to the Federal Republic. With the reunification that took place on October 3rd, the freely elected People's Chamber became history.
You can also find "World History" on Facebook. We are happy about a like.
This article was first published in March 2020.
