Out of the East : From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany 9781438434490, 2010023370

Table of contents :
OUT OF THE EAST: From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany
CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES
PREFACE
ONE: INTRODUCTION
TWO: THE PDS IN THE NEW GERMANY
THREE: UNIFICATION, DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION, AND THE PDS
FOUR: THE RISE OF THE PDS
FIVE: NORMALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
SIX: FROM PDS TO LEFT PARTY
CONCLUSION
NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

S

OUT of the EAST From

PDS to Left Party

in Unified Germany

DAVID F. PATTON

OUT OF THE EAST

OUT OF THE EAST From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany

DAVID F. PATTON

State University of New York Press

Published by

State University of New York Press, Albany © 2011 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Patton, David F., 1963– Out of the east : from PDS to Left Party in unified Germany. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-3449-0 (hbk : alk. paper) 1. Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Germany)—History. 2. Linkspartei (Germany)—History. 3. Political parties—Germany (East)—History. 4. Germany—Politics and government—1990– I. Title. II. Title: From PDS to Left Party in unified Germany. JN3971.A98P37715 20011 324.243'074—dc22

2010023370 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

List of Tables

vii

Preface

ix

ONE

Introduction

1

TWO

The PDS in the New Germany

29

THREE

Unification, Descriptive Representation, and the PDS

49

FOUR

The Rise of the PDS

69

FIVE

Normalization and Its Discontents

89

SIX

From PDS to Left Party

119

Conclusion

149

Notes

159

Selected Bibliography

199

Index

217

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1

PDS vote share in national elections in 1990

46

Table 5.1

PDS vote share (second ballot) in eastern state elections in 1990s

94

PDS vote share (second ballot) in Berlin regional elections, 1990–2001

95

Table 5.2

Table 5.3

PDS vote share (second ballot) in Bundestag elections, 1994–2002

113

PDS/Left vote share (second ballot) in eastern state elections in 2000s

122

Table 6.2

PDS membership, 1992–2006

135

Table 6.3

Left Party membership, 2007–2008

136

Table 6.4

PDS/Left vote share (second ballot) in western state elections, 2003–2009

139

Left Party.PDS/Left vote share in Bundestag elections, 2005–2009

141

Table 6.1

Table 6.5

vii

PREFACE

As a graduate student in Berlin, I had the good fortune to witness firsthand the wondrous events of 1989–1990 as East Germans peacefully toppled a repressive communist regime and opened the door to national unification. I remember well the initial optimism and good will among Germans on both sides of the former Iron Curtain; after four decades of living apart in separate, antagonistic states, they seized the chance to come together within one country. Willy Brandt, the former West German chancellor, captured the sentiment well: “What belongs together will now grow together.” A few dissident voices, such as that of the reconstituted former communist party of East Germany, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), cautioned against rapid unity in 1990, warning that the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was in effect annexing the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the time, few listened to this populist message. In 1997, I returned to the Federal Republic during a semester sabbatical and encountered a very different mood. Gone was the initial unification euphoria, replaced by a sense in the east that the region had somehow gotten the short end of the stick. The PDS had transformed itself into an outspoken regional advocate and now had the backing of around one-fifth of the eastern electorate. No longer content in opposition, the party was undertaking reforms—in the face of a good deal of internal opposition— that would make it more attractive as a coalition partner. The mainstream national parties had begun to rethink their earlier strategy of exclusion and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was preparing to govern with the party. By choosing the PDS and Left Party as the focus of this study, I hoped to not only shed light on an increasingly important German political party, but illuminate how strategies of newcomer integration—in this case, the incorporation of sixteen million East Germans, among them the fallen GDR elites—affect regional protest and interest representation. I would like to thank the following PDS and Left Party politicians for taking time to meet with me for interviews: Günter Bärwolff, André Brie, Michael Brie, Roland Claus, Gregor Gysi, Wolfram Friedersdorff, Wolfgang Gehrke, Hanno Hanisch, Uwe-Jens Heuer, Bernd Ihme, Horst Kahrs, Rolf Kutzmutz, Manfred Müller, Petra Pau, Carsten Schatz, and Roland

ix

x

PREFACE

Schröter. I would also like to thank Willi Bittner, Rudi Ellereit, Stefan Kapferer (Free Democratic Party), Sabine Kaspereit (SPD), Werner Schulz (Greens), Hans Misselwitz (SPD), Marlene Vesper and Wolfgang Richter for interviews. In addition, I appreciate the assistance of the staff at the Communication and Information Center at the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the archives of the PDS’ Bundestag delegation, and the SPD archives at the Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin. I would like to thank Connecticut College for supporting my research. The Center for European Studies at Harvard University and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (with special thanks to Thomas Cusack) kindly provided me with office space during the early stages of this project. Karin Goihl, as director of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, generously extended support to a former fellow. I would also like to thank Uta Schmidt, Hildegard Schmidt, Stefan Öhm, Nik and Sabine Puhlmann, and Alexandra Treske for their help and support. Jerry Braunthal, Rob Kahn and Rob Speel commented on draft chapters and made many useful suggestions. I would like to thank the anonymous outside readers and the SUNY-Press staff for their comments on how to improve the manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to my wife Carmela for her patience and encouragement. I dedicate this book to her.

ONE

INTRODUCTION

For four decades, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) ruled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with an iron fist and a tin ear. Well known for its inefficient economic planning, fealty to Moscow, and ruthless secret police, the SED, however, was not renowned for flexibility in the face of change. With its Stalinist structures and aging cadres, the SED stubbornly clung to a communist system in crisis, resisting even the limited reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev had begun to introduce in the Soviet Union after 1985. East German politburo member Kurt Hager famously articulated his party’s hard line in an April 1987 interview in the West German weekly Der Stern: “If your neighbor changes his wallpaper in his flat, would you feel obliged to do the same?”1 Such bullheadedness earned SED leaders a reputation for being “fossils” and “cement-heads.” They were caught off guard by the prodemocracy demonstrations that spread in fall 1989. In October, Gorbachev, visiting East Berlin for the fortieth anniversary of the GDR’s founding, cautioned SED chief Erich Honecker that “life itself punishes those who arrive too late.” Just weeks later, Honecker and other hardliners were swept from office, casualties of a peaceful revolution. The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) formed out of the wreckage of the SED in late 1989. It is notable that this party, whose leaders and members came overwhelming from the ruling party, proved as adept at adaptation as the SED was rigid. Two remarkable transformations have allowed it to survive and even thrive, against all odds, in unified Germany. The first metamorphosis occurred when the PDS successfully transformed itself into a party of regional protest and interest representation. Its success as a de facto eastern party led to its consolidation and set the stage for subsequent efforts to establish itself throughout the country. As heir to the discredited SED, it overcame a hostile environment in which its very existence was viewed by many as a provocation. Germany’s centerright Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) characterized it as left-wing extremist and demanded that federal and state 1

2

OUT OF THE EAST

offices of constitutional protection closely monitor it. Others opposed it out of concern for transitional justice, as an obstacle to an honest and forthright reckoning with the GDR past. Nonetheless, the PDS’ share of the eastern vote in Bundestag elections climbed from 11.1 percent in 1990 to 19.8 percent in 1994 to 21.6 percent in 1998. Its regional resurgence, a central focus of this study, sheds light on the relationship between representation and integration in unified Germany. In the mid-2000s, the PDS embarked on an extreme makeover. Through name changes and party merger, the PDS became the Left Party (die Linke) in 2007.2 The new party drew heavily on the PDS’ membership, leadership, and electorate, yet, unlike its predecessor, surged in western Germany. Whereas the PDS had never come close to clearing the 5 percent threshold needed to enter a western state parliament, the Left Party joined six western state parliaments between 2007 and 2009.3 In the September 2009 Bundestag election, the Left showed that it was a rising force in the west, where it captured 8.3 percent of the vote, in the east, where it finished a close second to the CDU at 28.5 percent, and nationally with nearly 12 percent. Just seven years earlier, the PDS had garnered four percent nationally. How did its successor so dramatically expand beyond the former GDR? To its critics and supporters alike, the PDS became a measure of eastern integration after unification. Initially it was widely assumed that once easterners began integrating successfully within the Federal Republic (FRG), they would lose interest in a party so closely identified with the GDR. A leading scholar reasonably observed, “the constituency for an Ossie party is likely to exclude all those in the East who are economically successful and politically cosmopolitan. That would leave the PDS as the party of a shrinking constituency fighting a rear-guard action.”4 The party regarded its own political isolation as evidence that western elites did not want pluralist integration, but rather eastern assimilation to the western model. The PDS stated in its 1993 program that: “In contrast to the established parties we do not want a westernization of the east.”5 In the words of Gregor Gysi, the party’s parliamentary leader, “Whoever wants unity must come to terms with the PDS and also with me. Unity cannot be had any cheaper. I had to get used to your chancellor and now you also have to get used to me.”6 The PDS and the Left Party are windows on the complex relationship between representation and integration. On a general level, this relationship is of great bearing to contemporary Europe. It lies at the heart of the widely felt democracy deficit in the European Union (EU); it is central to debates surrounding immigrant communities; and it informs center-periphery relations in many European countries. This book examines the nexus between German unification, eastern concerns about representation, and the electoral performance of the PDS and Left Party. Its story of halting integration, placed

INTRODUCTION

3

in a comparative perspective, underscores why perceptions of representation especially matter during times of state building. The Left is among the largest parties in eastern Germany and is increasingly influential in national politics. There is much interesting and important about this addition to a German party system that has proven remarkably durable since the late 1950s.7 How did the PDS transform itself into a successful party of eastern German protest and interest representation? How did a regionally based party become a viable national one by the late 2000s? A former communist party, carrying baggage from a discredited dictatorship, had achieved in German politics not only a rare second act as a de facto regional party, but also a third act as a left-socialist protest party with broad national appeal. Yet the second act had not fully played out when the third began, with tensions persisting between the party’s past and present incarnations.

PLAN OF THE BOOK Drawing on primary materials, secondary literature, interviews, survey results and voting data, this book focuses on the PDS and Left Party within the context of German unification and its aftermath. As case studies, they provide a gauge of evolving east–west relations in Germany since unification. They allow for a broadly comparative vantage point on integration and minority representation in the Federal Republic. This entails not only the incorporation of sixteen million easterners following unification, but the post-1945 absorption of around eight million German expellees from the east. The rise of the PDS relates to political regionalism and the recent resurgence of regional parties in advanced industrial democracies. This opening chapter begins by examining leading theoretical perspectives on the PDS and its successor party—the Left. To account for the PDS’ comeback as a mostly eastern party, some scholars pointed to its appeal among those hit hard by the post-communist economic transition; others highlighted its ties to a socialist subculture that had survived unification. Two additional perspectives had the PDS and Left filling “vacuums” in the German party system, whether as the proponent of abandoned left-wing positions or as the champion of neglected eastern interests. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, this book considers how descriptive representation, reflected in the composition of elites, affects minority interest representation, institutional legitimacy, and a sense of equal citizenship among historically disadvantaged groups in society. It argues that a lack of descriptive representation, as measured by the number of easterners in elite positions in unified Germany, played a key part in PDS and Left Party success in unified Germany.

4

OUT OF THE EAST

This opening chapter proceeds to show how the narrowing of a descriptive representation gap in West Germany advanced the integration of expellees in the 1950s, thereby hastening the decline of the refugee party, the League of Expellees and those Deprived of their Rights (BHE). Formed in 1950, the BHE had challenged the political establishment on behalf of disadvantage Germans expelled from central and southeastern Europe following World War II. This chapter first examines the BHE’s leadership, membership, and voters in the early 1950s. As will be shown, the West German political class responded to the expellee challenge in a manner that hastened the BHE’s decline. How does the rise and fall of the BHE relate to the PDS and Left Party? The lessons of the largely successful expellee integration of the 1950s support this study’s main theoretical findings about descriptive representation, while offering insights into the continuities and discontinuities of postwar German political development. They also raise the question of why the West German political class went to enormous efforts to accommodate expellee elites in the 1950s, yet all but ignored the lessons of this successful integration in the early 1990s. Chapters 2 to 4 examine how the PDS came to embrace eastern protest and interest representation as a successful political strategy. Chapter 2 introduces the PDS as it emerged out of the collapsing SED in 1989–1990 and struggled to find its way in unified Germany. Its SED roots were a mixed blessing. While they provided grassroots presence and an experienced leadership, they undermined the party’s efforts to distance itself from the discredited GDR. In 1990–1991, the party appeared as the representative of the former communist elites not as the voice of the east. Chapter 3 shows how unification ran up against descriptive representation for eastern Germans. It broaches the reasons behind the elite substitution and the PDS’ exclusion, focusing on state-building concerns, transitional justice, and party politics. With German unification, the logic of state building had overlapped imperfectly with the forging of a common national identity. Policies that hastened institutional uniformity left many easterners feeling alienated and marginalized in their new country. Chapter 4 shows how inadequate descriptive representation, an unintended consequence of unification policies, enhanced the PDS’ stature as an eastern representative, its grassroots presence, and its standing among protest voters. This was a time when easterners grew critical of the country’s political institutions and the PDS attacked the established parties for an alleged anti-eastern bias. Taken together, these three chapters examine the PDS’ resurgence against the backdrop of mounting eastern concerns over representation. Chapters 5 and 6 chronicle the transformation of the PDS into a party with greater national appeal. By the early 2000s, the PDS no longer found itself at the center of election campaigns, nor did it experience parliamentary quarantine. Although normalization offered opportunities, as chapter 5

INTRODUCTION

5

shows, it also eroded the pillars of the PDS’ past electoral success, causing problems typical for protest parties in power. This contributed to the party’s 2002 Bundestag election setback, its subsequent crisis, and its determination to navigate a new course. In chapter 6, we analyze the party’s return to national prominence as part of a reconstituted left. The chapter covers the initial cooperation between the PDS and the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) in the 2005 federal election, the resulting process of formal merger and the Left Party’s position in a transformed party system. The concluding chapter places the argument in broader comparative perspective by showing that PDS success in the 1990s had much in common with regional party resurgence in other industrialized democracies at the time. Uneven economic development, a sense of cultural distinctiveness, and the lack of descriptive representation also bolstered regionally based parties in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada in the 1990s. The sources of political regionalism were not so different from those present in the FRG.

PERSPECTIVES ON PDS SUCCESS With its electoral gains, the PDS became the object of extensive scholarly attention. Political scientists focused on how the party was profiting from economic downturn in eastern Germany, on its following among an established socialist subculture in the east, its growing success among leftwing voters disillusioned by the rightward shift of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, and its function as “the voice of the east” in a western-dominated political system. Each of these perspectives will be briefly examined in turn. Winning the Losers? As the transition to capitalism proved wrenching, communist successor parties rebounded throughout east-central Europe.8 These parties, which enjoyed an organizational head start over their rivals, often in the form of large party memberships and seasoned party officials, developed social democratic platforms that called for a gentler economic transition without forsaking the market economy, individual liberties, minority rights, or eventual EU and NATO membership. They were able to profit from shaken voter confidence in previous non-socialist governments that may have laid the foundation for future growth, yet had presided over declining living standards for many citizens. In the early 1990s, the political scientist Herbert Kitschelt put forth a model of cleavage formation in the post-communist states of eastcentral Europe. “The general proposition following from this image of postcommunist social structure is straightforward: Those who expect to become

6

OUT OF THE EAST

‘winners’ of the market system are likely to endorse libertarian/promarket policies and parties, whereas potential ‘losers’ will search for protection from the process of privatization and market dependence.”9 Many peasants, workers in inefficient state-owned industries, salaried public servants, and those on fixed incomes faced economic hardship and increased social insecurity. Transition losers lost confidence in the parties in power and became a constituency, although by no means the sole or even primary one, of the resurgent postcommunists.10 In Poland, the Union of the Democratic Left (UDL), headed by the post-communist Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SDRP), increased its vote share from nearly 12 percent in 1991 parliamentary elections to around 20 percent in 1993, enough to form a governing coalition with the Polish Peasant Party. In 1995, Alexander Kwasniewski, who had served as youth minister in a communist government in the mid-1980s, became president after edging the incumbent Lech Walesa in a close election. The Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP), as successor to the communist party, came to power after increasing its parliamentary presence from 33 seats in 1990 to 209 seats in 1994. In Lithuania, the Democratic Labor Party (LDDP), which had broken away from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990, assumed office in 1992 after its share of the vote in parliamentary elections increased to 42.6 percent. Former communist politician Algirdas Brazauskas was elected president in early 1993. Did the PDS resurgence fit this pattern of post-communist resurgence? On July 1, 1990, Chancellor Helmut Kohl addressed the nation on the day of the landmark currency union that had delivered the Deutschmark to East Germany. He reassured East Germans that “no one will be doing worse than before” and famously promised “blossoming landscapes.”11 Massive deindustrialization and structural unemployment followed, with total employment in eastern Germany contracting by more than one-third (or 3.5 million jobs) in the three years after the peaceful revolution of fall 1989.12 Although living standards quickly rose in the region,13 due in large part to financial transfers from the west, many eastern Germans nonetheless regarded themselves as worse off than before. It was at this time that the PDS rebounded. Thomas Falkner and Dietmar Huber recognized a broader pattern: “As in Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, the success of the SED heirs is also initially and primarily a reflex to the severities of the systemic change, which in Germany, given the old federal states’ economic strength, was linked less to the existential/material sphere than to the entire manner of unification that spelled downsizing, elimination, closings and exclusion for whole strata of the population of the former GDR.”14 In the 1994 Bundestag election, the PDS captured 24 percent of the vote among unemployed easterners, outpacing the 19.8 percent it had

INTRODUCTION

7

won in the east.15 It did well among easterners who had been compelled to change jobs and it performed strongly in areas hard hit by agricultural restructuring.16 The party more than doubled its vote share—from 12 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 1994—among eastern women aged twenty-five to thirty-four, a demographic group that confronted joblessness, fewer day-care opportunities and restricted abortion rights.17 The PDS made gains among easterners who had lost out or believed they had lost out in the post-communist transition. Rainer-Olaf Schultze concluded, “the PDS, simply put, is the party of unification losers.”18 Yet other data did not support this conclusion. In the 1994 federal election, the PDS performed disproportionately well among eastern civil servants and salaried employees, while underperforming among manual laborers,19 even as deindustrialization shuttered factories throughout the region. PDS voters were on the whole better educated and relatively well off.20 In 1998, Oskar Niedermayer pointed out that the PDS voter has “at the least an average income, which once again makes clear that the PDS vote is not comprised of the objective (material) unification losers, but rather the subjective (psychological) unification skeptics or objectors.”21 A long-term statistical analysis revealed limited supporting evidence for the transition losers’ hypothesis.22 Economic crisis had created fertile ground for protest and populism in the former GDR and throughout eastern and southeastern Europe. It did not, however, determine the form that this would take, whether success for ultra-nationalists (e.g., Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party in Russia), communists (e.g., the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia in the Czech Republic) or for a regional party such as the PDS. The relative disadvantage of eastern Germans vis-à-vis their western cousins in newly unified Germany added insult to injury and lifted the PDS, as a de facto regional party, in the 1990s. A Socialist Milieu in the East? In the 1990s, the PDS was widely regarded as the representative of a socialist milieu in eastern Germany. The concept of a milieu party drew upon M. Rainer Lepsius’s influential analysis of the party systems of Imperial Germany (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). To Lepsius, the concept of a “social moral milieu” designates “social units which are formed through a coincidence of several structural dimensions such as religion, regional tradition, economic situation, cultural orientation, and a configuration of intermediary groups specific to a social stratum. The milieu is a socio-cultural entity that is characterized by a specific affiliation of such dimensions with a certain segment of the population.”23 If anchored in a

8

OUT OF THE EAST

social milieu, a party can count on loyal voters and dedicated activists that derive identity through party service. The PDS was the only party in eastern Germany rooted in a tightly knit subculture. Drawn from the GDR’s upper service class (Dienstklasse), its core supporters included eastern intelligentsia, former state functionaries, officials in the SED and its affiliated youth, women’s and trade union associations. These party stalwarts had remained loyal to the GDR through thick and thin and now backed the PDS. In unified Germany, they espoused a commitment to social justice, anti-fascism, and international solidarity, defended (and often embellished) the GDR’s achievements, expressed dissatisfaction with the FRG, and considered unification to have been a de facto annexation. They held “anti-western” values that included a distrust of the market, distance from the nation, and slightly more pronounced authoritarian values than libertarian ones. They were geographically concentrated in the former administrative centers of the GDR, especially in East Berlin. As the SED successor, the PDS represented the interests and attitudes of this anti-western milieu in the former GDR.24 It seemed doubtful that subsequent generations of easterners, who came of age in the Federal Republic, would fill the ranks depleted by the passing of rock-ribbed partisans. The PDS was expected to slowly whither away. A comparative perspective seemed to bear this out. Slow decline beset communist milieu parties in southern Europe after the cold war. In the 1990s, these parties stagnated and turned inward toward a traditional communist subculture that had existed in Latin Europe for much of the twentieth century. Communist parties in France, Portugal, and Spain, and Italy gradually lost members and voters as their core milieu eroded.25 They retained symbols, ideological appeals, and platforms that still resonated among traditionalists, but generally did not attract new constituencies. This fate appeared to await the PDS after unification. However, the PDS did not experience gradual decline, but rather nearly doubled its eastern vote share in federal elections in the 1990s. Moreover, in the 1998 Bundestag election, it emerged stronger in agrarian regions and among blue-collar workers—neither part of the pro-GDR subculture. All the while, its base fell in relative importance, dropping from nearly two-thirds of all PDS voters in 1994 to just over half in 1998.26 Overall, there were signs that the PDS was becoming an eastern catchall party (Volkspartei) that appealed across class, regional, and generational lines. The party did well among young voters, many of whom had but childhood memories of the SED state. By joining forces with western trade unionists and ex-Social Democrats in the mid-2000s, the PDS—now calling itself the Left Party. PDS—made inroads among a traditional working-class subculture in western Germany long linked to the SPD. The Left Party reached far beyond the SED-forged milieu in the east in terms of its electorate.

INTRODUCTION

9

PARTY SYSTEM DYNAMICS Although economic crisis and an eastern socialist subculture created conditions favorable to PDS resurgence, they found expression within a specific institutional landscape. Cleavages, whether class-based, religious, or regional, must acquire political salience, and institutions, such as a party’s organizational strength or a church’s resources, often make the difference.27 In unified Germany, the PDS not only benefited from but also contributed to political regionalism. Without the material, personnel, and organizational assets of the old SED at its disposal, the PDS would have lacked the strong grassroots presence in the east that bolstered its reputation for eastern interest representation. The FRG’s institutional landscape would play a large role in the party’s resurgence. In a unitary system, the PDS would have had a diminished parliamentary presence, but in federal Germany it sat in six eastern state parliaments (including Berlin) in 1990, even before it had begun to surge in elections. This helped keep the party in the public eye and provided it with a valuable forum. Germany’s modified proportional representation further enhanced the party’s parliamentary standing. Although the 5 percent hurdle did present a formidable barrier to Bundestag entry, certain exceptions favored the PDS. For instance, the election law waived the 5 percent hurdle if a party won a plurality in three districts. This helped the PDS in 1994 when it finished first in four eastern Berlin districts, yet received less than 5 percent nationally. Moreover, as a one-time exception, the Federal Constitutional Court imposed separate 5 percent hurdles in the former FRG and the former GDR for the 1990 Bundestag elections. Since the PDS secured 11.1 percent of the eastern vote, it returned to the Bundestag, even though it had captured only 2.4 percent countrywide. Another east–west conflict showed that party systems matter. In Israel during the 1950s and 1960s, oriental Jews from the Middle East and northern Africa were disadvantaged in a political system led by the western (Ashkenazi) Jews of eastern Europe. Israel’s oriental Jews were disproportionately poor, culturally marginalized, and all but absent among the country’s political, economic, and military elites.28 This, however, did not find expression in the Israeli party system until Likud and the religious Shas party emerged as voices of the alienated oriental Jewry. That an oriental party did not form earlier can in part be attributed to the political hegemony of the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Labor party; the lack of organizational resources among Oriental Jews; and a unitary state that favored the majority. An Ideological Opening? As the SPD and Greens moved toward the political center in the late 1990s, the PDS and later the Left Party stood to be the main beneficiaries. The

10

OUT OF THE EAST

logic of this argument was straightforward. When a party adjusts its program and policies in the hope of appealing to new segments of the electorate, it runs the risk of alienating former supporters and creating an opening for another party to win over disillusioned voters. Giovanni Sartori observed that unidimensional spatial competition occurs more frequently in party systems with at least five parties.29 After unification, the FRG had five Bundestag parties—the CDU/CSU, SPD, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Greens, and PDS. In 1998, Gerhard Schröder and the SPD campaigned as the “new center” (Neue Mitte) and once in power with the Greens pursued a centrist agenda. By the late 1990s, scholars speculated that the PDS was attracting voters that had become disillusioned with the SPD and Greens.30 At this time, the PDS attributed its electoral success to the SPD’s alleged disregard for social justice and even claimed to represent social democratic tradition better than the SPD.31 A similar dynamic appeared in northern Europe in the 1990s when left-socialist parties gained after Social Democrats tacked toward the political center. The Left Party (V) of Sweden, the successor to the Swedish Communist Party, won support among former SAP voters by opposing the governing party’s welfare state cuts.32 To David Arter, “the social-democratization of the communist successor parties in Finland [VAS] and Sweden [V] was facilitated by the neoliberalization of the ruling Social Democrats.”33 In the Netherlands, the Socialist Party increased its vote share fourfold (from 1.3 percent in 1994 to 5.9 percent in 2002), while the Labor party governed with the center-right Liberals. In 2006, it received 16.6 percent of the vote. In Norway, the Socialist Left Party, which had attacked the Labor party for its allegedly neoliberal economic policies, increased its vote share from 6 percent in 1997 to 12.4 percent in 2001. These left-socialist parties performed well among former social democratic voters by claiming policy positions that the center-left parties had, at least temporarily, relinquished. Political developments in western Germany did not initially support the thesis that a vacuum on the left of the party system, arising as the SPD shifted rightward, would result in PDS success.34 Even after the Schröder government had pursued modest neoliberal reforms and supported NATO’s military involvement in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, the PDS lost ground in the 2002 Bundestag election. By 2004, however, left-wing opposition to the government’s welfare state reforms was lifting the PDS. The following year it joined forces with the WASG, a new party that gathered in disillusioned former Social Democrats and trade union functionaries. The PDS contested the 2005 Bundestag election as the Left Party.PDS (Linkspartei.PDS) and gained in the west among former SPD voters. After 2007, the Left Party advanced further at the cost of the SPD, a junior partner in a CDU/CSUled government until fall 2009. This lent support to the hypothesis that it

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was occupying ideological space previously held by the SPD. Another party system gap, however, sheds light on how the PDS established itself as a leading eastern party after unification. A Representation Gap for East Germans? This study builds on scholarship showing that the PDS would stage its comeback as an advocate of eastern interests.35 There is little question that the manner in which the two German states unified reinforced western predominance in the Federal Republic. West Germany’s interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), who led negotiations on the Unification Treaty in 1990, made it clear who was in charge. “My set speech went as follows: Folks, it is about the accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic, not the reverse operation. We have a good constitution that has proven itself. We will do everything for you. You are heartily welcome. We do not want to ride roughshod over your wishes and interests. But a union of two equal states is not taking place. We are not beginning afresh with equal starting positions.”36 Some scholars went so far as to assert that West Germany had colonized the former East Germany.37 To make the case, Dümke and Vilmar pointed to the extension of western institutions eastward; western acquisition of property in the east; the ascension of westerners to leadership positions in the east; and pressure on easterners to assimilate to the dominant western culture.38 Others avoided the term colonization, while focusing on the institutional legacy of unification for east–west relations. Heidrun Abromeit reasoned that the East Germans’ weak negotiating position in 1990, their much smaller population, and the wholesale transfer of western German institutions eastward had produced a “representation gap” within parliament, the political parties, the interest groups, and the institutions of federalism.39 She claimed that “for a variety of reasons—institutional, party political and those conditioned by mentality—the ‘voice of the east’ is as good as silent in the Bundestag.”40 Abromeit predicted that easterners, seeing themselves as a structural minority, might respond in three ways: with outward migration; political unrest, or developing their own political party.41 Rather than a new party, the PDS gradually won recognition as a regional advocate. In state and federal parliaments, it claimed to speak for a population that went beyond the fallen GDR elites and presented itself as an authentic champion of neglected eastern interests. In 1990, polls showed that 11 percent of eastern voters believed that the PDS was representing their interests; by 1998, the share had risen to 38 percent.42 According to a 1994 study, among those who were particularly concerned about eastern problems, 11 percent favored the PDS. This group comprised one-fifth of the party’s voters and was slightly more prevalent among its core voters.43

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By the late 1990s, many non-PDS voters in the east recognized the party as a representative of eastern German interests and a needed counterbalance to the predominantly western parties.44 However, did the German political establishment really fail eastern Germans? A Slovak, Pole, or Latvian could point to the massive economic assistance that western Germans had provided eastern Germans during and after unification. Because the Federal Republic financed eastern infrastructure and extended its welfare state, easterners were spared the poverty, hyperinflation and decrepit infrastructure that plagued other former Warsaw Pact countries in the 1990s. In this regard, the former GDR enjoyed a “privileged transformation” that was not allowed to fail.45 Unlike their former Warsaw Pact neighbors, easterners also enjoyed the advantages of a functioning, well-run administration—a “ready-made state”—that the Federal Republic extended eastward.46 In western Germany, taxpayers shouldered much of unification’s financial burden. In the early 1990s, 57 percent of westerners fully or partially agreed with the statement: “I fail to see why so much money is flowing to the new federal states and the west is being neglected.”47 Few westerners accused the political establishment of neglecting eastern interests. Rather than advance a mono-causal argument, this study argues that economic crisis, eastern cultural distinctiveness, and party system dynamics together created an opportunity for the PDS to present itself as the voice of the east. In eastern Germany, a widespread perception of inadequate interest representation, fueled in part by the dearth of easterners among the FRG’s elites, lifted the PDS and its successor the Left in a number of ways. A lack of descriptive representation, as measured by the share of easterners in elite positions, illuminates why protest often took the form of political regionalism (to the benefit of the PDS); why a reconstituted socialist milieu included younger, reform-minded SED cadres; and why eastern dissatisfaction with unified Germany’s political institutions remained so high. Together these developments, in combination with economic crisis and a feeling of eastern cultural difference, lay at the heart of the PDS’ rise.

DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION Descriptive representation occurs when representatives resemble those they are representing.48 Its proponents contend that it improves substantive representation and instills a sense of equal citizenship among a previously disadvantaged population. Although descriptive representation is commonly associated with physical attributes such as skin color, a person’s gender, or a physical disability, it also may apply to shared life experiences.49 Accordingly, deputies with an agricultural background should have a presence among those representing the farming community. Descriptive representation is deemed justified because “no amount of thought or sympathy, no matter how careful or honest, can jump the barriers of experience.”50

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Its critics point to its potentially harmful impact on effective governance. Hanna Pitkin has argued that it reduces representation largely to “re-presenting” either a picture of, or the views of, the electorate within the legislature. “It has no room for any kind of representing as acting for, or on behalf of, others; which means that in the political realm it has no room for the creative activities of a representative legislature, the forging of consensus, the formulating of policy, the activity we roughly designate by ‘governing.’ ”51 Other problems include which groups merit special treatment and whether descriptive representation strengthens particularistic identities and a belief in essentialism.52 A case for descriptive representation can nonetheless be made under certain conditions. First, the descriptive representation of historically disadvantaged groups, Jane Mansbridge has argued, may improve communication between representatives and their constituents. “The deeper the communicative chasm between a dominant and a subordinate group, the more descriptive representation is needed to bridge that chasm.”53 Second, if minority interests are unformed and unarticulated, descriptive representation increases the likelihood that as issues appear unexpectedly, the representative will “react more or less the way the voter would have done, on the basis of descriptive similarity.”54 Third, when members of marginalized groups sit in parliaments, federal cabinets, boardrooms, and the courts, they may contribute to a gradual redefinition of what it means to be part of a group that had earlier experienced “second-class citizenship.” Writes Mansbridge, “when descriptive characteristics signal major status differences connected with citizenship, then a low percentage of a given descriptive group in the representational body creates social meanings attached to those characteristics that affect all holders of the characteristics. Low percentages of Black and women representatives, for example, create the meaning that Blacks and women cannot rule, or are not suitable for rule.”55 Finally, descriptive representation can increase the political system’s legitimacy by vicariously promoting a sense of inclusion among members of the disadvantaged group. They are more apt to identify with the institutions and their policy outcomes if members of their own group were present and involved in the democratic process. To Mansbridge, “this feeling of inclusion in turn makes the polity democratically more legitimate in one’s eyes.”56 Mansbridge’s last two points have less to do with improving substantive representation than with countering the symbolic and psychological effects of insufficient descriptive representation. This study considers substantive representation as well as the psychological impact of descriptive representation. Concerns about representation commonly give rise to identity politics; criticism of the governing institutions on the grounds that they favor one group over another; minority opposition to the political establishment; and increased minority protest that takes the form of political regionalism. Together, these developments buoyed the PDS’ electoral fortunes at a time

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when many easterners were experiencing economic hardship and self-identifying as former GDR citizens. They occurred within the context of unification policies that prioritized administrative efficiency and transitional justice above descriptive representation. Forty years earlier, the West German establishment pursued a different strategy toward a newcomer population that in key ways had resembled the sixteen million joining the Federal Republic in 1990.

LESSONS FROM THE 1950S: THE BHE AND EXPELLEE INTEGRATION Integration strategies and descriptive representation mattered at the dawn of the Federal Republic. The rise and fall of the West German BHE drives home this point. The year 1990 was not the first time that a transformed German state absorbed millions of “new” Germans with cultural traditions and economic circumstances distinct from those of the majority population. In the early 1950s, expellees and refugees from the east struggled to establish themselves in West Germany. Not unlike the eastern socialist milieu after unification, an expellee subculture viewed its new country with unease. The pro-GDR milieu of 1990 and the expellee milieu of 1950 housed citizens whose preferred answer to the national question (whether a separate GDR or a greater Germany) had not carried the day. In both instances, this milieu looked to a political party that would represent its specific cultural, political and economic interests. In the early 1950s, it was BHE; in the 1990s, the PDS rose to the occasion.57 While a booming economy and the mixing of newcomer and native populations hastened the BHE’s decline, greater descriptive representation played a role as well. In this respect, the lessons of the 1950s buttress this study’s argument. Whereas insufficient descriptive representation in the 1990s would slow integration by affecting perceptions of citizenship, institutional legitimacy, and political identity, the federal government’s embrace of the expellee cause defused newcomer protest. As we shall see, the BHE faded once it lost middle-class supporters who no longer needed the party for help, its position as the advocate of “second-class” citizens, and its status as an opposition party. The PDS would face some of these problems by the early 2000s as the established parties began to reach out to the party.

THE RISE OF THE BHE Germans from the east had already paid a heavy price for Hitler’s expansionist ambitions. In the aftermath of defeat, millions either fled or were expelled from eastern and southeastern Europe. By 1950, nearly eight million expellees and refugees resided in West Germany; the number had risen to nearly ten million by 1960.58 Many of them longed for past homelands, reluctant

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to face an uncertain future in the Federal Republic. The League of Expellees and those Deprived of their Rights (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten—BHE) formed in 1950 as a de facto refugee party, attracting scant support among native western Germans. The BHE, an expression of newcomer alienation and protest, criticized the western German establishment for neglecting the expellees’ plight. This section begins with an overview of the economic disadvantage, cultural estrangement and political marginalization that many expellees faced by the late 1940s. Next, it examines the BHE’s leaders, members, program, and electorate before turning to the political establishment’s response to the party and expellee disadvantage. This reveals that an inclusive strategy contributed to expellee integration and underscores the importance of descriptive representation. After World War II, the spectre of downward social mobility loomed large for these unwilling newcomers from the east. Many had arrived in the west destitute and without means. They were heavily settled in the agrarian regions of Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, and Bavaria; although less war-torn than the cities, these areas offered limited employment opportunities. In 1949, expellees made up 16.2 percent of the population in the Federal Republic, but comprised 34.5 percent of all unemployed.59 They were disproportionately wage laborers. Whereas slightly less than 50 percent of native western Germans in 1950 were blue-collar workers, 75 percent of all expellees belonged to this category.60 Many, if not most, expellees who had been self-employed prior to the war were unable to re-establish their farms, practices, and shops in western Germany.61 Expellees occupied the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder possessing the lowest incomes, the least wealth, and the highest unemployment rate. As a miserable “fifth estate” (“ein fünfter Stand”), they contended with grinding poverty in temporary settlements and often faced hostile westerners who associated them with hyper-nationalism, National Socialism, and eastern inferiority.62 West Germans looked down on the expellees, resenting the added competition for scarce housing and jobs. When a nativist association sprang up in 1950 that pit “home grown” against refugee, Theodor Heuss, as federal president, condemned the development as disgraceful.63 In short, conditions appeared ripe for political extremism. In his opening Bundestag address of 1949, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer stressed, “One has to solve it [the refugee problem] if one does not want to let West Germany become a center of political and economic unrest for a long time to come.”64 That political extremism did not ensue, argues Rainer Schulze, “is perhaps the true West German ‘miracle’ of the post-war period.”65 As late as 1953, polls revealed disproportionate support among expellees for a one-party state (29 percent of those polled) and little confidence in the political system.66 A difficult cultural adjustment awaited many expellees in western Germany. The Imperial Germans (Reichsdeutsche) constituted the largest

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single group (approximately 4.4 million) and included East Prussians, East Brandenburgers, Pomeranians, and Silesians. Although the Imperial Germans often struggled to adjust to different cultural settings—for instance a big city dweller from Breslau landing in a Bavarian village—they had remained part of a German state. In this regard, they differed from the nearly two million Sudeten German expellees in western Germany who had joined the Reich following the 1938 Munich Pact. The Sudeten Germans had lived for generations within multi-national states, either in the Habsburg Empire prior to World War I or in Czechoslovakia between the wars. Even they, however, faced a less difficult adjustment than did ethnic Germans from scattered agrarian communities in Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. It is the ethnic German whom Lucius Clay, the American commanding officer in Germany, had in mind when he wrote in the late 1940s: Separated from Germany through many generations, the expellee even spoke in a different tongue. He no longer shared common customs and traditions nor did he think of Germany as home. He could not persuade himself that he was forever exiled; his eyes and thoughts and hopes turned homeward. The ethnic Germans of southeastern Europe had little experience with representative democracy and showed a “certain distance to western and central European forms of civil society and political-cultural individualism.”67 The expellees arrived in western Germany having survived the horrors of ethnic cleansing, an experience that further set them apart from their new neighbors. They had been violently uprooted from their homelands and compelled to flee westward under often harrowing circumstances. Around 600,000 Germans from the east are thought to have perished.68 Many others were mistreated when Soviet soldiers, local inhabitants and local authorities encountered now vulnerable German settlements in eastern Europe. The expellees’ stark underrepresentation in West German politics in the late 1940s increased their alienation. This gap was in part the result of the western allies’ decision after the war, initially backed by the main West German parties, to prohibit political associations among expellees.69 Fearful of revanchism and political extremism, the western allies did not allow refugee groups to compete in local politics until 1948–1949 or at the state and federal levels until 1949–1950. This was an integration strategy that accorded expellees political and civil rights of citizenship, while, at same time, curtailing their right of political association. They hoped that the parties they had licensed—the CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD)—would establish a following among the refugees and thereby hasten political inclusion. This expectation was only partly borne out. In the 1949 federal election, more than one million expellees

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representing nearly 5 percent of the electorate voted for independent expellee candidates, even though these candidates stood little chance of entering the Bundestag.70 Many others voted for the populist Economic Reconstruction Union (Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung—WAV), which reached out to the expellees in an effort to slow its own political decline.71 In the late 1940s, the licensed parties did not include expellees within their ranks in proportion to their share of the population, nor did they make expellee concerns a priority, in part out of fear of alienating western Germans.72 Expellee politicians generally lacked influence within the established parties at this time and were largely absent from two important institutions. None were present among the fifty-two-person Economic Council (Wirtschaftsrat), which had served as legislative assembly in U.S. and U.K. zones of occupation, whereas there was just one expellee among the seventy-two members of the Parliamentary Council who drafted the West German Basic Law.73 Disproportionately few expellees sat in the state parliaments, even in those Länder where the share of newcomers was greatest. For instance, in Bavaria more than 20 percent of the residents were expellees, yet expellees comprised but 4 of 204 state parliamentarians in 1948.74 They were underrepresented in the first Bundestag—of 421 deputies, 60 or 61 were expellees, but even they lacked an organizational basis in parliament for cooperation across party lines.75 BHE Leadership and Membership As would the PDS forty years later, the BHE heavily drew on an organized subculture. As the cold war intensified, the western allies relaxed the coalition prohibition and paid less heed to complaints from communist bloc countries regarding refugee activity and revanchism. Several types of expellee association arose. On the basis of their place of origin, expelled Pomeranians, Sudeten Germans, Silesians, and East Prussians, among many others, established clubs to preserve cultural ties to their former homeland. These became the basis for the influential Homeland Provincial Societies (Landsmannschaften) that combined at the national level within the United East German Provincial Societies in August 1949, later renamed the Federation of Homeland Provincial Societies in 1952. The Homeland Provincial Societies upheld local traditions and lobbied hard for the right of expellees to return home.76 Additionally, regional associations, focusing on the social integration of refugees in western Germany, sprang up at all levels and demanded equal rights for the expellees. Many of these united in spring 1949 within the Central Association of Expelled Germans.77 Founded that same year, the Federal Republic guaranteed expellee groups the right of free assembly. As did the eastern German socialist milieu of the 1990s, the dense associational network of expellees groups organized reluctant newcomers on the basis of past experiences in a “lost homeland” and trying circumstances

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in a new state. It faced daunting organizational barriers. Although originally settled mostly in rural, isolated areas where war damage had been minimal, expellees were later resettled or allowed to move to more economically dynamic regions. This settling and resettling further complicated the formation of expellee networks. Nonetheless, a well-organized, mobilized milieu had emerged by the early 1950s that was embedded in the cultural clubs, professional associations, economic interest groups, and social activities run by and for Germans from the east. This subculture brought forth the BHE. In July 1950, Schleswig-Holstein residents surprised the political establishment by voting in large numbers for the new party in a regional election. Waldemar Kraft and others convened in early 1951 to found the national party. The BHE had to build an organization largely from the ground up because it did not draw upon the formal or informal networks of a pre-1933 predecessor.78 It played “catch-up” because many expellees had already joined other parties, as the western allies had hoped would happen. Without the connections of native politicians, however, they would face the difficult task of rising within parties dominated by western insiders. To middle-class expellees, political engagement often was a vehicle to escape downward social mobility in their new homeland. In his landmark study of the BHE, Franz Neumann considers this motivation central to the party’s founding.79 When it did form in 1950–1951, the BHE lacked the seasoned personnel, financial assets, and party structures of its chief competitors.80 In this regard, it would differ from the PDS, which had inherited the remnants of the SED’s previously expansive organization. The BHE generally found support among expellees without significant wealth, political connections, or party experience. They were among the poorest residents of West Germany and in many cases struggled to afford the modest membership fees the BHE imposed. Nonetheless, they were dedicated to the expellee cause. Often unemployed or retired, they had spare time to devote to the BHE, as would many retired or unemployed PDS members after unification. By 1953, the BHE had a membership of more than 150,000, of which an estimated 99 percent were expellees.81 It featured the highest ratio of members to votes received and counted on its committed activists during election campaigns.82 The refugee associations and BHE cooperated, even though the interest groups maintained political independence. Virtually all BHE politicians were active in an expellee association.83 There was so much overlap in personnel at the local level that the BHE organization and the expellee association were in some cases one and the same.84 Party Program Under Waldemar Kraft, the party’s first leader, the BHE stressed the expellees’ right to a dignified existence that included jobs and adequate housing

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in the FRG. It lobbied for a comprehensive Equalization of Burdens law (Lastenausgleich) that would materially assist those most hurt by the war. The BHE also pledged to represent those “deprived of their rights” (Entrechtete) who had lost property as a result of wartime air raids, who had suffered disproportionately from the currency union of 1948, or whose public service careers had been terminated as a result of denazification. Initially, its revanchist foreign policy goals, which focused on the expellees’ right to return to their lost homelands (Heimatrecht im Osten), took a backseat to its social policy demands (Lebensrecht im Westen). Yet as the social integration of the expellees advanced, the party’s foreign policy demands became more prominent. In 1952, the party officially renamed itself the All-German Bloc/BHE (GB/BHE) in an attempt to attract western Germans committed to the 1937 borders.85 By the mid-1950s, the GB/BHE had a party program with a focus on restoring Germany’s pre-war borders.86 The BHE opened its doors to former National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) functionaries. In fact, “no other bourgeois party likely counted as many former Nazi functionaries among its ‘office holders’ as did the BHE.”87 The party contributed to dismantling political barriers that had sidelined former Nazi functionaries after World War II.88 It seemingly mattered little that BHE founder Waldemar Kraft had been an honorary SS officer; that the expellee affairs minister in Bonn, Theodor Oberländer (BHE), had participated in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923; and that the BHE openly criticized denazification. Kraft explained, “we are not ready to cover for someone who has come into conflict with the penal laws. But we do not want to have anyone punished for his political convictions. For us it matters what views one holds today. The fact that within our ranks resistance fighters stand next to former leading National Socialists is evidence that we have performed real work toward reconstruction in the sense of genuine democracy.”89 On denazification, Hesse’s BHE chairman maintained, that “it is perhaps the greatest mistake of our young democracy that one has barred millions of fellow citizens from political activity because of their political pasts, threatened their livelihood, and treated them as second class citizens.”90 Forty years later, the PDS would voice similar concerns when it demanded an end to “witch hunts” in the east; an end to the “cold war” in Germany; and a cessation of the “victor justice” that tried former East German officials for human rights abuses committed in the GDR. BHE Electorate In the early 1950s, the BHE flourished in those regions with the most expellees. In Schleswig-Holstein, where about one million refugees comprised one-third of the state’s population, the party won 23.4 percent of the vote in the July 1950 state election. Angry about inadequate housing,

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high unemployment, and inadequate public assistance, many had voted for the BHE out of frustration with the government’s handling of refugee affairs.91 In the 1950 Bavarian state election, the BHE won 12.3 percent; in the Lower Saxony state election of 1951, it garnered 14.9 percent. This fledgling party captured 78 percent of the expellee vote in Schleswig-Holstein; 58 percent in Bavaria; and 55 percent in Lower Saxony.92 Its call for social rights resonated strongly among Germans from the east. A 1953 poll revealed that 85 percent of BHE voters backed the party because it represented refugee interests.93 The “typical” BHE voter was an elderly, Protestant expellee living in a rural community. The BHE drew heavily from impoverished workers and agricultural laborers and received a greater share of votes from pensioners than did any other party.94 Whereas the PDS in the 1990s would run strongly in the former administrative centers of the GDR, the BHE had its best results in the countryside.95 Expellees at times comprised a majority in the country villages of Schleswig-Holstein, eastern Lower Saxony and eastern Bavaria where they endured acute housing shortages, unemployment rates that at times exceeded 50 percent and hostility from native inhabitants.96 Many refugees languished here, among them the elderly with strong emotional ties to their old homeland. Their high concentration in parts of the countryside proved a boon to BHE recruitment in 1950–1951. Despite efforts to attract westerners, the BHE received nearly all its votes from expellees in the early 1950s. A 1953 survey indicated that only 5 percent of the party’s supporters were native West Germans.97 Although formed at different times and under very different circumstances, the BHE and the PDS both arose as local insiders and national outsiders. Although embedded in a geographically concentrated subculture, both were outsiders in regards to their leadership, milieu and program. Each loudly and persistently accused the German political establishment of neglecting minority interests, compelling the political class to fashion a response.

INCLUDING EXPELLEE ELITES AND THE BHE To attract expellee voters, and to fend off the BHE electoral challenge, the mainstream West German parties adopted key expellee demands on social and foreign policy, recruited expellee leaders to join their ranks and placed expellees on their party lists. Electoral considerations, but also concern about expellee radicalization, led the mainstream parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP) to pursue a strategy of inclusion toward the expellees after 1950.98 By 1950, the CDU/CSU had an internal party group to house expellees deputies within its Bundestag ranks, an auxiliary party association for those from the east (Landesverband Oder/Neisse) as well as expellee expert panels.99 The SPD and FDP also developed internal party structures for expellees.100

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Expellee politicians gained added influence within the established parties, in part because of the BHE challenge to the Bundestag parties.101 At this time, Linus Kather (CDU) stood out as a forceful expellee advocate. Heading the Central Association of Expelled Germans, he refused to toe the CDU party line in the Bundestag and aggressively (and successfully) advanced expellee interests inside and outside of parliament. Historian Hans-Peter Schwarz described Kather as “one of the toughest interest representatives in Bonn’s parliamentary history.”102 In the early 1950, he led an informal coalition of Bundestag deputies from the governing parties that helped mediate the competing demands of the expellee organization, the governing parties. and the federal ministries regarding the Lastenausgleich (LAG).103 Implemented in 1952, the LAG counts among the most important pieces of social legislation in the history of the Federal Republic, providing financial assistance to destitute expellees and demonstrating the country’s commitment to addressing their acute social needs.104 Yet there was more to the expellee outreach than such practical considerations as winning votes or forming governments. In West Germany, anticommunism served as a crucial link between expellees and the established parties that allowed both natives and newcomers to regard themselves as cold war victims. West German politicians pointed to the expellee plight as evidence of postwar German suffering at the hands of communists. This lent legitimacy to expellee demands and underscored the FRG’s claim, as legal successor to the German Reich, to be the sole legitimate representative of the German nation and the champion of Germany’s 1937 borders.105 West German anti-communism shifted attention away from Third Reich crimes and toward postwar Stalinist abuses. Writes Daniel Levy, “The fate of expellees and German victims was frequently invoked to establish that Germans suffered from the war no less than those attacked by Germany. It was mostly intended to abrogate the responsibility for the war crimes committed by Germans.”106 Whereas anti-communism would facilitate partnership with the BHE and the expellees, it would contribute to the PDS’ exclusion four decades later. The GDR’s approach to its expellees further fanned anti-communism in the Federal Republic. In 1950, it officially recognized the Oder-Neisse line as its border to Poland. As part of a heavy-handed assimilation policy (Einschmelzung), the SED state prohibited expressions of expellee culture in public life—for instance banning traditional eastern music from the airwaves—while cracking down on those who identified themselves as refugees.107 In addition to “equalization of burdens,” the FRG provided former cultural and administrative elites from the east with employment opportunities. In Article 36 of the West German Basic Law, the federal government was required to hire civil servants “in due proportion from all federal states.” This was interpreted to include their place of origin as well as their place

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of current residence. According to Article 131, the federal government was obligated to secure government service positions for expellees who had been civil servants prior to their expulsion.108 Both provisions helped expellees assume a prominent place in the West German civil service. According to federal data released in 1950, expellees were heavily represented among civil servants (Beamte) in the federal expellee ministry (91 percent), the Bundesrat affairs ministry (63 percent), the federal chancellery (52 percent), the ministry for all-German affairs (46 percent), and the agricultural ministry (37 percent).109 By 1952, they comprised one-fifth of Beamte at the federal and state levels.110 They held more than one-fourth of all top administrative positions (Oberste Bundesbehörden).111 Constitutional provisions also assisted expellees in the fields of culture and education. Karl Heinz Gehrmann writes, “Among the expellees a significant share of the former cultural elite landed on its feet and found again an appropriate job, a supportive environment (einen sozialen Ort) and felt jointly responsible for shaping the West German reality.”112 In 1954, more than 22 percent of all teachers in the Federal Republic were expellees; they were in fact overrepresented, especially in the elementary and middle schools.113 Integration proceeded as well, albeit more slowly, at universities where the faculty had a large say in whether professors from the east would be offered positions.114 This discretion allowed universities to drag their feet in appointing eastern academics, even though as tenured civil servants they were entitled to resume work and, until hired, draw a temporary salary. The federal government expedited the placement process by providing federal funds to universities to support temporary positions for not yet employed eastern professors.115 Older expellee professors who did not find university positions were later extended the benefits and privileges of emeritus status.116 For those instructors without civil service status, and therefore not protected by Article 131, the federal government and other agencies offered scholarships and financial support to help them find their way in West German academia.117 Together, such measures contributed to the integration of displaced cultural elites from the east. The West German government’s commitment to former eastern civil servants hastened the integration of potentially disruptive newcomers who would otherwise have been confronted with downward social mobility and redundancy in West Germany. This affirmative action for expellee elites stood in stark contrast to how former GDR elites would be treated after unification. In 1990, it was decided that civil service status would not be automatically extended to easterners who had occupied equivalent positions in the GDR. Although many teachers would hold onto their jobs, eastern faculty, especially in the heavily politicized social sciences, struggled to remain in academia in unified Germany.

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By 1950, both the state parliaments and the Bundestag had begun funding the preservation of eastern German cultural heritage. They accepted the leading role of the expellee associations in protecting this cultural legacy, while ensuring continuing federal and state assistance even as the expellees successfully integrated.118 The “culture paragraph” of the Federal Expellee Law of 1953 allowed the Bundestag to intensify and formalize its commitment to preserving eastern heritage: “The federal government and the states have, in accordance with their constitutional mandate, the responsibility to maintain among the expellees, refugees and the entire German nation an awareness of the cultural heritage of the expulsion territories (Vertreibungsgebiete) as well as the responsibility to secure, supplement and evaluate archives and libraries.”119 In the 1950s, federal and state governments worked closely with expellee organizations in shaping West Germany’s school curriculum to include the geography and culture of former German homelands, in funding scholarly research on the expellee experience, in broadcasting radio programs about the expellees, and in financing picture films about the German Heimat in the east.120 Countless projects and programs were initiated at the federal, state, and local levels in support of the expellees.121 This public sponsorship provided expellees with official recognition of their earlier lives and offered them a sense of shared purpose in their new homeland. To a far greater extent than would be true of former GDR citizens, the expellees in the 1950s received public recognition of honorable lives lived under difficult circumstances. This advanced the expellees’ integration, while at the same time reducing the need for a separate party. Although West German politicians had not welcomed an expellee party, they nonetheless readily cooperated with the BHE once it had formed. The Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats formed coalitions with it to ensure themselves majorities in parliament since the BHE often tipped the scales between the center-right and the center-left.122 The established parties also accepted the BHE on the basis of shared values. They, too, blamed communism for the postwar partition and did not fault the expellees for the hyper-nationalism of the interwar border regions that had contributed mightily to the German catastrophe. They and the BHE propagated the goal of a unified German nation within the borders of 1937, rejected the use of force to attain this goal, and distanced themselves from National Socialist ideology. The bourgeois parties on the center-right (CDU/CSU, FDP, and the German Party [DP]) could form coalitions with the BHE on the basis of its preference for private ownership of the economy; the Social Democrats could ally with the BHE in support of economic redistribution and social policy. In short, the established parties, whether on the center-left or on the center-right, did business with the expellee party. The BHE formed a coalition with the CDU, FDP, and DP after its strong 1950 showing in

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Schleswig-Holstein.123 In Bavaria, it demonstrated versatility by allying with the center-right CSU and the center-left SPD in the wake of the 1950 state election. The next year, it teamed with the SPD and the Center party in Lower Saxony. After the BHE had received 5.9 percent of the vote in the 1953 Bundestag election, Konrad Adenauer, ever the pragmatist, brought it into a center-right governing coalition with the CDU/CSU, FDP, and DP. In the 1950s, the BHE participated in fourteen different regional governments (usually center-right ones), entered one national government (1953–1955) and placed forty-five ministers. As it entered into coalition talks, the BHE demanded that it lead the expellee affairs ministry or an equivalent office. Although accused of “political blackmail,” the BHE usually had its way; it ran an expellee affairs ministry fifteen times and held the post of state secretary for expellee affairs on five occasions. Additionally, it headed an agricultural ministry four times, an economics ministry, and a finance ministry.124 By including the BHE, the established parties increased the descriptive representation of expellees and hastened their integration. The SPD, CDU/CSU, and FDP treated the BHE as a legitimate expellee voice. Together they drafted and implemented important social legislation to alleviate hardship among West Germany’s most destitute citizens. Within a few years, the organized expellee subculture had been transformed. Whereas this milieu had been feared, outlawed, and repressed under the western allies’ coalition prohibition, by the early 1950s it had assumed a place in the public life and national identity of the Federal Republic. The expellees were encouraged to hold two mutually supportive identities: that of an eastern German (e.g., Sudeten German, East Prussian, Schwabian from Hungary, Silesian, Transylvanian German) and that of a citizen of the Federal Republic. In contrast to the 1990s, Ostalgie (nostalgia for the east) and Ostidentität (eastern identity) were accepted and even celebrated in the 1950s. As we shall see, the established parties would not treat the PDS like the expellee party of 1950. They would not form a coalition with it for eight years; nor would they cooperate with it on legislation; nor would they recognize it as a legitimate representative of eastern interests. In short, whereas the BHE became part of the national project of the 1950s (a stable western democracy committed to national unity), the PDS would not be a welcome part of the national project of its time. In the early 1950s, the Federal Republic had sought to engrain a perspective on the expellee experience, as presented by the expellees themselves, within the West German historical consciousness and national identity. Whereas concerns about social justice led Bonn to reach out to the expellees, as victims of the ethnic cleansing of the mid-1940s, considerations of transitional justice in the early 1990s would lead Bonn to exclude the pro-GDR milieu and its political representative, both widely associated with SED crimes.

INTRODUCTION

25

INCLUSION AND THE BHE DEMISE The BHE soon declined and it did so rapidly. In the 1953 federal election, it entered the Bundestag with 5.9 percent of the national vote and 34 percent of the expellee vote. Four years later, the party won 4.6 percent nationally as its share of the expellee vote fell to 26 percent. In state elections in Schleswig-Holstein, an early BHE stronghold, the party won 6.9 percent in 1958 and 19 percent of the expellee vote. The party also lost significance in Bavaria and Lower Saxony.125 By the late 1950s, many of its leaders had left the party for greener pastures, often in the CDU; most of its voters had moved on as well. The economic boom of the 1950s hastened the BHE’s decline. As expellees left rural areas where they had been settled and secured jobs and adequate housing, they increasingly turned their backs on the BHE. The party remained the party of the oldest and poorest expellees, that of a shrinking, backward-looking constituency. The inclusion of the cultural and administrative expellee elites into the West German mainstream had countered a ghetto mentality. By 1950, the West German bureaucracy was working closely with the Central Association of Expelled Germans, “as a kind of auxilary or supplemental administration,” to address the social needs of expellees.126 The Central Association of Expelled Germans reported that its membership had risen from 1.5 million in 1953 to 1.8 million in 1955, whereas membership in the Homeland Provincial Societies increased from around 1.33 million in 1950 to an estimated 1.52 million in 1961.127 The share of expellees participating in conventions rose from 11.2 percent in 1952 to 12.3 percent in 1962.128 A further measure of a vibrant social milieu, expellee newspaper circulation remained at a constant high between 1953–1954 and 1957–1958.129 Throughout the 1950s, expellee organizations successfully articulated the Ostalgie (i.e., nostalgia for a past way of life in the east) of their time, yet increasingly without the BHE. In eastern Germany after unification, by contrast, the reconstitution of a socialist milieu would go hand in hand with PDS resurgence and nostalgia for the GDR (Ostalgie) correlated with support for the SED successor.130 Although the expellee groups cooperated with the BHE in the 1950s, they maintained political neutrality to a greater extent than would pro-GDR interest groups following unification. None of the teachers, journalists, artists, or bureaucrats among the expellees had to turn inward for recognition, protection, and patronage, in contrast to former GDR elites in unified Germany. Although the expellee organizations and the BHE provided both cultural recognition and support to this stratum, they increasingly did so in conjunction with state and federal agencies required by law to employ expellee civil servants and to promote expellee studies. This strengthened expellee ties to the state. A survey taken in Lower Saxony in 1950–1951 showed that the civil servants were the most content among the expellees.

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Whereas merely 24 percent of the blue-collar workers, and 30 percent overall, expressed satisfaction, 82 percent of the civil servants interviewed were satisfied with their situation in West Germany.131 The BHE, not surprisingly, performed poorly among civil servants and self-employed professionals. Its backers were considerably less well informed about politics than those expellees who supported the other parties.132 This distinguished it from the PDS, which would do well among salaried public employees and highly educated voters in the new Länder in the 1990s. The BHE’s participation in governing coalitions put its unity to the test. In 1950, BHE leaders could all agree that the licensed parties had not adequately addressed the pressing social and economic problems of the expellees. Once in office as cabinet ministers, they had to make difficult decisions that pit those who favored continued participation in government against those who preferred that the party join the opposition.133 In particular, a wrenching debate over Adenauer’s foreign policy of western integration (Westbindung) exposed deep rifts within the party. The federal ministers Kraft and Oberländer backed the chancellor staunchly, whereas others feared that deeper western ties would entrench the postwar partition of Germany and the separation of the expellees from their former homelands. The party split in 1955 when Kraft and Oberländer (known as the K.O. group) left the BHE after most of its members in parliament had rejected Adenauer’s policy toward the Saar, a German region that had been separated by France following World War II. As the BHE entered into government at the state and national level, it became part of the West German establishment of the 1950s. It employed expellees within the public sector and aggressively directed government moneys toward its constituents, becoming itself an engine of integration. According to Franz Neumann, “The process of integrating the expellees, which leveled the difference between old citizens and new citizens, was greatly advanced by the BHE-functionaries in district administrations and in the ministries.”134 The BHE used its influence to shape implementation of the Equalization of Burdens Act of 1952; Theodor Oberländer (BHE), as federal expellee minister, played an important role in expanding the terms of the law.135 Because it single-mindedly funneled jobs to expellees in the expellee ministries it headed, while lacking a clear ideological platform, the BHE has been described as a patronage party par excellence.136 In so doing, it lessened the plight of refugees and thereby contributed to its own redundancy. In a sense, it helped put itself out of business.137 In summary, when the West German establishment reached out to expellee elites, it diminished the BHE’s long-term prospects. With the economic upturn of the 1950s, and the inclusion of expellee representatives, the protest that had bolstered the BHE declined as the native-newcomer cleavage receded into the background. The BHE failed to consolidate its

INTRODUCTION

27

position within the expellee milieu; it could not attract younger, educated professionals; and it lost its appeal as a protest party as well as its raison d’être as the advocate of an underrepresented minority. The narrowing descriptive representation gap, and with it greater cultural and political recognition, hastened the refugee party’s demise. In contrast, the lack of descriptive representation after German unification would allow the PDS to reposition itself successfully as the “authentic” voice of the east. This is the story to which we now turn!

TWO

THE PDS IN THE NEW GERMANY

In 1946, the KPD and the SPD combined to form the SED in the Soviet occupation zone. Backed by the Kremlin, it dominated East Germany for forty years. To do so, it survived a worker revolt in 1953; established the notorious Ministry for State Security (MfS, or Stasi); and built and policed the Berlin Wall. By the late 1980s, the communist regime was in crisis. When Hungary opened its borders to Austria in 1989, East Germans began pouring through this hole in the Iron Curtain en route to the Federal Republic. Others overwhelmed West German embassies in nearby communist countries. All the while, East Germans staged peaceful demonstrations against SED misrule and oppression. On October 18, 1989, Egon Krenz replaced Erich Honecker as the country’s leader and promised change, yet Krenz, a discredited member of the old governing clique, could neither stem the flight of East Germans nor the popular uprising within the country. This chapter begins with the PDS’ founding in late 1989 and then examines its leaders, members, program, and electorate. With its SED roots, the PDS was at once a national outsider and a local insider. Although it appeared fated for political obscurity in unified Germany, the party nonetheless would initiate internal reforms that made its comeback possible. This chapter introduces a party that served as the representative of fallen GDR elites. Its transformation into a credible eastern advocate would come later. In late 1989, disgruntled SED members belatedly pressed their party to introduce far-reaching reforms.1 Hans Modrow, who as SED party secretary in Dresden had initiated talks with the democratic opposition in October, was named prime minister on November 13. The GDR’s plight worsened further with the exodus of East Germans, a deteriorating economic situation, and ongoing protests, marked by louder calls for unification and reprisals against the SED and its secret police. The SED relinquished its constitutional mandate to rule on December 1. On December 12, the SED

29

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politburo and party central committee resigned amidst mounting pressure inside and outside the party. In their place, an ad hoc working committee (Arbeitsausschuss) formed to prepare an extraordinary SED party congress on December 8–9 and December 16–17. The party was in disarray. The West German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported, “The Socialist Unity Party of Germany is presently the least united party on German soil. It has no program; it does not even know what it might be called; its new party leadership has admittedly no idea what socialism is supposed to be; the old enormous party apparatus blocks a new beginning; the gulf between workers and intellectuals has deepened.”2 At the emergency congress, the very survival of the SED was at issue.3 In an undecorated sports hall in East Berlin, a far cry from the ostentatious meeting places of past congresses, delegates called for the SED’s dissolution, to be replaced by a new party that would be less burdened by the SED’s crimes, corruption and mismanagement. Gregor Gysi, a member of the ad hoc working committee, argued against this approach and claimed that, if followed, the party congress would be turning its back on those activists who had recently given so much to revitalize the SED: “After all they want to save our party not any old party.”4 He also pointed out that dissolution would jeopardize the party’s material assets as well as the jobs of its many employees.5 Instead, Gysi and the other new party leaders demanded a decisive break with Stalinism and called for a modern socialist party that could stabilize and democratize the country. The extraordinary party congress of December shored up the crumbling SED by electing a new and credible leadership. Gregor Gysi assumed the post of SED chair, while Wolfgang Berghofer, the reform-minded Dresden mayor, and Hans Modrow became deputy chairs. The congress also approved new bylaws as part of its ongoing efforts to transform itself into a normal democratic party. The party began to return amassed wealth to the state,6 radically reduced its bloated party apparatus; and expelled from its ranks the discredited vanguard, including the long-time ruler Erich Honecker and his short-lived successor Egon Krenz. The SED shuttered its party schools and academies, abolished its armed militias, disbanded its workplace organizations, and renamed itself “SED-PDS” in December and then just “PDS” by early February 1990. These changes helped the SED reformers turn back repeated calls for the dissolution of the party and instead embark on its democratic renewal. The PDS nonetheless faced stiff headwinds. East Germans blamed the SED, and by extension its legal successor, for the GDR’s economic ruin, human rights abuses, and for the financial and social privileges bestowed on the country’s leaders. In 1990, they preferred things western, whether products, western-backed parties in the Volkskammer elections of March 1990, or the western political and economic system. A financial scandal in

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fall 1990 made matters worse for the PDS. Party officials, unbeknownst to its chair Gregor Gysi, had illegally transferred 107 million marks in party funds into two accounts of a Soviet front company called “Putnik.” Once it became known that the PDS had attempted to sequester SED assets, the party lost additional members, many of them younger ones, and sustained a further blow to its credibility.7 It dropped one of its campaign slogans: “We keep our word.”8

LEADERS Former SED members, often in their thirties and forties, spearheaded efforts to reform the PDS in the early 1990s. They frequently had belonged to the second and third tier of the party nomenklatura and had distinctly “eastern” biographies. This often entailed leadership in the party‘s youth association (Free German Youth [FDJ]), SED membership at an early age, study in the USSR, a degree in the Marxism-Leninism-influenced social sciences, employment as a party official or academic, foreign travel privileges, and in some cases past activity as a secret police informant. Although these credentials had once promised success, they were hardly helpful in unified Germany. For many talented, ambitious easterners, who were either too young to retire, or unwilling to drop out of public life, the PDS offered a chance at a political career in the Federal Republic, while providing employment to those whose jobs had been eliminated during unification. Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky, André Brie and his brother Michael, Gabriele (Gabi) Zimmer, Helmut Holter, and Claus Roland were among the less-compromised, reform-minded cadres who took control of the PDS in the early 1990s. Hans Modrow had observed in fall 1989 that the SED needed to turn to articulate, younger cadres if it were to cope with the changing circumstances. To Modrow, “In some areas we will have to come together with young people who until now have worked in the second and third ranks and among whom there are clever minds that wait for one to call them into action.” He continued: “Who then knew Gregor Gysi well? Who had really taken him seriously and consulted with him? However, today these are the people with whom one can talk.”9 And could Gregor Gysi talk! He was just forty-one years old when he became SED chair in December 1989. Soon he was a celebrity throughout the country, in large part due to his intelligence, quick wit, and skilled oratory. The diminutive Gysi shined in political talk shows, a mainstay of German evening television. As early as February 1990, the PDS was capitalizing on his popularity, printing stickers in English: “Don’t worry—Take Gysi.” Gregor Gysi came from a family with distinguished communist credentials. According to Rita Kuczynski in a July 28, 2002 article in die tageszeitung: “The Gysi family belonged to a red aristocracy: a child of the

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anti-fascist nomenklatura. A son of heroes who grew up with the realization that he was something special and would himself also have to become a hero afresh. With Gysi, this generation advanced to the very top of the party.” His parents were communists and part Jewish.10 His father, Klaus Gysi, had served under Walter Ulbricht as culture minister and under Erich Honecker as the GDR ambassador to Italy and then as state secretary for church affairs. Gregor Gysi’s uncle Gottfried Lessing had been a co-founder of the Rhodesian Communist Party and later the GDR’s ambassador to Uganda where he was killed during civil unrest in 1979. (His ex-wife Doris Lessing—Gregor Gysi’s aunt—received the Nobel Prize in Literature.) Gregor Gysi studied law at the Humboldt University in Berlin, joined the SED, and at the age of twenty-four became the youngest licensed lawyer in the country. Gysi represented prominent regime critics, some of whom later accused him of having assisted the East German secret police (Stasi). Critics alleged that he had volunteered for the Stasi under the cover names “Gregor,” “Sputnik,” and “Notar.” He dismissed these accusations and fought them in the courts. In 2008, new charges of Stasi involvement surfaced against Gysi who once more professed his innocence.11 Gregor Gysi led the party at key junctures. He shaped the crucial SED congress of mid-December 1989 that embarked upon the party’s democratic transformation. As PDS chairman (1989–1993), he helped his party to a respectable showing in the March 1990 elections in the GDR while providing leadership at a difficult time. In the 1990s, he chaired the party’s Bundestag caucus, celebrated by the PDS as “Gysi’s colorful corps (Gysis bunte Truppen). The PDS heavily relied on his oratory skills and public relations talent and accordingly granted Gysi ample opportunities to represent the party in parliament.12 More than any other, Gregor Gysi was the public face of the PDS. As such, he topped the party list in the 2001 Berlin city election. After the party’s strong showing, Gysi became Berlin’s economics minister, a post he abandoned in summer 2002 to the detriment of his reputation. In June 2005, he announced that despite recent health problems, he would lead the PDS in the coming election campaign and contest a seat in the eastern Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick. He led efforts to recast the PDS as the Left Party.PDS, setting the stage for its cooperation and eventual merger with the WASG. He co-chaired the Bundestag parliamentary caucus after the 2005 federal election. André Brie was another PDS reformer who helped spark his party’s revival. Whereas Gysi was trained as a lawyer, Brie came from the academy. He was representative of the rising generation of PDS politicians, many of whom like Brie, had taught in the social sciences—heavily influenced by Marxism-Leninism—at East German universities. Born in 1950, André Brie had lived as a child in China and North Korea where his father, Horst Brie, worked as a GDR diplomat. Horst Brie had earlier been a co-founder

THE PDS IN THE NEW GERMANY

33

and official of East Germany’s FDJ.13 André, who joined the SED in 1969, studied foreign policy in Potsdam and earned a doctorate in 1979. He taught international relations for fourteen years (1976–1990) and travelled to Zurich to participate in disarmament talks in the mid-1980s. By the late 1980s, André, his younger bother Michael, and the political economist Dieter Klein at the Humboldt University were exploring models of reforming the GDR. An admirer of Gorbachev, Brie criticized the GDR’s decision in 1988 to ban the Soviet youth magazine Sputnik and Soviet movies because of their increasingly liberal content.14 In 1990, he became the chief elections strategist for the PDS and advised the party to position itself in the March 1990 election campaign as an opponent of the GDR’s “annexation” by the FRG and as an advocate of eastern interests.15 After unification, André Brie became known as an innovative thinker and a determined reformer who frequently crossed swords with dogmatic elements in his party. He served as deputy chair from 1990 to 1992 and in the federal executive until 1999. In 1991, Brie became chair of the Berlin PDS, but resigned a year later after revelations came to light that he had cooperated with the East German secret police for almost twenty years. Nonetheless, he remained an influential proponent of a pragmatic orientation that kept open the option of coalitions with the SPD. He headed the party’s program commission (Grundsatzkommission) from 1991 to 1997. In 1999, he entered the European Parliament and served until 2009. His younger brother Michael, who was elected to the SED-PDS executive committee at the December 1989 extraordinary party congress, lost his job at the Humboldt University after volunteering information about his previous cooperation with the Stasi.16 Michael Brie joined the PDS-affiliated Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and together with André Brie and Dieter Klein, was instrumental in drafting the more moderate 2003 party program that replaced the 1993 program. Lothar Bisky, another key figure in the party’s revival, had fled to western Germany as a child with his family from the part of Pomerania that would be ceded to Poland after World War II. Bisky took the unusual step of leaving the Federal Republic for the GDR in 1959. There he attended university, joined the SED and became a professor of cultural theory and rector at the College for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Like Gregor Gysi, Bisky was part of the ad hoc SED working committee of late 1989 that prepared the December party congress. In 1990, he became PDS caucus leader in the Brandenburg state parliament. There he chaired an investigatory committee from 1992 to 1994 that examined the past relationship between Brandenburg’s minister president Manfred Stolpe (SPD) and the Stasi. Bisky supported the beleaguered Stolpe and used the extensive media coverage of the inquiry to advance a view of individual accountability in the GDR that transcended a black-and-white portrayal of “victims” and “perpetrators.”17

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In 1993, Bisky succeeded his friend Gregor Gysi as federal party chair, earning a reputation as an “integration grandpa” (Integrationsopa) who kept at bay rival (and at times warring) factions of the party. He again became federal chair in 2003 and in 2005 joined the Bundestag as a Left Party.PDS deputy. His party nominated him to serve as a Bundestag vice president, but Bisky withdrew his candidacy after failing to receive the needed votes in parliament a record four times. From 2007 to 2010, he was co-chair of the Left Party. In 2009, Bisky was elected to the European Parliament where he became president of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left caucus. Like Gysi, Bisky confronted and denied charges that he had worked as a Stasi informant.18 Given the PDS’ strength at the state level, and its relative weakness nationally, regional politicians played an influential role from the outset. Gabi Zimmer emerged as one of several prominent regional party leaders in the 1990s. She hailed from Suhl (actually the nearby village of Hinternah) in southwestern Thuringia not far from the West German border. Zimmer projected a straightshooter, down-to-earth image that contrasted with the more urbane style of PDS politicians from Berlin.19 Born in 1955, Zimmer had studied Russian and French at university and later edited a newspaper in a state-owned industrial plant in Suhl. She joined the SED in 1981 and from 1986 to 1989 held a leadership post in the factory. In February 1990, Zimmer became PDS chair in the district of Suhl; from 1990 to 1998, she chaired the Thuringia PDS. In the 1990s, she served as a PDS deputy in the state parliament and headed the party’s caucus in 1999–2000. After joining the federal executive in 1995, she succeeded Lothar Bisky as federal party chair in 2000. Her tenure as party leader was not successful, and in 2003 she did not seek re-election. She was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 and again in 2009. Roland Claus and Helmut Holter also emerged as important PDS reformers in the early 1990s. Born in 1954, Claus studied engineering economics (Ingenieurökonom) and later received a degree in the social sciences (i.e., Marxism-Leninism) at an SED party school. He worked from 1978 to 1989 as a full-time official within the FDJ and, soon after the wall fell, was SED chief in the Halle district. He joined the SED-PDS’ executive committee in December 1989 and chaired the PDS’ state branch in Saxony-Anhalt. As party leader in Saxony-Anhalt, he shaped the “Magdeburg model” in 1994, whereby the PDS supported a minority SPD-Greens government. This helped the PDS begin to overcome its previous isolation. From 2000 to 2002, Claus led the PDS parliamentary caucus in the Bundestag. In 2005, he re-entered the assembly and was the Left Party.PDS coordinator for the east. In 2006, a Bundestag committee resolved that it had been established that Claus had served as a Stasi informant. The CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP

THE PDS IN THE NEW GERMANY

35

parliamentary groups supported the resolution in committee, while the Left and Green caucuses had voted against it.20 Born in 1953, Helmut Holter joined the SED in 1973 and studied engineering and social science in the Soviet Union. Like Claus, Holter had the makings of a promising political career in communist East Germany. The former SED party secretary did not leave politics as the GDR crumbled, but rather extended his career under radically different circumstances as PDS chair in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. In 1998, his pragmatic course led to the first SPD-PDS coalition at the state-level in Germany. Holter, whose relations to the party rank and file were often strained, became the labor minister in Schwerin, a post he held until 2006. He then served as vice-chair of the Left caucus in the state Landtag. The PDS’ leaders were national outsiders and local insiders. Their close ties to the GDR placed them outside of the political mainstream in unified Germany. They had SED pasts, often as lower- or mid-level party cadres, and were committed to a party that had been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of most Germans. With a few exceptions, the high-ranking SED nomenklatura left active politics in 1989–1990.21 This is not to say that the PDS’ politicians were political neophytes. Nine of the party’s thirteen eastern German Bundestag deputies had had a lengthy, uninterrupted membership in the SED.22 In the early 1990s, almost all (thirty of thirty-one) of its deputies in the eastern state parliaments had come from the SED, with the average length of membership being 17.6 years.23 The PDS deputies in Bonn were a highly educated lot; in the early 1990s, ten of the party’s thirteen Bundestag deputies from the GDR had doctorate titles.24 Likewise, the party’s leaders in the local assemblies of eastern Germany had more formal education than did their SPD and CDU counterparts, with more than half with university degrees, according to a later study.25 Moreover, they were more likely to have pursued social science degrees that—given the pronounced Marxist-Leninist content of these fields—furthered their outsider status in the Federal Republic.

MEMBERSHIP By the late 1980s, the SED had more than 2.3 million members, equal to about one-fifth of the GDR adult population. The SED had maintained a quota system to ensure a large working-class presence among its members. In 1989, blue-collar workers formed the largest single group (40 percent), followed by intelligentsia (28 percent) and salaried employees (24 percent).26 The SED also housed the full-time party functionaries (circa 10 percent of the membership), the economic and administrative functionaries (circa 10.5 percent) and members of the military (circa 11 percent). Although comprising

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less than one-third of the party’s entire membership, the last three influential groups comprised more than 90 percent of party office-holders.27 In fall 1989, both the SED’s size and composition changed dramatically. Its membership fell from 2.3 million in 1989 to 400,000 in June 1990 to 241,000 in June 1991.28 The party lost nearly five-sixths of its members in a year, and around nine-tenths in two years. Many left the SED in late 1989 and early 1990 because they were angry or disillusioned with its mismanagement and corruption. Others who had joined the ruling party for pragmatic reasons, such as career advancement, had little reason to remain as PDS membership was now more of a professional liability than asset. In late 1989, blue-collar workers quit the SED in disproportionately large numbers. Salaried employees followed in large numbers in 1990 as the GDR’s administrative structures were dismantled.29 For every one hundred SED members in 1989 who had been a skilled worker (Facharbeiter), five remained in the PDS. Yet for every one hundred members in 1989 with an advanced degree (Hochschulabschluss), twenty-four stayed in the PDS.30 By 1991, the PDS’ internal composition no longer resembled that of the SED. Despite what its critics would claim, the PDS was not a smaller version of the old SED. In 1989, 17 percent of the SED’s members were retired; by June 1990, the share had risen to 42 percent. The percentage of members over 50 rose from 44 percent in 1989 to 61 percent in 1991. By the mid-1990s, 70 percent of the PDS members were older than fifty-five.31 It was the GDR’s “generation of upward social mobility” (Aufsteigergeneration) that remained most loyal to the PDS. As the generation that had come of age during the 1950s, they had benefited from the career advancement opportunities of the early GDR, when young men of working-class background quickly rose within the communist system. Writes Lutz Niethammer, “Despite much criticism of the specifics, it [i.e., this generation] remains attached to a system that offered them experiences of accomplishment, responsibility and also power that their fathers had been denied.”32 This “long generation” filled many leading positions in the GDR for an extended period of time. By limiting the opportunities for advancement among the better qualified younger generation, it contributed to the fall 1989 revolution.33 Many in this generation maintained a strong emotional bond to the PDS. In the early 1990s, PDS members were confronting joblessness, a loss of social status, and compulsory early retirement. By spring 1991, 40 percent of the PDS members in the labor force had changed occupations since 1989, half of which were involuntary changes; 25 percent perceived the change as a demotion. At this time, PDS members experienced higher rates of unemployment, of part-time work, and of compulsory early retirement than did eastern society as a whole.34 In 1991, the Institute for the Social Data Analysis (ISDA) asked PDS members why they were in the party. The largest single group (45 percent)

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37

indicated that the PDS offered them a “home” with a sense of belonging and community. Gregor Gysi had tapped into this sentiment in December 1989 when he rejected calls to dissolve the SED: “what right do we have to rob ourselves all of a political home (Heimat)?”35 The PDS offered a refuge for those who had not yet come to terms with the GDR’s demise.36 Reinhard Höppner (SPD), the minister president of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, had this group in mind when he observed: “the PDS is not an ideology, but rather an identity.”37 These members participated in order to validate their past life experiences in the GDR. Gregor Gysi noted, “at the same time they frequently defend willingly or unwillingly a history that does not deserve defending to this extent. Their programmatic starting point is not only Marxism, but also Marxism-Leninism (inclusive of the highly questionable elements) because this too is necessary for the validation of their life histories (Biographien).”38 The 1991 survey revealed other motivations as well. The second largest member group (17 percent) identified themselves as having the strength of their political convictions and not being opportunists who switched sides when the going got tough. A third group (14.4 percent) pointed to the party’s interest representation; this included its representation of the working class and of eastern interests. A fourth group (13.8 percent) pointed to the party’s emancipatory socialist program, while a fifth group cited its Marxist ideology. In short, the PDS was a pluralistic party. Its members spanned generations (from those who became communists during the tumultuous Weimar Republic to those who joined in the early 1990s); across regions (from easterners raised in a totalitarian society to westerners socialized in the “new left” social movements of the 1970s); and across ideological boundaries (from hardliners in the party’s Communist Platform, to the anarchists of anti-fascist youth groups, to social democrats). That said, the party’s membership was overwhelmingly eastern with around 97 percent having been in the SED.39 Like its leaders, the party’s members were national outsiders. Whereas former East German satellite parties such as the CDU were quickly absorbed by their West German sister parties, SED members often had nowhere to turn but toward the PDS. Lothar de Maizière, the first and last democratically elected prime minister of the GDR, observed that the CDU had been tougher on former SED members than on former Nazis.40 The PDS, in contrast, remained open to and supportive of the SED nomenklatura, thereby reinforcing its reputation as a bastion of old cadres. Western Germans often equated the party with hardline communism, while some state offices of constitutional protection investigated the party as a possible threat to German democracy. Significantly, the eastern SPD did not welcome former SED members. On January 20, 1990, Wolfgang Berghofer, the deputy chair of the SED-

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PDS in 1989–1990 and a reform-minded mayor of Dresden, together with thirty-nine other Dresden party functionaries and members dramatically quit the SED-PDS. They called on their former party to disband and expressed support for social democratic principles.41 Berghofer’s departure shook the SED-PDS as other reformers left the party as well.42 At this time, eastern Social Democrats made a key decision that had far-reaching consequences for the two parties in the east. They discouraged entry to Berghofer and other former SED members; Berghofer and his kind were not welcome. The SPD was understandably concerned that they might damage its credibility and identity. Nonetheless, it missed a chance to integrate reform-minded SED members within its ranks. On January 21, the eastern SPD’s executive committee passed a resolution that the party’s local branches (Ortsverbände), many of whom contained past victims of the SED, would decide on membership and could turn down applicants without giving a reason. The rejected candidate could later appeal to the district organization. Membership would remain provisional for a year and then would become final if there were no objections; any member of the local branch could file an objection. All prospective members had to be forthcoming about their political pasts. Former SED-PDS members were barred from running for party office in the SPD for a full legislative period. Those who had just recently quit the SED were asked not to apply for SPD membership in the months to follow. In newly formed party branches, the share of former SED members could not exceed 30 percent.43 This resolution sent a loud and clear message to those PDS members who may have considered joining the SPD. In eastern Germany, the number of SED turned SPD members remained low six years after unification. In 1996, an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the approximately thirty thousand eastern SPD members came from the once 2.3 million strong SED.44 Although the SPD now accepted social democratic-minded former SED members, it remained aloof to former highranking functionaries (district party secretaries and upward) as well as Stasi employees.45 By the mid-1990s, the SPD in eastern Berlin counted only 300 to 350 former SED members among its 2,700 members.46 In Saxony, one local SPD branch indicated that it did not accept former SED functionaries as members, while another branch declared that it had not accepted a single former SED member.47 The CDU and the Greens, in contrast, quietly accepted former SED members although few applied.48 It was the PDS that housed many former SED cadres. Although this hurt the party’s reputation and hindered its efforts to distance itself from the GDR’s crimes, it also bestowed significant organizational assets upon the PDS. Its corps of experienced, dedicated and well-connected former SED members guaranteed the party a strong grassroots presence. Even as its eastern membership dipped below 100,000, the PDS still far outnumbered the SPD in terms of eastern members.

THE PDS IN THE NEW GERMANY

39

PROGRAM AND POLICY PREFERENCES When the SED held its extraordinary party congress in December 1989, German unification seemed far off. Yet within the year, the GDR had disappeared and the PDS was fighting for its very survival in unified Germany. Election platforms and policy positions quickly became obsolete given the dizzying tempo of change. As the external environment changed, so did the party. Nonetheless, the PDS showed a consistency of purpose in its program; it espoused anti-capitalism and represented an eastern socialist milieu that had supported and served the GDR. In the early 1990s, both features put the PDS outside of the political mainstream. Approved on December 17, 1989, the SED-PDS’ new bylaws (Statut) rejected the GDR’s “administrative-bureaucratic socialism,” asserting that the party’s roots “lie in the German and international workers’ movement as well as socialist, anti-fascist, pacifist and international leftist traditions, especially of Lenin. Marxism is the party’s theoretical foundation.”49 At a time when calls for unification grew louder, the SED-PDS called for a sovereign East Germany.50 The party’s bylaws, updated in February 1990, officially broke with the SED’s strict party discipline, its ban on internal factions, and its rigid hierarchy. Instead, the PDS ensured the rights of individual members, gave considerable autonomy to the local chapters, granted the party congress the right to elect party leaders, and permitted internal caucuses.51 The Communist Platform (Kommunistische Plattform; KPF) opposed a further “social-democratization” of the PDS and wanted to make sure that communism, including Leninism, shaped the party’s policies and program. On occasion, its leaders made controversial statements about the GDR’s Stalinist past that led some to call into question the PDS’ democratic credentials. The KPF established its own internal structures, organized conferences, and published a newsletter. In the early 1990s, it reported 25,000 members, making it the largest of the internal PDS caucuses.52 In addition to the KPF, other caucuses that arose in early 1990 included the short-lived social democratic caucus, Platform “3rd Way” and the Platform Democratic Socialism. They were joined by intra-party interest groups (Interessengemeinschaften) and consortiums (Arbeitsgemeinschaften—AGs) that included sections for women, youth, Christians, gays and lesbians, senior citizens and those concerned with such topics as disarmament, educational policy, cultural policy, and economic policy. Despite this plethora of associations within the PDS, as of January 1991 only 5 to 10 percent of the party’s members were active in them.53 By early 1990, the allure of German unification had become irresistible in eastern Germany. The PDS now sought to balance the public’s wish for national unity and its members’ opposition. Held under the slogan “progressive, productive and pro-GDR,” the PDS congress in February 1990 adopted a provisional party program and an election platform for the March 18

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Volkskammer elections. The PDS called for a gradual, step-by-step national unification within the context of European disarmament and integration that would preserve “societal values and achievements of the GDR,” such as socialized industry, the right to work, state-provided child care, and antifascism.54 The PDS demanded that the GDR enter into unification negotiations as an independent sovereign actor, warning that the existing laws and practices of the Federal Republic, unless revised, would not protect eastern interests in unified Germany.55 The February 1990 program no longer included Lenin within its philosophical canon, nor did it lay claim to a Marxist worldview. Instead, it called itself a “socialist party on German soil.” “Individualism” stood atop a catalogue of party values that included solidarity, justice, meaningful work, freedom, democracy, human rights, preservation of the environment, and peace. The new program acknowledged capitalism’s efficiency, but faulted it for failing to ensure peace, environmental protection, and social justice. In contrast, “socialism as an expression of age-old human ideals—social justice, solidarity, freedom for the oppressed, help for the weak—is immortal, even if its opponents declare it dead one hundred times.”56 Patrick Moreau has argued that the ideas of Gramsci greatly influenced the PDS’ strategy, providing a theoretical perspective that might attract western Germans critical of the statism of earlier socialist models, yet supportive of the PDS’ goal of establishing itself at the grassroots, extra-parliamentary level in both halves of Germany.57 As in the subsequent program (approved January 1993),58 the 1990 program drew on earlier socialist concepts that resonated among the party’s traditionalists who remained ideologically and emotionally attached to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Luxemburg, all prominent within the official canon of the GDR. Nonetheless, as Franz Oswald argues, the PDS had broken with the ideology of the SED in at least three important ways. It did not advance a single ideological “truth” or rigid, official dogma but rather celebrated pluralism. Second, the PDS explicitly recognized the accomplishments of the modern capitalism era, representative democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and civil society. Third, unlike communists of old, the PDS did not call for a violent overthrow of capitalism but rather grassroots activism to effect societal change.59 In its 1993 program, the PDS refrained from a general condemnation of the GDR and instead defended the alleged values (e.g., solidarity, antifascism) and social achievements (e.g., full employment, universal child care) of the second German state. It situated the dark side of the GDR within the context of the cold war. The GDR was characterized as a failed yet legitimate attempt at creating a better Germany after Hitler. According to the 1993 program,

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millions of people after 1945 supported the construction of a better social order and a peace-loving Germany to overcome the fascist legacy. No apology is necessary. The anti-fascist, democratic changes in East Germany and later the attempt to fashion a socialist society stood in defensible opposition to the preservation in West Germany of capitalism that had been weakened and discredited as a result of the crimes of German fascism, which were incomparable in human history. Valuable results and experiences in the struggle for social justice, in the setting of production goals on behalf of the working population’s interests, and in a solidarity-based, peaceful community on German soil are part of the experiment of socialism in the GDR. Nonetheless there were mistakes, wrong tracks (Irrwege), sins of omission, and even crimes.60 The program cited East German accomplishments, while conceding, “an attempt to achieve socialism that is not fought for, developed and sustained by a large majority of the people and that does not ensure the emancipation of the individual person sooner or later must fail.”61 This sanitized version of the GDR satisfied party traditionalists, yet rankled the German political establishment (and many ordinary Germans) who regarded the PDS as revisionist and unrepentant. In its 1993 program, the party presented itself as a modern all-German left-socialist party rather than as an eastern regional party. On behalf of the former upper service class of the GDR, it demanded an end to a “cold war” in Germany and condemned “the legal and social marginalization of hundreds of thousands of people.”62 These were not just empty words. From the outset, the PDS stood up for GDR elites. Its very decision to reconstitute rather than to dissolve the SED was made partly on behalf of those working for the party. In December 1989, Gysi spoke out strongly against a legal dissolution of the SED, warning that “with a decision to dissolve, all the co-workers in the party apparatus will be unemployed and the livelihood of the co-workers in the firms and organizations owned by the party would be endangered.”63 By opposing the FRG’s “annexation,” the “pro-GDR” PDS minded the material interests of those in the state bureaucracy, the military, the universities, and cultural agencies who would become redundant in unified Germany. After unification, the party criticized the prosecution of former East German officials who had committed human rights violations in the service of the GDR. The PDS also strove to restore full pensions to former GDR elites (and their dependents), who, because of past proximity to the SED regime, were to receive less money. This affected many amongst its eastern base. In early summer 1991, the governing Christian Democrats and Free Democrats, with support from Social Democrats, passed the Pensions

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Transition Act (Rentenüberleitungsgesetz—RÜG) in conjunction with the Claims and Entitlement Transfer Act (Anspruchs- und Anwartschafts-Überführungsgesetz—AAÜG). These measures, which drew on general guidelines laid out in the treaty on currency union and in the Unification Treaty, capped pensions for those eastern Germans whom, in the words of the Bundestag deputy Dr. Gisela Babel (FDP), “we reproach for having been particularly close to the state and of particular service to the system.”64 The new legislation also limited the pensions of the holders of supplementary or special retirement accounts (and their dependents) on the grounds that these individuals had enjoyed undue and unjust privileges that must not be perpetuated in unified Germany.65 The new policy affected individuals with supplementary and special retirement accounts in the GDR. If transferred to unified Germany in their entirety, these accounts would have provided pensions that were larger, in some cases much larger, than those of the average eastern German. These accounts, some of which had been established in the 1950s to induce East Germany’s technical, educational, and medical elites not to leave the country for better paying jobs in the Federal Republic, provided the intelligentsia with supplementary retirement benefits. The so-called technical intelligentsia had included those with advanced degrees (Hochschulabsolventen) in technical fields who were employed in eastern firms. Professors and instructors at universities, technical colleges, and academies had belonged to a supplementary retirement system for the intelligentsia (Altersversorgung der Intelligenz—AVI). Scholars at the Academy of Sciences and at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences had their own retirement pool. Doctors and pharmacists in the state-run health services had held a supplemental retirement account as well.66 Other supplementary account holders included full-time functionaries in the SED, the state ministries, the trade unions, the SED-affiliated mass organizations of the GDR, and the SED satellite parties. The Pensions Transition Act and the Claims and Entitlement Transfer Act regulated the transfer of twenty-seven supplementary accounts into the pension system of the FRG. Additionally, they regulated the transfer of four special retirement accounts that had been established in the GDR for employees of the military, the secret police (Stasi), the police, and customs.67 Three groups were affected by the legislation. First, former employees of the MfS received benefits that on later adjustments were not to exceed 70 percent of the average pension.68 Although some Christian Democrats in the Bundestag had favored curtailing the Stasi pensions to just DM 600 per month, the Bundestag majority capped the monthly pension for Stasi employees at DM 802.69 Second, retirement benefits were restricted to the level of the average pension for persons enrolled in certain retirement systems whose salaries had been more than 1.4 times that of the average compensation, which was taken as evidence of a leading position.70 Third, benefits were also

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capped at the eastern German average for those persons whose employment indicated a particular proximity to the communist state. This was applied to leading functionaries within the national ministries, the trade unions, and the mass associations; the directors of state-owned companies and other ranking economic managers; judges and public prosecutors; professors and teachers in the educational facilities of the SED and trade unions; and SED party secretaries, among others.71 Finally, the 1991 law established a maximum pension of DM 2010 for those with supplementary and special retirement accounts.72 The Pensions Transition Act put the eastern intelligentsia at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their western German counterparts whose pensions were generally supported by supplementary or special retirement accounts; vis-à-vis their younger eastern colleagues who on retirement would draw on supplementary retirement accounts of the Federal Republic; and vis-à-vis eastern Germans who had not made contributions into the supplementary accounts for the intelligentsia.73 The SPD joined the governing CDU and FDP in passing the controversial law in the Bundestag despite some misgivings. Rudolf Dreßler, an SPD expert on social policy, reminded the Bundestag that the former Nazi civil servants had received their full pension benefits without exception. His colleague Ottmar Schreiner told the Bundestag that outside constitutional law experts “wringing their hands had requested that we do not undertake to mix aspects of criminal law or criminal prosecution with considerations of social law. We heard during several consultations that there was only one such case of this. That was the reduction after 1933 of the pension claims of German Jews.”74 The PDS actively opposed the law and fought hard to have it overturned in the courts.75 In parliament, Petra Bläss (PDS) decried its “arbitrary limits on the benefits in the special and supplementary systems” and lamented that the new regulations “proceed with capriciousness and combine social legislation and criminal law.”76 She warned of coming legal battles and popular protest, which, as it turned out, the PDS had no small hand in organizing. In fact, the PDS took every occasion to attack the law as politically motivated, unjust and discriminatory toward eastern Germans. The party’s spirited defense of the fallen GDR elites’ interests helped mobilize the eastern socialist milieu behind the PDS. Over the years, political pressure and the courts, including the Federal Constitutional Court, would force the Bundestag to eliminate and relax the most punitive features of the pension settlement. The PDS claimed to represent broad eastern interests. Early on, Gregor Gysi pointed to the alleged western orientation of the political parties as an indication that eastern interests would not be adequately represented. On the eve of unification, he explained why he thought the PDS would return to the Bundestag following elections. “I think that we will succeed because many will simply understand that the other parties have more

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or less fused with the parties of the Federal Republic. This means that a specific representation of GDR-interests will hardly be still possible within these parties, to say nothing of the Bundestag. Here the PDS introduces an element of interest representation and identity.”77 Even before it was widely regarded as such, the PDS was presenting itself as the advocate of the east. In the fall 1990 election campaign, it supported public job creation in the region, defended GDR accomplishments, such as free child care and liberal abortion rights, and opposed the alleged annexation of the GDR by the FRG.78 Gysi called on eastern Germans to resist peacefully a unification policy that, he asserted, would turn them into second- and third-class citizens.79 In its 1993 program, the party proposed an institutional innovation designed to enhance eastern interest representation: “We are fighting for an elected eastern German governing body that independently represents the interests of eastern Germans vis-á-vis the federal government and the Bundestag and in so doing puts up resistance against the undermining of the Unification Treaty.”80 Earlier the party had insisted on a new constitution for unified Germany that incorporated both eastern and western values in the political system. All the while, the PDS wooed left-wing Social Democrats and Greens in the populous west, knowing that voters in the old Länder would be key in the party’s long-term prospects. They anticipated the likely erosion of the socialist milieu in the east, while recognizing the unreliability of eastern protest. The PDS accepted communists within its ranks, but underscored its independence from the German Communist Party (DKP). The PDS pursued left-leaning voters by adopting positions that resembled earlier positions of the SPD and Greens. It called for statist economic management that included jobs programs, the expansion of worker rights, and greater income redistribution. The party drafted positions on pacifism, disarmament, and women’s issues that were similar to well-known Green prescriptions.81 In September 1990, Jutta Ditfurth, who had been a leading left-wing Green, noted striking similarities between the PDS election platform and past positions of the Greens: “Many aspects of the party program are familiar to me. At times it comes close to reaching the point of a copyright infringement.”82

VOTERS As if to make up for lost time, East Germans in 1990 repeatedly voted in democratic elections after four decades of not being able to do so. They were beckoned to the polls for a general election (March), local eastern elections (May), state elections (October), all-Berlin elections (December), and an all-German general election (December). For the PDS, the election cycle began fairly well and ended on a less promising note. Its share of the eastern vote fell from 16.4 percent in March, to 14 percent in the local elections of

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May, to an average of 11.6 percent in five state elections in eastern Germany, and to 11.1 percent in the Bundestag elections of December 2, 1990. In the Volkskammer election, the PDS had finished in third place behind the CDU and SPD. Polls showed that its supporters opposed unification at a far higher rate (18.8 percent) than did the electorate as a whole (5 percent); and that they were much less likely (2.2 percent) than the broader public (35.3 percent) to support a very fast unification process.83 The party did well in district capitals where the GDR’s administrative, security, and educational centers had been located. East Berlin, with its concentration of the upper service class (Dienstklasse), provided the PDS with its best results. More than half of the party’s voters believed that unification was more likely to be disadvantageous in the short run, whereas just 6 percent thought it was more likely to bring short-term advantages. Such pessimism was not present among the other parties’ supporters.84 Polls showed that the PDS had outperformed all other parties among the East German intelligentsia and did disproportionately well among other relatively privileged segments of society, such as salaried employees (especially those in leading posts), and students. In contrast, the party performed badly among the self-employed and the country’s blue-collar workers who strongly favored the CDU-led Alliance for Germany. This could be understood as industrial workers punishing the SED for its failure to represent their interests in the GDR.85 The PDS did significantly better in the agrarian north than in the industrial southern regions, where the effects of communist mismanagement, such as chronic shortages, environmental degradation, and crumbling cities, were most apparent.86 PDS voters in the March Volkskammer election were by no means limited to former SED members. In fact, an estimated three-fourths of its 1.9 million voters had not belonged to the SED, whereas most former SED members had voted for other parties.87 PDS voters all the same identified more with the GDR than did the supporters of other parties; more than 80 percent regarded themselves more as citizens of the GDR than as German.88 On December 2, 1990, all-German national elections were held for the first time since 1933. The Federal Constitutional Court had mandated separate 5 percent hurdles for entry to the Bundestag apply to the east and west. This proved a blessing for the former East German citizen groups and for the PDS because both had stood no chance of receiving five percent nationally. In the five new states, the party suffered its heaviest losses in places where it had previously been strongest.89 Overall, the PDS lost about a half of its voters between March 18 and December 2, 1990. This reflected a steep drop in voter turnout from 93.4 percent of the eligible eastern German voters in March to less than 75 percent in December. Bortfeldt observed that the former GDR elites still tended to support the PDS, but “because this strata was less a policy-oriented voting bloc than a voting bloc

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of protesters and those in denial, entire groups were in a position to simply break loose.”90 This process of dissolution appeared well underway. The PDS had lost around 250,000 votes to the SPD, 70,000 votes to the FDP, more than 60,000 votes to Alliance 90/Greens, and nearly 50,000 votes to the CDU.91 The PDS finished in fourth place behind the CDU, SPD, and FDP in the former GDR. Nationally it won only 2.4 percent. PDS voters generally lived in cities, belonged to no church, and held socialist political attitudes. Few blue-collar workers voted for this self-proclaimed working-class representative. In the 1990 Bundestag election, the PDS mustered just 5.3 percent among blue-collar voters in eastern Germany; this marked a sharp drop from the 11.9 percent of the working-class vote that the party had received in the March Volkskammer election. In comparison, the party remained disproportionately attractive to intelligentsia, managers, and students.92 The PDS once again performed better in the northern regions than in the industrialized southern parts of the former GDR. Overall, its anti-capitalism did not strike a chord among easterners in 1990 who were, despite the accelerating collapse of the GDR industrial base, generally optimistic about the future.93 The PDS had campaigned throughout unified Germany, yet remained very much a regional party. In the 1990 federal election, it won 11.1 percent of the eastern vote and 0.3 percent in the west. The party received 24.8 percent of the eastern vote and 1.3 percent of the western vote in newly unified Berlin. Even in Thuringia, its weakest showing in the east, the PDS had an overall vote share more than 7.5 times greater than that of its best showing (Hamburg) in a western state. In the west, the PDS had hoped to attract disenchanted Greens and left-wing Social Democrats, but instead settled primarily for the far-left fringe in urban centers. Unlike its centerleft rivals, it had no pre-existing organizational basis in the west, almost no western members and no experience in running electoral campaigns in the Federal Republic. The PDS was further burdened by its association with the SED, a party strongly disliked in western Germany. Table 2.1. PDS Vote Share in National Elections in 1990 Western Germany, %

GDR/ Eastern Germany, %

Unified Germany, %

Volkskammer Election March 18, 1990, GDR

N/A

16.4

N/A

Bundestag Election Dec. 2, 1990, FRG

0.3

11.1

2.4

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This chapter has examined the PDS of 1990. Amidst economic crisis and political disarray, reform-minded SED members struggled to revamp their old party in the hope of maintaining relevance in a democratic GDR and in unified Germany. The PDS’ membership, leadership, program, and voters no longer mirrored those of the SED. Gone from the party leadership were the doctrinaire septuagenarians, replaced by young, reform-minded politicians from the lower nomenklatura who envisioned a pluralistic, democratic alternative to Stalinism. The party’s membership had contracted dramatically in 1989–1990, shedding most of its working class members, while housing often elderly former elites who remained emotionally and ideologically wed to the GDR. Committed to peacefully overcoming capitalism in the long run, the PDS scrapped Marxism-Leninism as a guiding programmatic principle and instead drew on a diverse assortment of leftist thought. Among its objectives were to recast the Federal Republic in a socially just manner, while advancing “eastern” interests and values in unified Germany. It tended to the needs of fallen GDR elites. Despite its exertions, the PDS seemed headed for political obscurity in unified Germany. It was an outsider at a time when most easterners believed that the established parties in Bonn, especially the governing CDU/CSUFDP coalition, would effectively address their problems and concerns. A truculent “eastern identity” (Ostidentität) had not yet formed. Although most easterners in 1990 expected to remain “second-class citizens” for some time in unified Germany,94 they nonetheless were confident about the future. In 1990, the PDS appeared as the voice of former GDR elites rather than as a regional representative.

THREE

UNIFICATION, DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION, AND THE PDS

The events of 1989–1990 ended privilege and power for many of East Germany’s administrative, economic, and academic elites. Leading SED cadres faced retirement, unemployment, or a change of career. West Germans often stepped in to fill the newly created or recently vacated upper-echelon posts, while easterners occupied second- and third-tier positions in the east.1 With few exceptions, westerners ran the national parties and the federal government. This chapter explores the origins of a descriptive representation gap in unified Germany, examining the reasons behind the westernization of elite and its impact on public administration, political parties, judiciary, military, public broadcasting, and universities in the east. The chapter then examines how the established political parties strove to marginalize the PDS in the 1990s. In so doing, they further reduced descriptive representation, which, alongside protracted economic crisis and a growing sense of cultural distinctiveness in the east, would set the stage for the PDS’ comeback as a party of regional interest representation and protest. Whereas chapter 2 considered the party’s internal changes after 1989–1990, this chapter examines the external developments that presented the PDS, as a homegrown eastern opposition, with unexpected opportunities.

SUBSTITUTING ELITES Neither the displacement of eastern elites, nor the PDS’ exclusion followed a coherent strategy, but rather reflected an “improvised unification” born of logistical necessity, political calculations and concerns about transitional justice.2 On March 18, 1990, East Germans voted in democratic elections for the first time in their country’s history. The victorious East German CDU,

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the liberal parties, and the runner-up SPD all favored a quick unification by way of Article 23 of the Basic Law. This approach allowed for the extension of the Basic Law, West Germany’s constitution, to the territory of the GDR on its accession to the Federal Republic. The PDS and the citizen groups rejected this path, but together won less than one-fourth of votes cast in the March election. Rather than support a new constitutional order likely to delay unification, most had hoped for prosperity and stability within the FRG’s existing framework. Unification by institutional transfer, however, put GDR elites at a severe disadvantage. Yet their plight generated little protest or sympathy among average eastern Germans who had associated them with leading privileged lives in the GDR. The eastern administration would need a major overhaul if it were to fit the western model. For starters, it was much larger in relative terms and did not conform to the same standards.3 Hans-Ulrich Derlien applied the term politicized incompetence to the GDR’s public administration. With the professional civil service abolished after World War II, East Germany’s public servants were schooled in Marxist-Leninist theory rather than in the law, as in the Federal Republic where lawyers comprised nearly two-thirds of Bonn’s top civil servants.4 Ideological and political criteria, above all loyalty to the SED, determined recruitment and promotion. Area expertise and constitutional loyalty, as demanded in the Federal Republic, played a lesser role in an East German administration under SED control. It bore little resemblance to the “classical European administration,” in which civil servants were judged on expertise and competence.5 After unification, eastern functionaries faced the formidable task of acquiring the necessary legal training as well as the cognitive tools to adjust to rule-bound constitutionalism. The FRG combined retraining programs, purges, and an influx of westernerns to overcome deficits in the eastern administration.6 Greg Kvistad argued that Germany generally opted for a “depoliticised functionalist response” to the problem of how to deal with former GDR state employees.7 The GDR’s National People’s Army (NVA) also had dramatically diverged from its western counterpart, the Bundeswehr. It was a disproportionately large army in “one of the most militarized societies in the world,”8 with an outsized officer corps wedded to the ruling SED.9 According to the western German general Jörg Schönbohm, who oversaw the post-unification military transformation in the east, “the party had the whole NVA firmly in its grip.”10 Almost all officers were party members; the party decided promotions; and the SED and its affiliated youth organization were part of the fabric of the military.11 The GDR’s academic landscape also had contrasted sharply with that of West Germany. For instance, there were disproportionately many scholars at research centers outside of the universities. Whereas 51,000 West Germans worked at nonuniversity based research centers in a country of 61.1

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million, 32,000 East Germans held jobs at such institutes in the GDR, a country of 16.4 million inhabitants.12 Twenty-four thousand worked at the Academy of Sciences, a massive research institute that had no parallel in West Germany. Because the Academy of Sciences did not fit the western institutional landscape, it was closed soon after unification, with its employees either losing their jobs or later being reassigned to universities or research institutes.13 Approximately 15 percent of its scientists subsequently secured permanent academic appointments.14 On average, the East German faculty had faced less pressure to publish; if they had published, they had lacked ready access to western scholarship. Universities had differed from those in the FRG in other ways as well. The party rather than the faculty controlled governance; student enrollments and majors were determined from the top–down; departments such as Marxism-Leninism and Scientific Communism found no equivalent in West Germany; and Marxist-Leninist ideology saturated the social sciences, history and philosophy. The rapid transfer of FRG institutions, practices and standards to eastern Germany left many elites redundant. Western civil servants on loan (Leihbeamte) rather than eastern functionaries, it was thought, could best establish the FRG’s administrative structures and its capitalist economy. The Federal Republic had enough knowledgeable civil servants, promotioneager academics, and savvy political advisers to replace suddenly superfluous easterners until a new generation emerged. This “ready-made state” ensured a smooth administrative transition and, in a sense, was a privilege that Poles, Czechs, and Russians did not have.15 It came at a cost, however, to descriptive representative and, in turn, increased concerns about eastern interest representation. Before unification in October 1990, the GDR had commenced personnel renewal by dismissing high-ranking nomenklatura officials and retiring state functionaries at fifty-seven. At this time, many leading cadres left the administration, the judiciary, the military, state industries, and the universities.16 Upon unification, eastern public employees deemed “close to the state” (staatsnah) faced an especially uncertain future. This category encompassed many in the state ministries, the military, the police, the political parties, and the mass organizations, such as the trade union federation, youth organization, women’s organization, and the farmers’ organization. Not all state employees, however, were equally affected. In areas where the existing workforce was indispensable for day-to-day operations, such as the schools, railways, law enforcement, and mail delivery, there was considerable personnel continuity.17 Most teachers, for instance, kept their jobs.18 There also was variation across regions. Saxony often barred SED officials, those with past Stasi ties, and even those in the judiciary and bureaucracy with politically compromised degrees. Its tough-minded interior minister was a Protestant pastor who had been persecuted by the secret police.19 Other states, such as

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Brandenburg, screened employees less thoroughly. Nearly two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, an estimated 17,000 former Stasi agents and informants remained in the eastern public service. Of these, Saxony-Anhalt employed around 4,400, with most working either in the cultural ministry (1,976) or as police (1,722). Saxony had around 4,100 former Stasi employees in its public service. In East Germany, nearly 300,000 had worked for the Stasi either as full-time employees or as informants.20 The Unification Treaty of August 31, 1990 laid the foundation for the dismantling and transferring of the GDR’s administrative units. Employees initially remained in the departments that were absorbed by the federal government (e.g., railway service) or by the states (e.g., police and schools) on October 3, 1990. But for those in departments (e.g., the GDR central ministries) that were not transferred to the federal government or to the new Länder, the state had to decide whether to “wind down” (abwickeln) the office altogether. When this occurred one entered a so-called “holding pattern” (Warteschleife) for six months (nine months for those older than age fifty) during which one received 70 percent of his or her former pay and awaited possible counseling, job retraining and, if fortunate, reappointment.21 For the hundreds of thousands of easterners affected, the Warteschleife often meant the end of a career in government service.22 Eastern German public employees in offices not wound down were still not assured of keeping their jobs. They could be dismissed on account of insufficient institutional need, inadequate qualifications, suspected disloyalty to the constitution, human rights violations, or connections to the secret police (Stasi). With loyalty to the constitution among the criteria for suitability, some were dismissed if they had held positions within the SED and its satellite organizations beyond that of simple party member.23 Eastern public employees were evaluated on the basis of mandatory questionnaires and information, if requested, supplied by the public agency that oversaw the Stasi files. This office, with a staff of three thousand employees, came to be widely known as the Gauck Agency. It was named after its first director, Joachim Gauck, who had been a pastor and citizen group activist in the GDR. In the six months after unification, 1,818 individuals had been unconditionally dismissed due to Stasi ties and 65 due to human rights abuses.24 Once the Gauck Agency assumed full operations in 1991, the dismissal of compromised individuals gathered force. Stasi connections cost thousands of police officers, border police, military personnel, and passport inspectors their jobs and also led to the firing of teachers, professors, public administrators, and economic directors.25 According to Joachim Gauck, however, most former Stasi informants in the civil service were not purged.26 Ties to the secret police ended the careers of prominent politicians, among them the SPD’s chairman Ibrahim Böhme and the Democratic Awakening (DA) chairman

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Wolfgang Schnur, while suspicions of Stasi ties dogged many others, including the former GDR prime minister Lothar de Maizière (CDU), Brandenburg’s minister president Manfred Stolpe (SPD) and the PDS’ Gregor Gysi and Lothar Bisky. As former GDR elites vacated the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, incoming western Germans often assumed leading posts. According to one study, “The political purges created a vacuum that was mostly filled by the import of elites from the west who thereby received historically unparalleled opportunities of promotion or further advancement.”27 Western civil servants began arriving in 1990 to set up the administration in the five new states. By fall 1992, approximately 22,400 western civil servants and public officials were working in the former GDR,28 holding many of the top jobs. In Brandenburg’s ministries in 1991, approximately 3 percent of the civil servants in the lower ranks were western Germans, whereas more than half in the upper ranks came from the west.29 In the five eastern state chancelleries, every chief of staff and more than three-fourths of section heads were western. The ministerial under-secretaries were also predominantly western German; in Brandenburg, they comprised twelve of the thirteen secretaries. By 1993, three minister presidents in the five new Länder came from the west, as did the lord mayor of unified Berlin.30 In 1990, 28 percent of all cabinet ministers in the five eastern states were from the west; 43.2 percent of those individuals holding the most important cabinet posts came from the old FRG. The share of westerners in top posts rose to more than 50 percent after the 1994 elections.31 Two prominent western Christian Democrats, Kurt Biedenkopf and Bernhard Vogel, became minister presidents in the east and successfully rejuvenated political careers that were by all accounts on the downside. A third failed in his bid to relaunch his career. Werner Münch (CDU) resigned as minister president in Saxony-Anhalt after it became known that he and three other western Germans in the state cabinet had received salaries that far exceeded those of the eastern cabinet members.32 At the national level, few easterners held leading posts. The CDU and FDP harbored doubts about those coming from satellite parties (e.g., CDU, Liberal Democratic Party of Germany [LDPD]) that had faithfully supported the SED for forty years.33 They therefore preferred easterners who had participated in the pro-democracy opposition of 1989, but few of them exerted much influence within their parties. In the Bundestag, the Alliance 90/Greens group consisted of former East German citizen group activists; however, this small party remained in the opposition from 1990 to 1994. Overall, there was not a single eastern German committee chair in the Bundestag in the mid-1990s.34 Several easterners did head federal ministries such as those responsible for women and youth (Angela Merkel), transportation (Günther Krause), and education and science (Rainer Ortleb). However, many

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prominent eastern Germans later resigned from party office or government post due to corruption allegations, incompetence or alleged Stasi collaboration.35 Günther Krause, who had represented the GDR in the Unification Treaty negotiations, quit the cabinet in 1993 following a scandal-plagued tenure as transportation minister. Lothar de Maiziére, the GDR’s first and last freely elected prime minister, resigned as CDU deputy chair following accusations of Stasi involvement. Josef Duchac in Thuringia, Gerd Gies in Saxony-Anhalt and Alfred Gomolka in Mecklenberg-West Pomerania all became embroiled in controversies that cut short tenures as minister president. The Treuhand agency was the semi-public holding company that was charged in 1990 with privatizing more than twelve thousand GDR stateowned industries. While the majority of its four thousand employees (as of August 1992) came from the GDR, more than 60 percent of its directors and more than 50 percent of its department heads hailed from western German industry.36 On October 4, 1990, just one day after unification, western Germans replaced all previous heads of the fifteen branches of the Treuhand agency.37 Western industrialist Detlef-Karsten Rohwedder headed the Treuhand as president until his assassination at the hands of Red Army Faction terrorists in 1991. Birgit Breuel, a CDU politician from western Germany, succeeded Rohwedder as president of an agency that many eastern Germans blamed for destroying jobs in the former GDR. The courts in eastern Germany also experienced rapid westernization. By January 1, 1992, less than 33 percent of all judges in the eastern states had been former GDR judges, whereas more than 66 percent had originated in western Germany. By January 1995, 18 percent were former GDR judges, 3 percent were newly recruited easterners, and 79 percent came from the western states. Significantly, newly recruited western Germans, often at the start of their careers, comprised more than 50 percent of all judges by 1995.38 According to the Potsdam Elite Study of 1995, no eastern Germans held top positions within the leading courts of unified Germany.39 The substitution of elites proceeded thoroughly in the military. When the Bundeswehr absorbed the NVA, it dismissed eastern German officers at the rank of general. By the end of 1990, all career soldiers over the age of fifty had been discharged. According to a western German captain who commanded a brigade in Saxony, “many spoke sarcastically at the time of the ‘decapitation of the NVA’ since the entire top of the military leadership had to go within a three-month period.”40 By April 1991, western officers commanded all units from the battalion level upward; they comprised all the officers within the general staff; and they filled all officer ranks at the level of colonel and upward.41 East German elites faced a similar fate in public broadcasting. In place of the GDR’s television agency (DFF), regional agencies arose. The newly created broadcasting service in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia

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(MDR) was headed by a western German; only one of its directors was not from the west.42 Overall, eastern Germans held four of the top twenty-one positions in eastern radio and television by 1994 and none of the director (Intendant) positions.43 The share of eastern elite within the mass media and cultural sectors of the Federal Republic stood at 11.8 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively, both far below the share of easterners among the broader population.44 German unification also swept academics from their posts. Under the provisions of the 1990 Unification Treaty, the newly formed eastern states could close university departments and institutes that either had no equivalent in the FRG’s academic landscape or that were too ideologically compromised. If they did so by January 2, 1991, they would enjoy a brief window of opportunity that temporarily suspended employment protection for public employees. Eager to clean house, state governments shut down renamed sections of Marxism-Leninism and Scientific Communism and several institutions of higher education.45 In four eastern states, as well as in Berlin, state governments dissolved the departments of philosophy, law, history, economics, and education in late 1990 on the grounds that these departments had been especially ideologically politicized in the GDR.46 Those employed in the wound-down (abgewickelt) departments and institutes collected 70 percent of their pay for six to nine months; thereafter they were either rehired within refounded departments or, more likely, released for good.47 In newly constituted departments of political science, economics, and sociology, western personnel taught classes while a “founding dean” (Gründungsdekan) from the west decided on short-term contracts for the eastern personnel. The founding dean and a “founding commission” later made recommendations regarding permanent appointments.48 Wolfgang Schluchter, a founding dean at the University of Leipzig, concluded that “the consequence of the winding down (Abwicklung) was that in terms of personnel entire areas of eastern universities were westernized and incidentally also masculinized (vermännlicht) in one strike, as it were.”49 In short, German unification ended the careers of many academics, scientists, and skilled researchers in industry-related research and development (R&D).50 The Unification Treaty had allowed for the winding down of whole departments, the closing of the GDR’s Academy of Sciences and the review and dismissal of individuals scholars. An estimated 72 percent of the 140,000 eastern Germans employed in the “academic/scholarship sector” (Wissenschaftssektor) in 1989 had lost their jobs by 1993.51 Incoming western German scholars often assumed the best jobs. According to one estimate, they filled forty-seven of the fifty newly created professorial chairs in the social sciences that had been established in the east by 1998.52 A study published in the journal Nature showed that western Germans and foreign academics held approximately two-thirds of the highest-ranking professorial positions

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(C4) in the east by 1999, with the percentage of western Germans increasing sharply throughout the 1990s. By the late 1990s, western German and foreign scholars comprised 237 of the 240 directors and department heads at the twenty prestigious Max Planck Institutes in the east and held more than three-fourths of the director positions in the Leibniz Society Institutes in eastern states.53 Jens Reich, a molecular biologist and former East German citizen group leader, concluded on behalf of his former colleagues that, “We were not treated unfairly, according to western rules. . . . But the rules were against us.”54 Taken together, democratic reforms and national unification transformed the eastern elite. By the mid-1990s, former SED members made up 28 percent of the leading eastern German elites.55 Politically untainted easterners sometimes took their place, especially in trade unions and parties at the regional level.56 Yet, as we have seen, westerners usually took the top spots within the parties, the ministries, the courts, the military, and nonprint media. They comprised more than 88 percent of all elites in Germany, 40 percent in the east, and 94 percent of eastern elites in sectors other than the politics.57 The distribution of easterners and westerners corresponded to the “law of increasing disproportion,” which posits that “the disproportion of male, educated, high status elite recruits increases as we move up the political stratification system.”58 In this case, the level of status was closely linked to place of origin: whether FRG or GDR. By the mid-1990s, westerners occupied almost all the top posts at the national and EU levels. Yet even in the new Länder, the law of increasing disproportion applied: “The higher up one went in public administration and the judiciary, in the broadcast agencies and in the banks, the greater was the share of western Germans. The lower the echelon within the state structure, then the greater was the presence of eastern Germans among the leading personnel, as the example of local government clearly showed.”59 Finally, during unification the civil service rank (Beamtenstatus)—with its prestige, job security, good pay, and benefits—did not extend automatically to GDR officials. Well into the 1990s, the number of civil servants (Beamte) in the east remained disproportionately low. By June 30, 1998, the total number of civil servants and judges in the new states—including those originally from the FRG—had increased to 174,093. This increase still represented only 11.3 percent of the total number of civil servants and judges (1,530,426) employed at the time on territory of the former West Germany (früheres Bundesgebiet).60 Eastern Germans remained underrepresented within the prestigious, well-compensated German Beamtentum. The elite substitution of the early 1990s had contrasted with the personnel continuity of the early 1950s in the Federal Republic. At this time, the fledgling West German state needed the skills, energies and loyalty of former NSDAP members to rebuild its economy and secure its democracy

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after the catastrophe of 1933–1945. During postwar reconstruction and the cold war, the danger of a fractured bureaucracy was greater than in 1990 when western Germans did not need the GDR’s administrative or academic elite to rebuild the east. Moreover, the fallen elites posed little apparent risk to political stability. In the early 1950s, in contrast, the scientific, security, and administrative elites of the Third Reich, if excluded, might have stirred up irredentist sentiment among the masses. Likewise, if the center-right parties of the 1950s had barred entry to former NSDAP cadres, then a far-right party might have arisen. In 1990, however, the deposed GDR elite seemingly posed little risk for radicalizing the eastern population. For starters, they were generally much older and greyer than the deposed Nazi officials were in 1945, many of whom had assumed their positions at a relatively young age. Whereas the Third Reich had lasted but twelve years, the GDR had persisted forty years and had been hollowed out from within rather than defeated from without. By 1989–1990, many of its aged functionaries, who still espoused an ossified Marxist-Leninist ideology (described as “Marxism Senile-ism”61), could be sent into retirement where they would be bitter but less destabilizing than outcast Nazi judges, journalists or professors in their late forties or early fifties in 1950. By removing compromised GDR elites, unified Germany hoped to avoid what had happened in the Federal Republic in the 1950s when former National Socialists, among them judges, professors, and high-ranking civil servants, quietly returned to the courts, the universities, the schools, and the public administration. By 1956, a sizeable majority of West German senior civil servants, senior foreign servants, and military leaders had positions similar to those that they had held during the Third Reich.62 In 1951, the Bundestag passed a law that allowed former civil servants, among them many dismissed during Allied denazification, to return to the bureaucracy. Less than 2 percent of the 53,000 bureaucrats who had lost their jobs during denazification were permanently excluded from the civil service.63 “This was a preferential policy, adopted not to favor ethnic minorities or women, as in the United States in the 1970s, but to favor state bureaucrats. If we view the de-Nazification program as an attempt at administrative reform, then we must judge it an abysmal failure.”64 Some cases were particularly egregious, such as that of Chancellor Adenuaer’s confidant Hans Glöbke who headed the federal chancellery despite his role in the notorious “Nuremberg Laws” of 1935. By the late 1960s, young left-wing West Germans were angrily objecting to what they saw as a whitewash of the Nazi era and demanded a coming to terms with the legacy of National Socialism. The year 1968, when student protests shook the Federal Republic, has come to symbolize the nation’s long overdue process of confronting the Nazi past. West German experiences with the legacy of National Socialism shaped the post-cold war period in the east. To the FRG historian Heinrich Winkler,

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“There was no reason to repeat the terrible mistake of the west regarding the coming to terms (Aufarbeitung) with the Nazi past. The cost of the overlooked or half-heartedly confronted Nazi past during the early years of the Federal Republic was the year 1968. Were a critical discussion of the GDR-past not to occur, then a 1968 from the right would come sooner or later.”65 Public figures such as Joachim Gauck, the eastern German pastor charged with administering and reviewing the Stasi files, championed a frank and thorough reckoning with the communist past.66 Former GDR dissidents hoped that eastern Germans would themselves ask the awkward questions about human rights abuses and those responsible for crimes. To make this possible, they demanded that individual easterners have access to their own Stasi files; public employers could also inquire whether their employees had been secret police informants. Because the former GDR elites, it was argued, had propped up and benefited from an unjust system, they should neither hold the best jobs nor receive better pensions. This would perpetuate past injustices and be unfair to SED victims, many of whom had suffered career setbacks, harassment, and imprisonment. SED victims, it was widely argued, should not have to deal in an official capacity with the same people who had spied on and harassed them. Transitional justice therefore demanded that the Federal Republic remove and, when appropriate, prosecute eastern officials who had committed human rights abuses in the GDR or were particularly close to its repressive state apparatus.67 In a letter banning a dismissed director from the premises of his former institute at the University of Leipzig, the university chancellor wrote: “the system you served and for which you have your personal advancement to thank, not only has to answer for gruesome crimes but also through its incompetence and corruption has on its conscience the ruin of cities and countryside, and the crisis and suffering of more than an entire generation. . . . People like you who took part in the maintenance and consolidation of this spy- and denunciation-state should at the least discretely honor the human decency (menschliche Loyalität) that despite everything the new state shows them with the guarantee of an acceptable old age pension.”68 It was hoped that the replacement of GDR nomenklatura would promote national unity. If the SED cadres were not removed, and instead became entrenched (alte Seilschaften), they might impede the region’s economic and political modernization. Likewise in higher education, the “retention of existing structures could perpetuate incompetence, pockets of totalitarian ideology, and the results of political favoritism.”69 Stalwarts of the communist system were commonly regarded as Altlast (a burdensome legacy) to be managed in unified Germany. They had lost an internecine struggle over whether there was to be one German state or two, and whether Germany would be capitalist and liberal

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democratic or state socialist and authoritarian. In the words of Robert Gerald Livingston, “this imposition [of western solutions] was no surprise since the GDR lost what had amounted to a civil war lasting nearly fifty years—latent and bloodless to be sure, but a German–German civil war all the same.”70 This “civil war” featured ideological confrontation, rival claims of representing the German nation, competing assertions of system supremacy, military build-up and extensive espionage. Approximately one thousand East Germans died trying to flee to West Germany. Many had voluntarily remained in the GDR prior to the Berlin Wall, unlike the thousands who had fled to West Germany in the 1950s and early 1960s. According to Freya Klier, a former GDR dissident, the earlier exodus among the “critical intelligentsia” depleted the ranks of the crucial “Vaclav Havel generation of the GDR.”71 Such a view suggested that the remaining were morally compromised. In the unified Germany of 1990, the SED functionaries, NVA generals and Marxist professors seemed to embody the values of a discredited ancient regime.

MARGINALIZING THE PARTY OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM Although its leaders had generally not been part of the upper tier SED nomenklatura, the PDS found itself excluded alongside many former GDR elites. Its political marginalization occurred on different levels and to varying degrees in the 1990s. It was much more intense in the early and mid-1990s and much more apparent at the national level. The PDS’ isolation added to a descriptive representation gap in unified Germany. In the early 1990s, the established parties did not regard the PDS as a normal party capable of governing (regierungsfähig). Doing business with the PDS, it was commonly argued, would violate principles of democracy and national unity. The party was rejected on three grounds: on the basis of its ideology, on the basis of its past (transitional justice grounds), and on the basis of its effect on national unity (national grounds). Together, these three considerations prompted both the center-right (CDU/CSU, FDP) and the center-left (SPD, Greens) to keep the SED successor at arms length. Leading politicians, particularly among the CDU/CSU, viewed the PDS as a communist party lacking a positive role to play in German politics. Anti-communism had a long tradition in German politics extending back to the end of World War I, when the spectrum of communism had haunted the bourgeoisie and conservative Social Democrats alike. During the Weimar Republic, the bourgeois parties remained solidly anti-communist. On the left, the KPD competed with the SPD for working-class votes and maliciously accused the SPD of being “social fascists” in the early 1930s. Hitler, of course, greatly intensified anti-communism during a brutal twelve years that witnessed the banning of the KPD, the jailing and murder of communists, and the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union.

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Postwar developments kept anti-communism alive. As it beat back the German Wehrmacht in its relentless drive toward Berlin, the Red Army exacted terrible revenge on many German civilians. Soon thereafter, communist-led or supported regimes expelled millions of ethnic Germans from east-central and southeastern Europe. In the Soviet occupation zone, Social Democrats suffered through a forced merger with the KPD and subsequent subordination within the SED. In 1948, the Soviet Union aggressively imposed a blockade on West Berlin in an unsuccessful effort to drive the western allies out of the city. In 1953, Soviet tanks crushed an East German worker uprising and thereby rescued the SED. After 1961, East German border guards patrolled the Berlin Wall with instructions to shoot those trying to escape. All these events fanned anti-communism in the west. The Federal Constitutional Court banned the KPD in 1956, while the federal and state governments approved a so-called radical decree in 1972 that led to the dismissal of communists from the West German civil service. By the 1980s, anti-communism had lost its political importance, due in part to the rise of the Greens, yet it remained a feature of conservative discourse in the FRG. In the GDR, many persisted in their anti-communist convictions, having lived under the repressive SED dictatorship. As heir to a party that had purported to embody historical progress, the PDS was now criticized for being out of step with the times. Its supporters, whether Marxist or GDR nostalgic, were dismissed as “reactionary” (Rückwärtsgewandt),” “fossils” or as “cement-heads.” According to the CDU, “the PDS therefore represents a completely anachronistic political approach: it makes every effort verbally to portray the living conditions of today as the living conditions of the 19th century. Overcome long ago, the class conditions of the workers prevalent in the late 19th century, and the resultant social question, continue to be found in socialist doctrine. Every economic conflict, inevitable even in a free and democratic society, is reinterpreted as a class conflict. The PDS manifests itself therefore as a party that seeks to extend an ideology that had failed worldwide by 1989–1990 at the latest.”72 To its critics, the PDS was “an anti-democratic party with a communist core” that posed a “danger from the left.”73 PDS opponents cited national unity as a further reason to keep the party out of office. The cold war had featured opposing ideologies as well as a clash of competing conceptualizations of the German nation-state. The Federal Republic had remained constitutionally committed to unification, whereas the GDR had omitted any mention of national unity from its revised 1974 constitution. In 1990, the PDS initially favored a democratic, socialist GDR, housed pro-GDR elements and dismissed unification as western annexation (Anschluss). Its critics regarded the PDS as a divider (Spalter) that thrived on, and perpetuated, national disunity. To Manfred Wilke, “under the catchword of ‘eastern interest representation,’ the PDS resumes

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the SED’s policy of national division.”74 The PDS, according to its detractors, spread the fiction of a common eastern identity (Ostidentität) based on socialist values.75 The Bonn parties criticized it for raising unrealistic expectations about equal living standards in east and west and for hindering economic recovery in the new Länder.76 If the PDS was indeed divisive in its intentions, then unity, or so it seemed to its opponents, would best be advanced by marginalizing this troublemaker. Considerations of transitional justice led the established parties to reject the PDS for what it was: the legal successor of the SED, a party mostly of former SED members that included many functionaries, and a party led by former SED cadres. They regarded the PDS as the party of GDR perpetrators and unreconstructed communists. In 1994, the SPD maintained that “the PDS is above all the antiquated, aging party of the former state functionaries that has not drawn a clear line between itself and its SED past and which to this day does not want to make known where former ‘people’s property’ to the sum of billions of marks was shifted.”77 The memory of the past SED victims was invoked to justify the party’s exclusion. In June 1994, the CDU and CSU parliamentary caucus chairs at the national and regional levels declared that “We are emphatically opposed to any cozying up to the communists, and anyone who allies with the PDS five years after the fall of the wall tramples upon the rights that were won after a hard fight by the people in the Monday and Thursday demonstrations.”78 They warned the SPD not to sell out its principles less than fifty years after Social Democrats had been jailed for their opposition to the SPD–KPD fusion of 1946.79 Prominent citizen group activists who had suffered at the hands of the SED adamantly rejected any overture to the PDS. In some cases, former citizen group activists quit the Alliance 90/Greens over its allegedly cozy relations with the PDS.80 Notwithstanding their lofty talk about transitional justice, the mainstream political parties also took into account party political considerations as they devised their strategies for dealing with the PDS. On the one hand, established parties rarely welcome new competition, and the upstart PDS was now laying claim to the power and patronage that the other parties had shared. A decade earlier, they had fought the newly formed Greens. On the other hand, the center-right CDU/CSU and FDP had an interest in drawing attention to the alleged PDS menace. In so doing, they hoped to mobilize their own traditionally anti-communist constituencies and to place the other “Red” party, the SPD, on the defensive. Western voters, it was assumed, would be less likely to vote SPD if they believed that it was preparing a deal with the PDS. Richard von Weiszäcker (CDU), the former federal president and mayor of West Berlin, implicitly criticized his party’s treatment of the PDS “as an election campaign club in the hand of one western party to strike at the head of another western party.”81 If, as

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many speculated, the CDU/CSU campaign ads warning against SPD–PDS partnership actually bolstered support for the PDS in the new states, then this was not necessarily a bad thing for the CDU if it deprived the SPD and Alliance 90/Greens of left-wing voters.82 On the defensive, the SPD distanced itself from the PDS in an effort to counter conservative charges. To Roland Claus (PDS), “the SPD has ever since been in the situation that it enters into cooperation of any kind with the PDS only to the extent that it is allowed to do so by the CDU/ CSU.”83 This was particularly true in national politics where the SPD had the most to lose from appearing to cooperate with the post-communists. Western Germans, comprising approximately 80 percent of the German electorate, were overwhelmingly opposed to cooperation with the PDS at the national level.84 In the eastern Länder, an isolated PDS served CDU interests by depriving the SPD of a potential coalition partner. This left the SPD in several eastern states with no option other than joining CDU-led grand coalitions. These proved costly for the SPD, which opened itself up to PDS criticism from the left. Yet if the SPD were to come to power on the basis of either informal or formal arrangements with the PDS, then the CDU would suddenly face the unappealing prospect of being forced into the opposition in those eastern states where it did not have a parliamentary majority.85 In the words of one analyst, “In the end the PDS taboo was a comfortable cushion upon which the CDU in the six eastern federal states could comfortably lean back.”86 In the early 1990s, the PDS taboo found expression in the party’s exclusion from governing coalitions and its marginalization in parliament.

EXCLUDING THE PDS FROM GOVERNMENT The PDS’ political isolation began as former satellite parties freed themselves from the shackles of the SED-led National Front in late 1989. These parties asserted their political independence from the SED–PDS as democratic elections in the GDR neared. The East-CDU and the LDPD—both longstanding junior partners of the SED—now satisfied their respective political allies (CDU and FDP) in West Germany by distancing themselves from the discredited PDS. The re-formed Social Democratic Party of the GDR also kept the party at arms length, declaring in its February 1990 election platform: “We Social Democrats can presently only make one certain statement regarding coalitions: Never with the PDS.”87 Predictably, the PDS found itself without political partners following the March 18 Volkskammer election. On October 3, 1990, the party took its place amongst the Bundestag opposition in newly unified Germany. In the early and mid-1990s, the CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD, and Greens rejected coalitions with the PDS at the national and state levels. In 1994,

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CDU general secretary Peter Hintze threatened Christian Democrats with expulsion if they cooperated with the PDS.88 The SPD, although more divided on how to deal with the PDS, released its Dresden Declaration in 1994, stating, “The PDS is a political competitor and opponent of the SPD. Any collaboration with it [the PDS] is out of the question for us.”89 Following the 1994 Bundestag election, the SPD leader Rudolf Scharping declared, “coalitions with the PDS at regional or federal level are out of the question. Where the SPD is in government, the PDS is in opposition; where the SPD is in opposition there can be no coalition with the opposition.”90 At the state level, the first opening to the PDS occurred in 1994 when the SPD and Greens formed a minority government in Saxony-Anhalt requiring the parliamentary backing of the PDS to remain in office. This arrangement, known as the Madgeburg model, continued after the 1998 state elections in somewhat altered form and persisted until 2002 when the SPD left the government. In 1998, the SPD and PDS built a governing coalition in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. In short, PDS exclusion from government in the 1990s was absolute at the federal level and far-reaching at the state level. During this decade, the PDS sat in only one state cabinet (after 1998) and was tolerated by a minority government in only one state (only after 1994). The PDS was initially marginalized at the local level. In 1992, for instance, the CDU–SPD governing coalition in Berlin altered the state constitution in order that the district mayor could be appointed by the majority in the district assembly, rather than by the largest party as had previously been the practice. This change allowed the established parties to prevent the PDS from appointing district mayors in eastern Berlin where the party was very strong.91 However, the PDS generally found acceptance at the local level in eastern Germany. This owed to the practical, less ideological nature of local politics, the experience and competence of many PDS local politicians and its strength in towns and cities throughout the former GDR. A lack of descriptive representation did not generally characterize local politics in the east since city and town councilors came, as one would expect, overwhelmingly from the region. In the 1990s, even the CDU on occasion was cooperating locally with the PDS despite its calls to exclude the PDS at all levels.92 Nationally, however, the CDU/CSU leveled harsh criticism at the PDS, especially during elections. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for instance, labeled PDS supporters “communist rabble” and “red-coated fascists,” drawing the latter term from a 1930 address in which the Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher had called communists a “red-coated duplicate version of the National Socialists.”93 Other Christian Democrats were no gentler in their choice of words. Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) dubbed the PDS as “the party of the Berlin Wall sharp shooters and henchman assistants (Gefängnisschergen)”94; Theo

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Waigel (CSU) warned of the “criminal SED-PDS” and a “cancerous tumor in the democracy.”95 The CDU’s general secretary Peter Hintze stated that “[A]fter Stasi torture, the Berlin Wall and barbed wire, spying and misery, the old SED-Communists are luring with racy protest slogans. This is how the PDS cooks its red soup with the firewood that it has chopped itself.”96 Conservative politicians regularly referred to the “SED-PDS,” “ex-SED,” the “SED-Successor PDS” and the “party of SED-continuation.”97 They classified it as “a party clearly hostile to the constitution.”98 Johannes Volmert has noted that the reluctance to mention the Party of Democratic Socialism without a qualifier resembled an earlier, longstanding unwillingness on the part of West German conservatives to refer to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) without a qualifier. Instead they spoke of the “Zone,” “middle Germany,” and “the so-called GDR.”99 A popular West German tabloid, Bild, referred to East Germany as the “GDR” until the late 1980s. In its “red socks” campaign of 1994, the CDU printed 100,000 campaign posters with the slogan “into the future—but not on red socks,” along with 100,000 posters that promised “Future not Left Bloc.” CDU general secretary Peter Hintze introduced the posters after the SPD and Greens had pioneered the Magdeburg model in Saxony-Anhalt. This PDS-backed minority government provided the CDU/CSU and FDP with a timely campaign theme: namely, what the SPD and Greens did in Saxony-Anhalt, they would again do in Bonn. To Hintze, “the screams of the victims of the SED-dictatorship have been silenced for just five years and the SPD in alliance with the Greens are preparing to make an arrangement with the PDS.”100 Christian Democrats spearheaded other efforts against the PDS. They sought from the federal states a common policy toward the “left-extremist” PDS, while hoping for a coordinated observation of the PDS by the national and regional constitutional protection offices. Leading Christian Democrats indicated in the early 1990s that the PDS should be banned by the Federal Constitutional Court as a party hostile to the constitution.101 The federal government, however, did not try to ban the PDS, which would have been difficult in light of its support of the Basic Law. At the federal level, Interior Minister Kanther (CDU) and his successor Otto Schily (SPD) had the Federal Office of Constitutional Protection (Bundesverfassungsschutz) monitor “extremist” elements within the PDS, yet without recourse to espionage tactics. Instead, this agency reviewed the party’s publications. The federal states have pursued different approaches. The southern states generally proved the most willing to investigate the party. In CSU-led Bavaria, the Office of Constitutional Protection combined espionage (spying and bugging) with a review of party literature. In the former GDR, the southern states of Saxony and Thuringia were, in turn, more committed to observing the PDS than were the northern states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.102 In Berlin, the Office of Constitutional Protection initially only reviewed PDS

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materials available to the public, but in 1995 Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen (CDU) approved the use of espionage to observe specific groupings within the PDS that were regarded as left-extremist in nature.103 When Manfred Kanther (CDU) in 1995 called upon state and federal agencies to harmonize their policies of monitoring PDS activity, the Thuringian interior minister Dewes (SPD), who opposed such an approach, accused Kanther of trying to instrumentalize concerns about the PDS for party political advantage in the coming state elections in western Germany.104

CHALLENGING THE PDS IN PARLIAMENT The established parties also strove to isolate the party in parliaments. This was most evident at the state level in the early and mid-1990s (with variation from state to state). In the Bundestag contacts between the PDS and the CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD, and Greens were kept at a minimum throughout the 1990s. Other Bundestag parties refused to introduce a bill with the PDS, even when there was basic agreement on content. Instead, they introduced their own legislation, neither seeking nor accepting the PDS as a co-sponsor. A PDS Bundestag deputy complained in 1992 that “everything is done in order that our motions do not make it through committee. We would not even be able to carry the motion ‘Kohl is chancellor.’ ”105 The established parties in the federal parliament made no secret of their contempt for the PDS.106 The weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported in 1991 that “good manners are suspended whenever a deputy from the PDS steps to the podium in the Bundestag. Parliamentarians from all the other caucuses unabashedly slide their chairs across the floor, rustle their newspapers and talk loudly with one another as if there were no speech from the PDS. That is exactly the point to it all. It is to make clear to the parliamentarian outcasts from the SED-successor party that their presence is not valued at all. The newcomers complain that the only ones who listen to them are the ‘notorious hecklers.’ ”107 Hecklers regularly interrupted the PDS speakers with stinging remarks about the crimes and economic mismanagement of the SED. When Gregor Gysi addressed the Bundestag on January 17, 1991, wearing a white armband and urging Germany to remain neutral in the Gulf War, he was constantly interrupted with heckles such as: “Unbelievable!, Get Out!,” “You have brought about the greatest damage to Germany, you and your colleagues! You should be ashamed of yourself.” Others walked out of the chamber while Gysi spoke.108 The heckling from the Bundestag chamber was especially fierce on March 13, 1991 when PDS deputy Gerd Riege, the rector of the Jena law faculty, spoke about the current social problems in eastern Germany. Riege, who had filed reports for the East German secret police, encountered a steady stream of protests such as: “Who locked up the people, it was you!,”

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“November 1989 has passed you by!” “You have no business even speaking of ‘justice.’ This is an outrage!,” “What one has to hear from a Stasi-guy! Unbelievable!” “Such a Stasi-bigwig!” The following February Riege took his own life, leaving behind a suicide note in which he wrote of his dread of the hate encountered in the Bundestag.109 In November 1994, eighty-two-year-old eastern German novelist Stefan Heym opened the thirteenth legislative period of the Bundestag with an inaugural speech. He held this privilege as the oldest deputy in parliament. Heym had led an eventful life. Of Jewish ancestry, Heym (whose original name was Helmut Flieg) had fled Nazi Germany eventually to settle in the United States where he became an American citizen and a U.S. Army officer serving in Germany at the end of World War II. He moved to the GDR in 1952 where he was initially celebrated, yet he later fell out of favor with the SED for his critical writings.110 1n 1994, Heym won a direct seat for the PDS in Berlin’s city center, defeating the SPD and CDU candidates in a hotly contested campaign. Because he was part of the PDS Bundestag group (although not a party member), his address, delivered in the Reichstag building just feet from the district that had popularly elected him, was met with orchestrated disdain; Christian Democrats stared woodenly ahead, refusing even to acknowledge a speaker whose address was conciliatory in tone. The controversy continued when the federal press office refused to print Heym’s speech in its publication Bulletin, as is customary, on the grounds that this would provide the PDS with an additional public platform. After the SPD, Alliance 90/Greens and the PDS complained, the federal press office belatedly printed the speech in Bulletin.111 Since the Bundestag is a self-governing body, its majority was in a position to limit the parliamentary influence of the PDS delegation. It did so in a variety of ways. For instance, it assigned the PDS delegation (1990–1998)—as well as the smaller Alliance 90/Greens delegation (1990–1994)—the status of a parliamentary group rather than that of a normal parliamentary caucus (Fraktion). This meant that the PDS group received less money from the Bundestag; was not present in all the subcommittees; could not call for an open vote or for a vote to move a bill directly to the second reading; had less speaking time; could not summon a member of the federal government, had no right to place committee chairs; and did not have equal rights in special investigatory commissions.112 The Bundestag made party delegation size its criterion for awarding full caucus rights, arguing that if small delegations also received the status of a parliamentary caucus then this would reduce the governability and efficiency of the chamber. Since 1969, the minimum size threshold for caucus status corresponded to that of a delegation with at least five percent of the second ballot votes in the parliamentary election.113 As we will recall, the PDS entered the Bundestag under special circumstances in 1990 (as did the eastern Alliance 90/Greens). Because in 1990 the PDS

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received only 2.4 percent of the vote,114 it fell short of the thirty-four seats that the Bundestag deemed necessary for full caucus status. Claiming discrimination, the PDS petitioned the Federal Constitutional Court for status as a caucus. In July 1991, the court rejected the PDS’ claim to caucus status, yet nonetheless ruled that a parliamentary group such as the PDS has the right to be present in subcommittees and the right to have its parliamentary initiatives considered openly in the Bundestag.115 Although the court ruled that the committees in parliament should mirror the overall partisan balance, it did not challenge the Bundestag’s discretion to determine committee size and to choose the mathematical method of apportioning seats within committees. This prerogative allowed the Bundestag majority to keep the small PDS out of such important boards as the Parliamentary Control Commission (PKK), which oversees the Federal Office of Constitutional Protection and the Federal Intelligence Service; the judge selection committee (Richterauswahlausschuß); the conference committee between the Bundestag and the Bundesrat (Vermittlungsausschuß); and the G-10 committee that oversees the state’s phone taps and reading of private mail. The Bundestag kept the PDS out of the thirty-two-person Common Committee, which serves as the “Emergency Parliament” in times of crisis. With a four to four split vote, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the Bundestag’s right to suspend proportionality in the staffing of the “Emergency Parliament.”116 After the PDS delegation increased from seventeen to thirty seats following the 1994 election, the Bundestag majority introduced an alternative method of distributing committee seats that was less favorable to smaller parties. This ensured that the PDS did not acquire seats in the Vermittlungsausschuß and in sensitive, important boards such as the “Emergency Parliament,” the PKK and the committee that oversees the budget of the secret services.117 The PDS again appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe to acquire the status and privileges of a caucus, but the court in 1997 once more upheld the threshold for caucus status although it did recommend extending the time for PDS speakers.118 In early 1998, the PDS complained that since the last election its business in forty-six of fifty sessions had been placed last on the day’s agenda receiving floor time late in the evening after the television coverage had ended and most had left the building.119 The PDS also complained that it was being kept from receiving normal honors. In early 1991, for instance, the Bundestag sent a delegation to Israel that included representatives of all the parties except the PDS.120 In February 1995, Kohl invited all the members of the budget committee to a dinner of wine and pig stomach (Saumagen) at the chancellery, but took the unusual step of excluding the two PDS members from the dinner. Two Greens on the committee protested Kohl’s exclusion of the PDS deputies by refusing to attend the dinner, thereby forgoing the pig stomach and wine.121

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In state parliaments in Saxony and in Berlin, the established parties in the early 1990s strove to isolate the PDS because of its unwillingness to remove deputies who had collaborated with the communist secret police. In Saxony, for instance, almost all parliamentarians left the chamber when the PDS parliamentary leader spoke in October 1991, and the established parties refused for a time to consider PDS proposals.122 In Berlin, the FDP submitted a proposal not to review PDS initiatives that narrowly failed to secure a majority (ninety five to ninety nine) in the state parliament.123 The PDS in Berlin nonetheless struggled to find an audience for its address in parliament since, as one observer wrote in late 1991, “the CDU deputies above all have made a sport of constantly interrupting the ex-communists with heckles.”124 In chapter 2, we introduced the PDS after unification by examining its leadership, membership, evolving platform, and voters. This chapter has presented the broader political environment, in which the party would operate. It has shown that elite substitution and the marginalization of the PDS, which occurred on many levels and for different reasons, had the cumulative effect of limiting former East Germans among the country’s leaders. Although the FRG, with its strong federalism and its modified proportional representation in elections, featured institutions conducive to regional representation, the speed and manner of the institutional transfer augmented western predominance. Western Germans were starkly and conspicuously overrepresented in national politics, the national media, institutions of higher learning, the military, the economy, and even in eastern state governments. The relative dearth of minority elites, especially among the political class, would contribute to a highly charged climate in the east characterized by identity politics, mounting distrust in political institutions and minority protest against the political establishment. As chapter 4 shows, the lack of descriptive representation deepened regionalism in post-unification Germany and played into the hands of a resurgent PDS.

FOUR

THE RISE OF THE PDS

During German unification, state building imperfectly overlapped with the forging of a common national identity. Western predominance and PDS exclusion, although consistent with the extension of FRG institutions to the new federal states, stoked eastern concerns about representation and recognition in unified Germany. This chapter examines how elite substitution and a lack of descriptive representation shaped an eastern socialist milieu that stood with the PDS; how it helped the party sell itself as the “voice of the east”; and how it helped make the PDS a vehicle for regional protest. All three developments would set the stage for the party’s comeback.

ELITE SUBSTITUTION AND THE PDS MILIEU After unification, some GDR elites retreated into a kind of internal exile within a country that they had long despised as the “class enemy.” Others, many of whom had retired or lost their jobs, became locally active. Although the PDS did not deliberately place supporters in interest groups and neighborhood associations, its eastern members were heavily involved in grassroots service. To some, community involvement was a way to win the respect and recognition of one’s neighbors. To others, it was a form of party service to raise social consciousness in local communities. Through grassroots activity, former SED elites highlighted social injustice in the Federal Republic, which in turn vindicated their anti-capitalist ideology and past loyalty to the GDR. PDS members, former elites and local PDS politicians commonly participated in three broad types of interest groups in the new federal states: those with institutional origins in the former GDR; those that formed to assist and inform the Federal Republic’s newest citizens (e.g., renter rights, tax provisions, unemployment, political education); and associations that more narrowly represented former GDR elites. 69

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The first grouping included the reorganized Democratic Women’s Federation of Germany (DFD), People’s Solidarity (Volkssolidarität), antifascist organizations and Solidarity International.1 Despite the loss of state sponsorship, they managed to survive unification, albeit on a far smaller scale. The DFD had been an SED-steered mass association with 32 Volkskammer deputies and around twenty thousand deputies at the local level. In 1989–1990, the DFD lost most of its members and property, suffered defeats in the March and May 1990 elections, and faced a crisis of purpose in a unified, democratic Germany.2 The DFD renamed itself the dfb (to signify more modest aspirations) and committed itself to advancing women’s rights, especially in the new federal states. In the early 1990s, the dfd led protests against the restriction of abortion rights, the Pensions Transition Act of 1991 and rising unemployment. It worked closely with other eastern groups critical of unification policies.3 One of its leaders, Dr. Barbara Höll, was part of the PDS Bundestag group from 1990 to 1994. Activists within local dfb chapters performed social work on a voluntary basis. People’s Solidarity (Volkssolidarität) also survived unification and provided social services to the elderly. The single largest organization in the new states, it was nonpartisan, but not apolitical. People’s Solidarity issued policy positions prior to Bundestag elections, had contacts to local government and cooperated with other grassroots organizations in the new federal states. It had many PDS members active in its ranks. A second set of voluntary associations included new interest groups that had had no equivalent in the GDR. Among them were associations for renters, the unemployed, small garden owners, and those needing advice on pensions, taxes, property claims, and other legal matters. These associations helped people deal with the far-reaching changes that had accompanied unification. For instance, many easterners struggled to keep their homes after it was decided in 1990 that property that had been illegally confiscated in the GDR would be returned to the original owners, many of whom had left for West Germany prior to the Berlin Wall. Small garden owners organized to protect their position in unified Germany where, on average, far fewer western Germans had such plots. Self-help groups for the unemployed formed as joblessness dramatically increased. Eastern Germans, who had been accustomed to a highly centralized, paternalistic welfare state without independent institutions of civil society, found themselves within an unfamiliar law-based, decentralized welfare state. One can speculate whether a hypothetical North–South unification between the Nordic societies and the GDR might have demanded fewer adjustments on the part of eastern Germans given the more unitary and paternalistic Scandinavian welfare state. PDS members and former GDR elites set up and staffed neighborhood associations that offered counseling on issues relating to pensions, taxes, unemployment claims, and property disputes. They were also very active

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in renters’ associations. In East Germany, rents had been fixed, some at the levels of the mid-1930s, and heavily subsidized by the state. Apartment dwellers had chosen boards that oversaw recycling, minor maintenance within the building, and social events. These bodies generally dissolved during unification, but some of their members became active in newly formed associations that formed to represent renters. As the party with the strongest and, in many residential areas, the only grassroots presence, PDS members often assisted in the renter associations that advised eastern Germans at a time when their rents were spiraling upward. The newly formed associations became local chapters of a national umbrella association and provided their members and the broader public with advice on rental questions and property disputes. They were nonpartisan, but contained many active PDS members, often in leadership positions, who made no secret of their partisan loyalties. Community activists often expressed positions close to those of the PDS. For instance, the business manager (Geschäftsführer) of the Brandenburg renters’ association, an organization with forty-seven offices and 26,000 members in 1992, declared at a congress of eastern associations: “I imagine that school children will have to write essays in 50 or a 100 years on why the attempt at German unity at the close of the 20th century had to fail. One could already give the answer today. Because the colonial masters were so boundlessly greedy.”4 A third set of associations was comprised of interest groups that lobbied on behalf of alleged unification victims. The Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (Gesellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde—GBM) was among the most active. In early 1991, Wolfgang Richter and Siegfried Prokop, professors at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, together with the journalist Rolf Niering, prepared a manifesto entitled “For Justice and Dignity” that would become the founding document of the GBM. The document charged that German unification had led to “massive injustice” that included politically motivated “black lists,” the expropriation of eastern property, less social security for the elderly, diminished status for women, “ ‘know-it all western Germans’ who call into question our qualifications,” “psycho-terror,” increased xenophobia, and rising homelessness. Its authors declared that “We will not accept this any longer!,” “We call every fate by its true name,” “Strip away the cloak of anonymity,” “Make it all known publicly,” “We do not allow ourselves to be robbed of our selfesteem.”5 They urged all those who had experienced human rights violations during German unification to report their experiences so that they could be documented in a “white book” that would reach the broader public.6 By the end of May 1991, seventy-two intellectuals, among them numerous former faculty members of the Humboldt University, had signed the manifesto. Dismissed eastern German professors, medical doctors, artists, and theologians played a prominent role in the GBM. Its activities ranged

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from opposing alleged human rights abuses in unified Germany; fighting occupational “blacklists”; exposing the alleged discrimination of eastern intelligentsia; and opposing the prosecution of former GDR officials.7 The GBM was especially active in the area of old age pensions. It led mass demonstrations, staged a vigil, organized a large-scale conference, and, along with more than twenty other interest groups, backed a court challenge to the Pensions Transition Act that, as seen, had capped retirement benefits for Stasi employees, former GDR elites, and intelligentsia. The GBM also held press conferences, published a journal and monthly newsletter, assembled an archive of alleged human rights violations, and organized numerous workshops, conferences, and art exhibits. As part of its series Discord in Germany, the GBM issued six hefty “white books” that combined analysis with archival material (mostly letters submitted by aggrieved parties) in an effort to document human rights abuses in the new federal states.8 Led by Wolfgang Richter, the GBM was reporting a membership of four thousand and thirty-five local chapters on its tenth anniversary.9 The society had many PDS members and often adopted similar positions. Fallen GDR elites had nowhere else to turn for party political support but to the PDS. From the very beginning, the GBM cooperated closely with other interest groups representing self-proclaimed unification victims. The Community Initiative for the Protection of the Social Rights of Former Adherents of the Armed Services and Customs of the GDR (ISOR) had approximately seventeen thousand members by the mid-1990s, including many former officers of the East German military (NVA) and the Stasi. The Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support (GRH) assisted former GDR officials facing criminal prosecution for human rights abuses committed in the GDR. On October 3, 1992, the GBM published the East German Memorandum, which sixty-four associations had signed.10 It began with the somber observation that “on the occasion of the second anniversary of the formal unification of both German states, the citizens of Germany have no occasion whatsoever to celebrate or to break out in exultation.”11 The memorandum then provided a lengthy catalogue of the failures of unification. Many of the associations that had signed the East German Memorandum held a congress on October 2, 1993 where they founded the East German Curatorium of Associations.12 The East German Curatorium of Associations was an active, outspoken proponent of “eastern interests.” It organized congresses on topics such as pensions, democracy in Germany, and the eastern academic landscape. Wolfgang Richter, who later assumed the presidency of the curatorium, indicated that twenty-three associations with around 500,000 members belonged to this eastern umbrella organization in 1998.13 Although officially nonpartisan, the curatorium included Lothar Bisky and Bundestag deputy Uwe-Jens Heuer (PDS) as guest speakers at its inaugural congress.

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To summarize, past GDR supporters and current unification critics forged an opposition that included many PDS members and former GDR elites. This network of associations reached out to easterners struggling to make sense of the changes that unification had brought. It helped them cope with wrenching social change in a region that featured low overall rates of civic engagement.14 Moreover, it anchored the PDS’ presence in the new federal states and put the party in touch with the problems of ordinary eastern Germans. In this regard, it differed from the official, ritualized socialist subculture in the GDR that had left the ruling SED increasingly disconnected from average East Germans, many of whom had withdrawn to a private niche of friends and family. The PDS was at the heart of the reconstituted socialist milieu. Its elderly members, many of whom had earlier taken part in the building up of the GDR, participated in party activities. They often had ample time to dedicate to their cause.15 In the mid-1990s, 71 percent of the PDS’ district branches had more than five regular volunteers working for the party. Among rival parties, fewer than 10 percent had six or more volunteers at the district level.16 Elderly PDS activists energetically participated in election campaigns. Werner Patzelt concluded, “In fact after unification it was this active membership, highly motivated for opposition by anger, defiance and wounded pride in view of the destruction of their life’s work, which contributed to far more than only a share of the PDS’ electoral appeal. As a result, the most important start-up capital of the PDS was the traditionally disciplined participation of this membership in internal party affairs, its reliable organizational strength in election campaigns, and its great activity in the institutions of civil society.”17 For ideological and personal reasons, many PDS members would have stood by their party come hell or high water. Yet certain unification policies, such as the dismissal or early retirement of GDR government employees, the closing of university departments, the capping of benefits for those close to the SED state, or the return of illegally confiscated property to former owners, helped feed a large pool of people with free time and grievances aplenty. They comprised the party’s “social capital.”18 Lothar de Maizière (CDU) later criticized CDU and SPD attacks on the GDR’s upper service class, noting that his party “has downright driven former GDR elites (Funktionsträger) into the arms of the PDS.”19 The PDS had a strong local presence for reasons that went beyond its membership. It provided former academics, for instance, with the opportunity to reach a public audience. In 1991, the Helle Panke, an association close to the PDS, formed in Berlin as a center for the advancement of politics, learning, and culture. Helle Panke offered numerous scholarly events where eastern scholars, many of them either dismissed or retired historians and social scientists, presented research, often on topics relating to socialist theory, the

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history of the GDR, and topics in current events. Comparable associations formed in other eastern states. At the national level, the Foundation for Societal Analysis and Political Education (later called the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation) formed in 1990 as a foundation close to the PDS. It, too, focused on political theory, GDR history and unification. By encouraging scholarship, the PDS worked closely with former eastern academics, while promoting an alternative historical perspective on the GDR from the one commonly advanced. Jürgen P. Lang and Patrick Moreau have viewed this enterprise skeptically: “The communists, who earlier always re-wrote history, are now re-writing their own history. This also directly pertains to the PDS.”20 Others have offered a mixed assessment of the scholarship produced in PDS-proximate circles.21 The PDS also provided lower-level SED functionaries and dismissed university teachers, in many cases casualties of the elite substitution that accompanied unification, with the chance to achieve elected or party office in the Federal Republic. Often with unmistakable SED biographies, reform socialists and pragmatic reformers led the PDS at all levels. Educated, middleaged party leaders determined the political direction of the party, whereas the older members participated in local interest groups and during campaigns.22 Dietmar Keller (PDS), a Bundestag deputy from 1990 to 1994, described a foundational bargain that had been forged in 1989–1990 between the reformers and the remnants of the old SED apparatus. “We, the reformers, wanted to fashion a socialist democratic party. We wanted a radical renunciation of one faction’s monopoly on truth; we wanted to get away from the so-called democratic centralism. And we made an offer of peace to the old functionaries of the GDR. We said: we will take you along, we won’t push you out, we will also defend your rights, but only on one condition. . . . You do not have the right to represent the party to the outside world and to call into question the reform course.”23 This generational division of labor generally worked well for the party although the reformers did not always find support among the more hard line membership. According to Michael Brie, “Their common chronic weakness is that they can find direct backing among only around a quarter of the members.”24 Had many of the dismissed academics or downsized administrators remained on university faculties or in government jobs, they would have had less time and less motivation to serve the PDS at the local level. The PDS benefited from their education and skills. In 1997, the leading PDS deputies had a degree of formal education (more than half with university degrees) far greater that of their counterparts in the SPD and CDU caucuses.25 In comparison to the other parties, a far larger share of the ranking PDS deputies at the local level had been politically active in the GDR in both nonleadership and leadership positions, mostly at the local level. They had more political experience, albeit under entirely different circumstances.26

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All the same, the PDS entered unified Germany with little firsthand knowledge of the Federal Republic. In an effort to establish itself at the local level, the party invested considerable effort into training its politicians. It formed a task force devoted to local politics, organized congresses and a monthly forum where aspiring PDS politicians were schooled in the workings of local government.27 In Berlin, aspiring PDS candidates for office learned about local governance in workshops offered by a political foundation with ties to the FDP.28 The PDS hoped that by acquiring competency in towns and cities it would gradually rehabilitate its tarnished image in the east. In local assemblies, the party concentrated on the concerns of the poor, the unemployed, the elderly, women, youth, and foreigners, while focusing less on economic development, fiscal policy, energy policy, public order, and agricultural policy.29 The PDS represented those groups that were less well integrated in the Federal Republic.30 A 1995 survey of district party managers (Geschäftsführer) and chairpersons in eastern Germany showed that the PDS enjoyed disproportionately many contacts to renter associations, women’s associations, unemployment associations, charitable groups, and anti-fascist groups.31 After unification, local PDS branches often had provided easterners with advice about bureaucratic matters and assistance in filling out forms. For instance, prior to the establishment of renter associations in the early 1990s, the PDS had initially offered information to renters in several of its district and party offices.32 In Dresden, the PDS sent out 70,000 postcards in May–June 1991 with information about housing subsidies (Wohngeld). The Dresden PDS subsequently answered technical question about the subsidies, helped residents with the forms and, in some cases, arranged legal consultations. The party was also active in providing information about pensions. In some locations, such as Freiberg in Saxony, the local PDS office continued to hold regular office hours more than ten years after unification.33 The PDS maintained numerous contacts to trade unions, youth groups, culture associations, media, and to a lesser but not insignificant degree to business groups.34 According to a 1992 study, 23 percent of those who had start-up businesses came from the GDR power elite (8 percent) and from the intelligentsia (15 percent). Many had few options other than to establish their own businesses.35 In short, the PDS resembled a catchall party (Volkspartei) in eastern Germany where it enjoyed as many or more links to civil society than either the SPD or the CDU. Unlike the CDU, whose relations with the churches and business were particularly strong, the PDS enjoyed close ties to groups focused on social issues, such as unemployment and housing.36 Tellingly, it was at the local level where the PDS stopped the electoral slide that had set in after the March 1990 Volkskammer elections. In Berlin municipal elections of May 1992, the PDS won 29.7 percent of the votes in the eastern half of the city. It emerged as the strongest party in

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several eastern districts and finished just behind the SPD (31.9 percent) in former East Berlin.37 In late 1993, the PDS did well in the Brandenburg local elections, increasing its vote share from 16.6 percent in May 1990 to 21.2 percent. It was the largest party in Potsdam and Frankfurt/Oder city councils. Elections in Berlin and Brandenburg began a string of victories that would continue throughout the decade. In the 1990s, the share of the PDS vote in local elections rose steadily. The PDS received 14.3 percent in the first cycle of local elections, 19.8 percent in the second cycle, and 22 percent by the end of the decade. Its gains came in part at the expense of the FDP and Greens, which all but vanished at the local level.38 Because of its extensive grassroots presence, the PDS interacted with easterners outside of a narrow socialist milieu,39 developing a reputation as a caregiver party (Kümmerpartei) that looked after those needing help. Its reform-minded politicians tackled the problems of their cities and districts. According to Werner Patzelt, “There, these groups of comparatively young, well-educated elites, who already in the GDR had been wanting to fashion change and who had been shaped by the GDR without being responsible for a system with which even then they had already often been somewhat dissatisfied, now invested their commitment and expertise so convincingly that political capital was accumulated from which the PDS still exists quite comfortably in local, state, and federal elections.”40 In effect, the PDS was following in the footsteps of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) during the cold war. Barred from national office for ideological reasons, the PCI focused on local government. Like the PDS, it was aided by a large and committed membership. In cities such as Bologna within the so-called “Red” center of Italy, the PCI by the 1970s had developed a reputation for efficient, pragmatic, and honest municipal administration. This enhanced the overall legitimacy of the party and translated into additional gains for the PCI in national elections. In the 1990s, the PDS pursued a similar approach. Unification’s elite substitution provided building blocks for this strategy. As the next section shows, it also enhanced the party’s credentials as an authentic regional advocate.

ELITE SUBSTITUTION, THE “VOICE OF THE EAST,” AND THE PDS While elite replacement had advanced state building, as the Federal Republic’s institutions were efficiently established under western German guidance, it also generated misgivings in the east about how effectively eastern interests were represented in unified Germany. Concerns mounted as the eastern economy shed jobs and regional cultural differences became more evident. In the early 1990s, the initial euphoria surrounding national unity gave way to growing suspicion and mutual incriminations between easterners and westerners.

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To political theorists, when neglect or distrust impairs group relations, descriptive representation can improve substantive representation since those in the subordinate group may be better able to communicate with representatives from a like background.41 To its proponents, descriptive representation is especially useful during periods of rapid change when politicians and political parties have not yet developed clear positions in emerging debates. At these times, a descriptive representative is more likely to respond to new and unforeseen policy challenges in a manner similar to that of the constituent.42 Distrust and impaired communication certainly characterized relations between eastern Germans and western Germans by the mid-1990s. In 1989–1990, East German citizens had proclaimed “We Are One People” and supported the Kohl government’s unification policies. Rolf Reißig, an eastern German sociologist, described this as “a new social contract,” whereby eastern Germans turned over their newly won right of political self-determination to the federal government in Bonn in return for the promise of prosperity.43 In 1990, optimism prevailed as easterners awaited the “blossoming landscapes” that Chancellor Kohl had pledged would come soon. Voters did not heed the skeptics on the left, nor anticipate the mass unemployment and the prolonged, painful economic restructuring. The immense difficulties of the post-unification transition, apparent by 1992, severely tested the implicit contract between western elites and eastern masses.44 Mass unemployment and economic dislocation shook the former GDR and deepened the east–west divide. Western elites, facing challenges to which there had been no precedent, naturally drew on their own experiences and values. On the eve of unification, Helmut Kohl invoked the lessons of the early Federal Republic. “If we at this time hold fast to the fundamental principles which carried the Federal Republic from an economic nadir after the Second World War into the top ranks of the world’s industrial countries, then we can also overcome the challenges of the 1990s. The coalition of FDP, CSU and CDU has already achieved great things in the formative years of the Federal Republic. . . . We are determined to draw upon these experiences and upon this spirit in the time ahead.”45 Yet although western Germans remained confident in the FRG’s institutions and practices, their views did not always match those in the east. For instance, a far higher share of western elites (16.5 percent) believed that equal living conditions had already been established in both parts of Germany than did eastern elites (8.4 percent) or the eastern masses (7.5 percent).46 Differing perceptions hindered communication and increased distrust. Easterners often regarded western elites as out of touch, arrogant, or driven by self-interest. This cycle of distrust is illustrated by the example of the Treuhand agency, the massive holding company responsible for more than thirteen thousand state-owned enterprises employing four million people in the

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ex-GDR. The Treuhand came under tremendous political pressure as many easterners blamed it for liquidating firms it could not sell. Impaired communication only made matters worse. As one scholar observed, the Treuhand “did not really know what was going on in its firms which were being led by the old cadres often under the influence of prospective western buyers. The current market value of these enterprises would have to be estimated by western German advisors and auditors whose incentive, together with managing directors (Geschäftsführer) and investors, to mislead the Treuhand agency was very great.”47 Western business interests on the board opposed an active industrial policy for eastern companies and expressed concern about the impact of subsidies on western companies.48 In short, western Germans in the Treuhand agency made critical decisions on the future of industrial enterprises without adequate channels of communication to the eastern firms and without having shared experiences with the many eastern Germans affected by Treuhand policy. In the new Länder, the Treuhand agency came to symbolize for many a misguided, and at times corrupt, western-led unification process. Eastern Germans increasingly questioned elites who lacked firsthand knowledge of the GDR and the new federal states. Trust diminished. In 1993, 72 percent of eastern Germans agreed “the West Germans conquered the former GDR in a colonial manner.” Although 48 percent of the western Germans polled indicated that “the Bonn government is doing too little to save jobs in the ex-GDR,” 92 percent of the eastern Germans expressed this view.49 When asked to evaluate seven explanations for why so many eastern firms had failed, most eastern Germans (63 percent) believed the reason: “western Germans were letting the competition go under” to be “very important.” Just under half listed “the Bonn government rescued too few jobs” and the “Treuhand makes mistakes” as being very important. In contrast, less than one-fourth of the western Germans polled considered each of these top three eastern German answers to be very important, whereas 63 percent and 58 percent listed the legacy of communist mismanagement and the backwardness of the firms as very important reasons, although neither were (i.e., 37 and 26 percent) among those most often given by eastern Germans.50 In September 1990, polls showed that 44 percent of eastern Germans agreed fully that the arrival of western officials was both “necessary and desirable,” whereas just 7 percent thought that the incoming civil servants were not at all necessary and desirable. This far outstripped support for other newcomers, such as former GDR citizens, western German workers, and foreigners.51 Two years later a sea change had occurred. By November 1992, only 14 percent in Saxony-Anhalt approved fully of the arrival of western civil servants and economic managers, whereas 20 percent rejected these newcomers unconditionally. According to the poll, the arrival of western

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Germans now found less unqualified support than did the arrival of any other single group of newcomers, including Asians, Africans, and Turks.52 What explains the rising hostility toward the incoming westerners? In part, it reflected eastern resentment toward western Germany. Yet it stemmed from other factors as well. The “imported” officials were not always first rate; they often held different values from local easterners; as a newly ascendant elite, they operated in the midst of a bitter fallen elite from the old regime; and they enjoyed a high degree of autonomy that was on occasion abused.53 Locals bitterly joked about the “Besserwessis” or “the know-it-all westerners” who neither respected nor acted on eastern grievances. Although westerners held elite positions in many areas, the lack of descriptive representation within the political class was arguably most consequential. Robert Rohrschneider, for instance, has shown that eastern politicians were much more likely to hold the statist and socialist values of the eastern German electorate than did politicians from the old FRG.54 Deputies from western Germany stressed how the market had delivered benefits to eastern Germany on the whole, notwithstanding significant short terms problems; in contrast, eastern deputies focused on the systemic problems of a market economy while conceding its greater efficiency.55 Rohrschneider attributed this values divide to GDR socialization.56 When the economic crisis of unification struck with unexpected ferocity and endurance, eastern and western politicians not only reacted to the crisis differently, but communication between western elites and eastern masses became difficult. In the early 1990s, politicians in Bonn not infrequently made insensitive pronouncements that showed little understanding of life in the GDR, scant recognition of what eastern Germans had actually accomplished, and minimal acknowledgment of western mistakes during unification.57 In 1995, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported, “the east is without a voice—and western Germans do not even notice.”58 It is at such a time of faulty communication and inattentiveness that descriptive representation can ensure better substantive representation. To Gregor Gysi, “Only eastern German elites could have convinced to some degree the eastern German population of the necessity of the restructuring.”59 Enhanced descriptive representation might have fostered more trust between elites and the masses during this time of rapid change. In the 1990s, a few prominent politicians in the new states demanded a more nuanced view of the GDR, placed value on a distinctly eastern identity, and called attention to the plight of many ordinary eastern Germans.60 These elites, whose ranks included Manfred Stolpe (SPD) as minister president of Brandenburg, Renate Hildebrandt (SPD) as Brandenburg’s minister for labor, health, welfare, and women from 1990 to 1999, and the western German Kurt Biedenkopf (CDU) as Saxony’s minister president, were generally homegrown easterners.

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Inadequate descriptive representation facilitated the PDS’ transformation, in the eyes of many eastern Germans, into an “authentic” regional advocate. At a time when Wessies and Ossies competed for scarce resources and articulated alternative cultural identities, the CDU, SPD, FDP, and Greens were all burdened in the east by their predominantly western national leaderships. Günther Krause, formerly a federal transportation minister, complained in 1996: “When a regional party such as the CSU has four ministers in the federal cabinet and there are only two ministerial posts remaining for 16 million Ossies, anyone can understand that the east is only half as well represented in the government as Bavaria.”61 The CSU in the Bundestag and Bundesrat openly asserted Bavarian interests in the Federal Republic. Such appeals, although often unwelcome by Christian Democrats in other states, were nonetheless considered legitimate. Like Krause, the western German Bundestag deputy Heiner Geißler (CDU) remarked on the differing degrees of influence held by the CSU and the eastern CDU, while pointing to the CDU’s ineffective eastern interest representation as a primary reason for its electoral slide in the new states.62 The PDS did not have a western center of gravity because its leaders, members, and voters came overwhelmingly from the former GDR. This allowed it to make the case that it understood and represented eastern problems and values. The PDS repeatedly did just this, equating itself with the region as a whole. Roland Claus, Gysi’s successor as parliamentary caucus leader, claimed: “With me, the east sits in the first row of the Bundestag; with all the others, much further back.”63 This assertiveness resonated among voters worried about interest representation in a predominantly western establishment. By the mid-1990s, many in the new states wanted an eastern voice to articulate and represent what they perceived to be their distinct interests and identity. Noted Conrad Lay in 1994, “Because it is western Germans, who in important areas in eastern Germany bear the responsibility for the transition, not a few eastern Germans hope for decisive improvements with a change in the conditions of representation. . . . That the eastern German regional party is the PDS . . . troubles only a minority of eastern Germans.”64 By the mid-1990s, the PDS had gradually transformed itself from the voice of fallen GDR elites into a widely recognized regional advocate. In its party program of 1993, the PDS called for preserving a distinct regional identity and promoting eastern interests.65 This was consistent with the programmatic focus of other regional parties, such as Italy’s Northern League or the Scottish National Party, which will be discussed later in this study. On the sixth anniversary of German unification, the PDS executive and the party’s Bundestag delegation issued a position paper “East Germany—Challenge and Chance,” asserting widespread regional discrimination. Once again, it gave voice to the grievances of the GDR elite, singling out the docking

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of pensions, the purported blacklisting of those closest to the communist regime, the use of the Gauck Agency to check public employees for possible Stasi pasts, and the prosecution of former GDR officials. Yet the PDS cast a far broader net by promising solutions to problems—disproportionately high unemployment, disproportionately low incomes, rising rents, and contested property rights—that affected millions in the new states.66 As the parliamentary elections of fall 1998 approached, the PDS released its “Rostock Manifesto: For an East Fit for the Future in a Just Republic” in which the party, eager to secure its base in the former GDR, again turned its attention to the economic, social, and political problems of the region.67 Its tone was angry and combative. The party stressed issues of representation: “In that western German economic leaders and party leaders had the say almost everywhere, democratic self-determination largely became a farce.”68 The PDS demanded local solutions, an active regional structural policy, a public jobs program, and an end to the discrimination and expropriation of eastern Germans. With the Rostock Manifesto, it once again presented itself as an aggressive regional proponent and honed its image as an eastern, oppositional party.69 The PDS proposed institutional reforms to increase the east’s influence and provide descriptive representation. It called for enhanced direct democracy, such as referenda, increasing the power and financial resources of local government, and establishing an eastern chamber that would defend the region’s interests vis-à-vis the federal government and the Bundestag and advance the rights of eastern Germans as laid out in the Unification Treaty of 1990.70 With a focus on descriptive representation, the PDS’ proposed constitutional changes bore a certain resemblance to the Soviet model, which, however, had often showcased national groups in parliament (i.e., the Supreme Soviet’s Council of Nationalities) without giving them much actual power. In the GDR, the official trade union, the DFD, the FDJ, and the cultural association—even though they were not parties—all had a fixed number of seats in the Volkskammer. The PDS did not demand a quota system, but it did call for a third legislative chamber to house social movements rather than political parties.71 The party insisted that institutional reforms address a democracy deficit that had left easterners and other disadvantaged groups frustrated with the political system; it called for self-determination, rather than external domination, in the east. On a comparative note, regional parties regularly trumpet constitutional reform, given their voters’ dissatisfaction with the current state of representation. In its 1993 program, the party promised that in parliaments and local assemblies, “The PDS will actively represent the interests of the people in eastern Germany vis-à-vis the destructive tendency of a colonial annexation policy.”72 In the Bundestag, it focused on such “eastern” issues as the policy of the Treuhand Agency, the alleged discrimination of those with distinctly

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GDR biographies, the downsizing of eastern personnel, and the reduction of pensions for those who had been closest to the communist state. The PDS Bundestag delegation was extremely active in its first legislative period (1990–1994), and a large share (31 percent) of its engagement centered on problems specific to the new states.73 With its heavy focus on the eastern Länder, the PDS acted like a regional party in federal parliament.74 It made good use of its right to submit parliamentary questions (Kleine Anfragen, Grosse Anfragen) in order to compel the government to respond to the situation in the eastern states.75 In regional parliaments, the PDS likewise focused on what it saw as a deeply flawed unification process by emphasizing capped pensions for former GDR officials, eastern identity, and rights for eastern Germans. The party was particularly engaged on behalf of affordable housing.76 With its ties to the fallen GDR elite and to interest groups representing renters, retirees, the unemployed, and small garden owners, the PDS presented itself as a civil rights party. Many of its critics found this especially galling given its SED past. The party mobilized protest against the Treuhand, the return of property illegally confiscated in East Germany to the original owners, the capping of pensions for former elites, and the trial of high-ranking GDR officials, as well as the border guards who had shot and killed East Germans trying to leave the country. The PDS produced colorful posters proclaiming that “the Dacha must remain in eastern Germany,” and that Soviet land reforms of the late 1940s must not be overturned. The kind of identity politics that generally favored the PDS in the east was less prevalent at the local level given the less ideological nature of local administration. Absent a powerful western wing, the PDS could forcefully articulate eastern concerns. By 1994, 46 percent of the eastern Germans polled thought that the PDS was a “normal, democratic party,” even if it was not treated as such by other parties.77 In 1991, 12 percent of eastern Germans (down from 14 percent in 1990) had indicated that the PDS was the most capable party at helping families with children. This rose to 25 percent in 1994 and to 33 percent in 1998. Likewise, the share of those who believed that the PDS would be the best at reducing unemployment increased from 4 percent in 1991 to 18 percent in 1998. In 1994, 20 percent of easterners indicated that the PDS could best equalize living standards in eastern and western Germany; by 1998, the share had grown to 35 percent.78 By the end of the decade, 67 percent of eastern Germans believed that the PDS stood up for the interests of the region, whereas only 7 percent saw the SPD as fighting for the east.79 In summer 1998, polling indicated that many PDS voters valued its interest representation. Fifty-one percent voted for the party because “the PDS comes from the east and represents the interests of the eastern Germans”; 49 percent because it was “more strongly committed to

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social issues than the other parties”; and 46 percent indicated that it was because the party “does good work at the local level.”80 As the PDS surged, and as voters in the east proved more likely to shift political allegiances than did western voters, the SPD and the CDU/CSU sought to strengthen their credentials as regional champions. They directed more of their attention, at least during election campaigns, toward eastern Germany and its problems. Their representatives in the new states attempted to band together in an effort to increase their influence. Initiatives included 1) the SPD’s “Forum East” formed in 1996 and led by Brandenburg’s Manfred Stolpe; 2) working groups for CDU and SPD deputies on the Committee of the German Bundestag for the Affairs of the New States; and 3) an informal cabinet of CDU deputies from the eastern states comprised of a speaker (Günter Nooke), a deputy speaker, and policy experts. These initiatives generally remained ineffective, in part because easterners were a minority within their parties. They also allowed the PDS to assert, perhaps not incorrectly, that its success was forcing western-based parties to pay more attention to the new states and that without the PDS the region would be of even less concern to the political mainstream.

ELITE SUBSTITUTION, EASTERN PROTEST, AND THE PDS To its proponents, descriptive representation proponents can alleviate a sense of “second-class citizenship” among historically disadvantaged groups, while increasing the perceived legitimacy of institutions.81 It may strengthen ties among a minority group to political institutions and instill a sense of inclusion or ownership that “in turn makes the polity democratically more legitimate in one’s eyes.”82 This section examines how the lack of descriptive representation related to eastern alienation in unified Germany, which in turn bolstered the PDS as a party of regional protest. Easterners generally did not regard themselves as equally empowered. During the cold war, they had been de facto “second-class Germans” trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Upon joining the FRG, 87 percent of easterners agreed that: “despite unification we will remain second-class citizens for a long time.” The share fell to 69 percent in 1995 before climbing to 80 percent by 1997.83 Wolfram Brunner and Dieter Walz have argued that the persistent economic disparity between western and eastern Germans best explains why the latter thought of itself as second class.84 Easterners also expressed less satisfaction with the FRG’s institutions than westerners. When asked in early 1994 “Do you think that the democracy we have in the Federal Republic to be the best form of government or is there a different form of government that is better?” 31 percent of eastern

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Germans proclaimed FRG democracy to be the best governmental form; 28 percent thought there is a better type; and 41 percent were undecided. In comparison, 76 percent of western Germans claimed that the German democratic system is the best type of government; 9 percent believed there was a better one, and 15 percent were undecided.85 Eastern Germans also revealed little confidence in the national parliament, federal government, press, and parties. In his study on institutional transfer, Wade Jacoby shows that new institutions acquire legitimacy when people become accustomed to working with them. Yet this legitimizing effect was likely dampened by the fact that it was often westerners rather than easterners who headed the new institutions.86 There has been a lively debate in the scholarly literature as to whether eastern dissatisfaction had its roots in pre-1989 socialization or in distinct eastern experiences during and since unification.87 To those within the first camp, the lasting cultural legacy of the former GDR had been underestimated in 1989–1990, when eastern Germans were embracing the political and economic model of the Federal Republic.88 Others considered unificationrelated problems, such as high unemployment and the persistent east–west economic gap, to explain institutional dissatisfaction.89 Scholars also noted that concerns about empowerment and self-determination augmented eastern dissatisfaction with the FRG’s institutions. Detlef Pollack concluded, “The system change has made GDR citizens feel like foreigners in their own country, people who are expected to start again from scratch. The new roles and norms have been determined by outsiders.”90 Despite enjoying a living standard higher than in other former Warsaw Pact countries, eastern Germans took little pride in something that had been handed to them by others. Lothar de Maizière explained: “The Czechs designed their new system themselves, and they feel personally responsible for both its failure and its successes. Here it is different. Everything is imposed from Bonn. Even if the end result looks better on paper, people have the sense that they were not and are not the masters of their own destiny.”91 In search of self-esteem and defensive about their lives in the GDR, eastern Germans exaggerated the GDR’s achievements—as part of a nostalgia for the east known as Ostalgie—while criticizing the Federal Republic.92 As western Germans assumed leading posts throughout the country, a regional backlash arose that in part reflected dissatisfaction with the new boss from western Germany as well as a broader sense of being taken over by the west.93 As Jennifer Yoder succinctly put it, “when the institutions are not homegrown, it is important that the elites are.”94 When PDS voters were asked in 1998 why they backed the party, 29 percent of those polled listed “out of protest against the federal government” as a reason, whereas 27 percent listed “out of protest against the predominance of the west in the development of the east.”95

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Economic dislocation provided fertile ground for political protest in the east. Although most easterners said that they were themselves materially better off after unification, they were nonetheless discontent with the region’s de-industrialization, mass unemployment, stagnating growth rates, de-population, and dependency on western transfers. Many were angry and disappointed by what they perceived as unfulfilled promises and western profiteering at their expense. They also resented the persistent gap in regional living standards and wages. Under these circumstances, they looked for ways to protest the political status quo. Yet why did protest voters prefer the PDS to the other opposition parties, such as the Greens or the SPD? The answer lies in the PDS’ outsider status. As seen, the established parties isolated the PDS in parliament, refused to form coalitions with it at the federal level, supported its surveillance by federal and state offices of constitutional protection, and routinely warned of resurgent communism, especially at election time. Yet by attacking the PDS as a far-left extremist party, the western-led parties paradoxically helped the PDS make its case that the west was detached from eastern circumstances.96 Some Christian Democrats even threatened to cut funding for the new states if easterners continued to vote PDS. As a result, what better way was there to signal protest than to vote for a political pariah? After the PDS’ surprising gains in the Berlin local elections of 1992, Gysi made just this point: “CDU, SPD and FDP constantly give the impression that every vote for the PDS riles them in particular. . . . The result is that anyone who is especially dissatisfied with federal or state policies votes for the people that will most annoy those governing.”97 To Joschka Fischer, a prominent Greens politician and later German foreign minister (1998–2005), the PDS willingly became a victim. “And the PDS is now the party of martyrs in the east. And in the Bundestag the CDU/CSU set upon Gysi and his troops like a pack of hyenas and before running cameras they then allow themselves to be skinned and boiled in oil like the martyrs in early Christianity and then they present themselves as the crucified Christ for the people in the east!”98 In 1994, a poll showed that more than one-third of easterners thought that campaign attacks on the PDS were an indication that the west did not want the east represented in the Bundestag.99 Seven years later, Gabi Zimmer, as party chair, noted that some voters backed the PDS because they viewed its treatment as evidence that the west still rejected the former GDR.100 The party had encouraged this reaction among disappointed easterners, while simultaneously courting young, left-wing protesters. In 1991, it ran a large advertisement in the Frankfurter Rundschau declaring, “One does not have to like the PDS unconditionally in order to reject the methods by which it is now supposed to be ‘downsized’ just like everything that comes out of the GDR that is not hastily prepared to conform to the west.”101 In an early poster, “Head Up, Not Hands Up:

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PDS,” the party communicated to dispirited eastern Germans, among them the former elites facing dismissal or prosecution for human rights abuses, that they should express their resolve and fighting spirit by voting for the PDS. The PDS asked easterners for votes, even though the powers-that-be regarded it as undemocratic and divisive. “Be bold, no one is looking.”102 “Berlin votes, Bonn sees Red,” promised a PDS campaign poster in the Berlin elections of 1995 to those city residents looking for ways to irritate “Bonn.” In the city of Böhlen in Saxony, the PDS printed flyers in 1994 with the provocative heading: “Help Out the Office of Constitutional Protection—Observe the PDS.” It urged citizens “not to leave the observation of the PDS to the office of constitutional protection, but do it yourself” by observing the party firsthand. It concluded “you need not personally give the office of constitutional protection the results of your observations” but instead “you can entrust it to the ballot box on June 12th, September 11th and October 16th.”103 In 1998, a PDS campaign poster proclaimed “SEND A SIGNAL, PDS” and featured four hands, of which two had clenched fists, one showed a peace sign, and one showed someone giving the middle finger. Relegated to the opposition, where it was unencumbered by coalition partners or tight budgets, the PDS in the 1990s attracted alienated voters with populist positions, even if its suggestions were unrealistic. It demanded a strictly pacifist foreign policy, the abolition of the military, greatly expanded public works programs, full employment, more extensive social benefits, and cutting the work day with the goal of a thirty-hour week.104 It presented a much more favorable picture of the GDR than did the other parties, regularly denounced unification as “annexation” and “colonization,” while criticizing the degradation of eastern biographies, experiences, and values. In summer 1999, the PDS led a signature drive in the new states under the banner: “Equal living conditions in east and west now!” The petition contained familiar PDS demands, such as equalizing wages and pensions, combating eastern unemployment, and recognizing the GDR’s degrees. It concluded, “just as social justice is a fundamental condition for a humane, truly modern policy, equal living conditions in east and west are a fundamental condition for the achievement of German unity.”105 By linking equal living standards to national unity, the PDS played on the widespread perception of easterners as second-class citizens. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the PDS did not exploit the public’s widespread resentment of foreigners for political gain. On issues of immigration, asylum, and multiculturalism, the PDS was decidedly not populist, opposing for instance the bill supported by the CDU, FDP, and SPD, which reduced the opportunities for political asylum in Germany.106 The PDS in fact called for immigration. The party did not oppose supra-nationalism in the EU or eastern enlargement on principle, although many of its voters were upset by these developments.

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The PDS engaged in attention-grabbing stunts that enhanced its status as an unconventional outsider. Gregor Gysi, for instance, leapt out of an airplane and then parachuted down shortly before the Volkskammer elections of March 18, 1990. He later described the free fall as an “appropriate metaphor for the general situation” in the GDR.107 On November 30, 1994, Gysi, Bisky, and other prominent PDS leaders protested what they saw as the exorbitant and politically motivated taxation of PDS assets by starting a hunger strike. The hunger strikers occupied rooms of the Treuhand agency and of the independent commission that had been established to assess the property of former GDR parties. Once evicted by the police, the PDS leaders occupied rooms in the Berlin state parliament building and soon thereafter continued their hunger strike in the Berlin theater, Die Volksbühne. At the same time, the PDS was organizing large-scale protests against the finance ministry’s tax demands, dismissing the tax bill as a partisan attempt to subvert a democratic process that had just returned the PDS to the Bundestag for four more years. Its week-long hunger strike ended when a Berlin court ruled on behalf of the PDS in its case against the Treuhand agency and the independent commission.108 The protest took other forms as well. In November 1997, Gregor Gysi climbed onto the roof of the Palace of the Republic in eastern Berlin where he unrolled the banner “Stop the Demolition of the Palace!” Gysi, who was soon escorted down by the police and the fire department, chose this audacious stunt to protest the fate of the Palace of the Republic, a building that had earlier served as popular meeting place during the GDR. Other actions included the dropping of protest fliers from an airplane down upon journalists and spectators at an FDP campaign rally. These well-staged events helped the PDS establish a reputation as a cheeky, irreverent party that would not abide by the political establishment’s conventions. This was the reputation cultivated by the PDS’ Bundestag delegation, known as “Gysi’s colorful corps” (Gysi’s Bunte Truppe). One of the colorful ones was the youthful Angela Marquardt whose spiked dyed hair, body piercing, and provocative homepage attracted considerable attention. In fact, the district attorney’s office had brought charges against Marquardt for supporting terrorists acts because her homepage featured a hyperlink to the far-left journal radikal, which in one of its issues instructed environmental activists on how to sabotage train tracks used to transport nuclear waste. Marquardt, who won the court case in 1997, was a Bundestag deputy between 1998 and 2002. PDS critics lamented that the showcasing of a few lively personalities, such as Gysi and Marquardt, hardly made up for the legions of “gray” former SED functionaries among the party’s rank and file. Nonetheless, the PDS did project a youthful, alternative image. Because the PDS had neither cabinet posts, nor good relations to big business or the leading interest groups, nor significant political influence, it

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was arguably less susceptible to scandals. This was, at least, what the PDS repeatedly asserted. In a 1994 letter to Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth, Gysi wrote: “it is the case that I speak of the PDS as the cleanest party in Bonn because it participates in no corruption . . . I constantly point out in connection with this that it is not solely to our credit, but also a necessary consequence of exclusion.”109 The PDS stayed clear of the scandals of the mid- and late-1990s that shook the CDU and SPD. Those voters who were disgusted with the mainstream parties could therefore turn in protest to the PDS, which presented itself as a party of clean government. To return briefly to the excluded Italian Communists of the cold war era, they had benefited from a reputation for honesty that in part stemmed from limited access to the well-heeled political establishment in Rome. In closing, while the PDS’ resurgence cannot be understood apart from eastern economic crisis and a growing sense of cultural difference, it occurred within a political system that had easterners wondering why the “voice of the east” was hardly heard. As a de facto regional party, the PDS, backed by an active membership and able leadership, provided an appealing answer: The west does not want “us” as an equal partner. This chapter has argued that inadequate descriptive representation contributed to the rise of the PDS in at least three ways. Confronting a hostile environment, fallen GDR elites and young reform-minded SED members banded together within a reconstituted socialist milieu that offered the PDS an invaluable grassroots presence that its competitors lacked. As a mostly eastern party in a country led by westerners, the PDS gradually established its reputation as a credible regional advocate. Finally, as a national outsider and local insider, the PDS could attract protest votes among easterners who blamed the west for the economic crisis after unification.

FIVE

NORMALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

For the PDS, the 2002 Bundestag election would erase many of its electoral gains of the past decade and thrust the party into crisis. The roots of its predicament did not lie primarily in the realm of economics, a narrowing of cultural difference across regions, or greater descriptive representation. This chapter begins by showing that conditions for political regionalism remained generally supportive, even as the initial phase of unification ended. What had changed was the party’s diminished capacity to mobilize eastern concerns about representation. The PDS acquired, as this chapter illustrates, a new role in German politics. It had grown weary of the political sidelines and instead embarked on government participation. All the while, the established parties, led by the SPD, experimented with a more flexible approach toward the SED successor. By the early 2000s, the PDS was governing in two states and shaping federal policy. Although participating in government offered the party the prospect of significant long-term benefits, such as giving its politicians invaluable policymaking experience and establishing its reputation as responsible coalition partner, it did entail certain start-up costs. This chapter examines how the PDS, in its new role, would initially struggle to maintain its reputation for effective eastern interest representation; its internal cohesion; and its appeal as a protest party.

ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES PERSIST Ten years after unification, the economic situation remained grim for many eastern Germans. The great financial transfers of the 1990s that were intended to prevent a German version of the Italian Mezzogiorno (underdeveloped south) had not yielded the anticipated results. The eastern economy remained in crisis with rates of unemployment over 17 percent, little growth, a large outward flow of workers, and an underdeveloped manufacturing sector, especially in export industries. By the late 1990s, the eastern growth rate lagged 89

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behind the western rate despite massive support from the federal government, the western Länder, and the EU.1 Whereas the five eastern states in 2001 had 16.8 percent of Germany’s population (without Berlin), they accounted for just 11.1 percent of the German GDP (without Berlin), yet 35.7 percent of the nation’s unemployed (without Berlin).2 By the late 1990s and early 2000s, social spending in the east as a share of GNP had climbed to just below 50 percent, compared to around thirty percent of GNP in the west.3 In 2002, eastern Germany held the dubious distinction of having four of the eight EU regions with the highest unemployment. Halle in Saxony-Anhalt posted a 27.1 percent unemployment rate, highest in the continental EU, surpassing any region among the acceding states of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the three Baltic countries, and Slovenia.4 By the early 2000s, living standards in parts of eastern Germany had fallen behind those in neighboring ex-communist countries in east-central Europe.5 Specific eastern issues (e.g., capped pensions, the Treuhand and the nonrecognition of some GDR degrees) had decline in importance ten years after unification. In many regards, the east resembled depressed, “rust belt” regions in western Germany, such as Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr valley where the unemployment rate topped 25 percent in 2005.6 The declining salience of unification-related issues arguably made specifically eastern interest articulation and protest less appealing. Yet the region’s high jobless rate and its lower wages fueled anger and calls for better interest representation in the new Länder. Many easterners maintained a distinctive identity that drew on their GDR experience. Based on more than thirteen hundred interviews, the Sozialreport 2000 revealed that most easterners neither identified fully with the Federal Republic nor with the defunct GDR. Sixty-five percent did not want East Germany back but did not feel fully at home in the FRG. This ambivalence was particularly pronounced among easterners claiming to have experienced downward social mobility.7 Seventy-seven percent felt “strongly attached” or “quite attached” to East Germany, whereas 45 percent felt this way about the Federal Republic.8 Eastern Germans also held different policy priorities. Whereas in 2001 three-fourths of easterners regarded equal living standards in east and west as a very significant political objective, around one-third of western Germans considered this very significant.9 Although hardly a scientific sample, the answers of millions of Germans to the question: “Who was the Best German?”—posed in 2003 by the German public television network ZDF—provided a window on the cultural divide separating western and eastern Germans. After the 3.3 million votes were tallied, Konrad Adenauer, the first West German chancellor and a staunch anti-communist, emerged the winner. Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Sophie and Hans Scholl, Willy Brandt, Sebastian Bach, Johannes Gutenberg, Otto von Bismarck, and Albert Einstein rounded out the list. Whereas Marx finished

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first in the east with more than 40 percent of the vote, he received only 3 percent in western Germany. In the west, Konrad Adenauer far outpaced his rivals, yet received scant eastern support.10 The national political establishment remained overwhelmingly western in composition and orientation even as the tenth anniversary of unification passed. A few examples from national and state politics demonstrate this. In the first SPD-Greens federal cabinet, Christine Bergmann, the minister of women and children, was the only federal minister from the east. Rolf Schwanitz (SPD) attended cabinet meetings as state minister and the designated commissioner for eastern affairs yet did not have a vote, nor emerge as a forceful, high-profile regional advocate.11 The second governing party, Alliance 90/Greens, remained overwhelmingly western. Werner Schulz, one of its few prominent eastern leaders, lamented that “in 1998 we did nothing to ensure that an Ossie was present anywhere at all: not in the front benches of the government, not in the party leadership nor in the executive committee of the parliamentary caucus.”12 He noted, “Today the hyphenated name [Alliance 90-Greens] links a milieu party in the west with a splinter party in the east.”13 Another eastern politician lamented the lack of regional parity within the Green party leadership and blamed the party’s decline in the new states on inadequate descriptive representation.14 In a 2000 Bundestag address, Chancellor Schröder, reflecting a common western German attitude that the east was still a place apart, noted that eastern Germany has “significantly fewer small and medium enterprises than we do.” Gregor Gysi was quick to admonish, “this ‘than we do’ should not be said again. The east belongs to the country.”15 Yet as Stephan Lebert remarked on January 13, 2002 in Der Tagesspiegel, “No, the east is mostly still not present within the thought constructs of the powerful—and just this is naturally a reason for the success of the PDS. Voters do not want to be forgotten.” In Brandenburg, Esther Schröder, a PDS deputy in the regional parliament, took the state government to court in 2000, forcing it to disclose information on the backgrounds of its leading civil servants.16 In ten state ministries, western Germans held 79 percent of the state secretary posts; fourfifths of the division head posts (Abteilungsleiter) and more than two-thirds of the section head positions. More than two-thirds of the ministries had no division heads from the east. Furthermore, ten years after unification, 77 percent of the judges in state courts; 80 percent in the administrative courts; and all of the judges in the state labor court and state social court (Landessozialgericht) were westerners; more than 70 percent of the university professors hailed from the west as did two-thirds of the rectors at institutions of higher learning. In 1999, the Brandenburg CDU, upon entering into coalition with the SPD, selected only western Germans to serve as its cabinet ministers.17 Thomas Baylis reported in a 2001 study of state cabinets in Brandenburg,

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Thuringia and Saxony that westerners held eleven of the thirteen most important positions—minister president, justice minister, economics minister, finance minister, and interior minister.18 By mid-decade, however, the two most prominent western politicians in the east, Kurt Biedenkopf as minister president in Saxony and Bernhard Vogel as minister president in Thuringia, had been replaced by eastern Germans. Only a few easterners had risen to national political prominence. Wolfgang Thierse, deputy chair of the SPD, assumed the high-profile position of Bundestag president in 1998. Thierse provided a bleak assessment of the economic situation in eastern Germany in a widely noted SPD strategy paper published in January 2001. Whereas eastern politicians often had been associated with upbeat prognoses that vindicated the policies of the national parties, Thierse demonstrated his political independence by warning “the east hangs in the balance,” underscoring the grave deficiencies in the political representation of eastern interests. He argued that the cultural and political institutions of unified Germany had to grant easterners a sense of full membership within the polity and that “A new and young generation of eastern German ‘elites’ ” must be helped along the way if the region were not to become a “spiritual wasteland.”19 Angela Merkel became CDU party chair in 2000 and chancellor in 2005.20 The daughter of a Protestant minister in the GDR, she had participated in the FDJ, studied physics, worked as a scientist and joined the pro-democracy citizens group, DA, in 1989. Merkel’s political sponsor in the FRG, the CDU leader Helmut Kohl, referred to her as “my girl” and brought her into the federal cabinet where she headed the ministry of women and youth between 1991 and 1994. She became a CDU deputy chair in 1991 and the CDU chair in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in 1993. In 1994, Merkel was named federal environmental minister. As a triple minority within the predominantly male, Catholic, western CDU, Merkel generally kept a low profile. In 1998, she replaced Peter Hintze as the party’s general secretary, becoming CDU chair two years later. She was the first woman and easterner to assume such a powerful post in any of the established parties.21 Merkel, however, was not an outspoken advocate for the new states within her party. Had she been, her path to the top would have been more difficult. In the 2005 Bundestag election, although her party performed disproportionately badly in the east, she became chancellor as a result of its strength in the old Länder. In the 2009 election, the Merkel-led CDU improved in the east, yet still finished with less than thirty percent of the vote. Her rise to the summit chipped away at the descriptive representation gap, yet remained an exception to the rule. Germany’s political establishment remained heavily western in composition and outlook. Did descriptive representation still matter in the 2000s? Easterners continued to consider themselves second-class citizens and report dissatisfaction

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with political institutions. Although western predominance in the country persisted, its impact on substantive interest representation had probably diminished. Descriptive representation is especially important during rapid transformations when minority interests are unformed and unarticulated. At these moments, descriptive similarities, such as shared experiences, make it more likely that the representative will act as the voter would have responded.22 In the early 1990s, far-reaching decisions for the east were made by politicians and civil servants from the west. By the 2000s, the transitional period had passed, and eastern interests were no longer unformed and unarticulated. Eastern and western representatives alike had either demonstrated, or failed to show, a commitment to the region and found support accordingly. Nonetheless, the presence of only one easterner on the sixteen-person Hartz Commission, created by Chancellor Schröder in February 2002 to consider labor market reforms, shaped recommendations that minister presidents in the new Länder criticized for their “specifically western German vantage point” and failure to address the region’s unique challenges.23 The Hartz reforms unleashed a wave of protest that buoyed the PDS and set in motion the events that would lead to the Left Party. Uneven economic development and cultural difference across regions, compounded by inadequate descriptive representation, all pointed to further PDS success as a de facto eastern party. The party, however, struggled with the opportunities and challenges that had arisen from its success.

GREATER RECOGNITION AND INCLUSION The PDS had much to be pleased about as it marked its tenth anniversary in December 1999. Although success in the western states remained elusive, it had steadily gained throughout eastern Germany; achieved full caucus status (Fraktion) in the Bundestag by clearing the 5 percent threshold in 1998; and joined the European Parliament in 1999 for the first time. The PDS entered into Germany’s first Red-Red (SPD-PDS) governing coalition in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in 1998; the prospects were not bad for others in the east. According to 1999 survey data, more than two-thirds of eastern Germans viewed the PDS as a normal democratic party; 58 percent thought that it should be allowed to govern at all levels (including federal), whereas only 15 percent believed that the party should be excluded at every level.24 In the 1998 Bundestag election, the PDS had owed its election success (5.1 percent nationally) primarily to voters in the east, although its western vote share rose slightly from 1 to 1.2 percent. In the east, the party won approximately 355,000 more votes than it had in the previous federal election and garnered 21.6 percent of the vote. Its support in the east had become more broadly based, with the electoral discrepancy between northern

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and southern regions of eastern Germany decreasing.25 There also was now less variation across occupational groups, as the PDS improved its standing among blue-collar voters. Moreover, the party performed comparably well across age groups and gender lines.26 There were unmistakable signs that the PDS was becoming, at least in terms of its voters, a catchall party (Volkspartei) in the east. The share of its most loyal voters declined from 64 to 52 percent of its total support.27 In 1998–1999, the party’s ranks swelled in the eastern state parliaments, as indicated in Table 5.1. The exception was in Saxony-Anhalt where the PDS won 19.6 percent of the vote in 1998 (down from 19.9 percent in 1994), after four years of “tolerating” the minority SPD-Greens government in Magdeburg. The far-right German People’s Union (DVU) arose as a protest party among the economic losers in this state.28 On September 27, 1998, the PDS secured 24.4 percent in the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania state election and, in what had become a familiar pattern, did especially well among salaried employees, civil servants, students, trainees, and the unemployed.29 In state elections held in September 1999, the PDS secured 23.3, 21.3, and 22.2 percent in Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony, respectively. In the latter two states, it had larger parliamentary caucuses than the SPD. The following month, the PDS won 17.7 percent in Berlin, receiving 39.5 percent of the eastern vote and 4.2 in western districts. In 2001 after the governing CDU-SPD coalition had collapsed in Berlin amidst a banking scandal, the PDS, led by Gregor Gysi, won a sensational 47.6 percent of the vote in former East Berlin, 6.9 percent in former West Berlin, and 22.6 percent overall. According to exit polls, 60 percent of the unionized, salaried employees in eastern Berlin and 57 percent of unemployed eastern voters had cast ballots for the PDS. As in the past, the party did disproportionately well among highly educated voters in the former East Berlin.30 The PDS finished in third place in the once-divided capital city, not far behind the SPD (29.7 percent) and CDU (23.7 percent). In the eastern half of the city, it had received more votes than the SPD, CDU, Greens, and FDP together (see Table 5.2). Table 5.1. PDS Vote Share (Second Ballot) in Eastern State Elections in 1990s MecklenburgWest Brandenburg, % Pomerania, % 1990 13.4 1994 18.7 1998–1999 23.3

15.7 22.7 24.4

SaxonySaxony, % Anhalt, % Thuringia, % 12 16.5 22.2

13.6 19.9 19.6

9.7 16.6 21.3

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Table 5.2. PDS Vote Share (Second Ballot) in Berlin Regional Elections, 1990–2001

1990 1995 1999 2001

Berlin, %

Former West Berlin, %

Former East Berlin, %

9.2 14.6 17.7 22.6

1.1 2.1 4.2 6.9

23.6 36.3 39.5 47.6

By voting for the PDS in greater numbers, eastern Germans prompted the established parties to reexamine their relations with the PDS. A gradual normalization was evident by the late 1990s, although the electoral cycle still brought with it periods of greater tension (prior to elections) and reduced tensions (following elections). A party acquires acceptance when the other parties start involving it in their political calculations. They might do so by attempting to outmaneuver it, by agreeing that it tolerates a minority government or by forming coalitions with the party.31 To Gero Neugebauer, “It is conditional upon whether the party is in a position to threaten others, to make demands, to command attention. The crucial factor is not primarily party program nor personnel but rather parliamentary strength.”32 As its parliamentary presence increased, the PDS found greater acceptance within the German party system. The established parties had earlier hoped to hasten the demise of the PDS—a party they opposed for reasons of state building and transitional justice—by either confronting it or ignoring it altogether. By the late 1990s, both the PDS and the established parties broached a new kind of relationship. The PDS Leaves the Opposition With its anti-capitalism and rejection of NATO membership, the 1993 PDS program fundamentally challenged the FRG’s economic and security foundations. Although the PDS pursued a pragmatic course in local and regional politics, party traditionalists and orthodox Marxists warned their reform-minded colleagues against being seduced by the “temptations of power” into abandoning the party’s socialist principles. Yet party reformers hoped to translate their party’s newfound electoral weight into political influence. Gregor Gysi cautioned in 1995 that the party would lose its appeal in the long-term if it indefinitely eschewed governmental responsibility.33 Party reformers had additional reasons to make the PDS “fit for coalitions” (“koalitionsfähig”). They believed, for instance, that

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the voters would come to value the PDS for its ability to solve concrete problems of unemployment, social inequality, deficits in the educational system, and a lagging economy. Were the PDS to develop a reputation for effective policymaking and political expertise, then it would receive more votes on its own merits and depend less on protest voters and a loyal milieu. This was desirable because the two pillars of PDS revival (milieu and protest) appeared by nature ephemeral; with the passage of time, eastern protest would probably ebb and the socialist subculture would likely erode as elderly members passed away. Therefore, the reformers sought a sturdier mast—that of policymaking competence—that would not only give people another reason to support the PDS, but would ease the concerns of voters, especially in the west, about the party’s intentions. They believed that the PDS would acquire policymaking experience and expertise by joining governments. Party reformers further believed that once in office the PDS would be in a position to better serve and secure the loyalty of important constituencies in public administration and small business.34 They also recognized that preparing their party for possible coalition with the SPD would require some internal changes. As Brigitte Fehrle noted in the Berliner Zeitung on January 18, 1997, “The chairman [Lothar Bisky] wants to stop the party, which is an eastern party, from sulking in the corner; he wants to prevent people from settling into the pathetic comfort of victimhood.” If the PDS were to leave the opposition, then it would have to modernize its party program further and openly deal with its SED past. Yet reformers would have to proceed carefully. Eastern traditionalists, far-left westerners, and young radicals were determined to prevent their party from jettisoning its anti-capitalist program in an effort to fit in. PDS reformers sought a gradual shift in the party’s orientation rather than a head-on confrontation with the opponents of SPD-PDS cooperation.35 At the Magdeburg party congress in January 1996, delegates passed a resolution stating: “The political objective of the PDS consists . . . in making a contribution towards pushing back and overcoming the conservative hegemony in society. To form majorities this side of the CDU/CSU, the PDS searches for common points with other forces, movements and parties.”36 The party leadership selected Magdeburg as the site of its first congress outside of Berlin in part because of its symbolism: Magdeburg was where the PDS had, for the first time, ended its parliamentary isolation by supporting the minority SPD-Green government in Saxony-Anhalt.37 On January 9, 1997, prominent left-wing intellectuals, trade union activists, church leaders, and politicians released the “Erfurt Declaration.”38 It sharply criticized the Kohl government for its economic policies, while calling on the SPD, Greens, and PDS to work together on behalf of social justice. “To all three parties: you must not dodge responsibility once a majority for change becomes possible.”39 According to Jürgen Hoffmann

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and Viola Neu, the Erfurt Declaration was likely a PDS-engineered initiative to generate support for a broad-based leftist alignment that would end the party’s isolation.40 At its 1997 congress in Schwerin, PDS chair Bisky stressed the importance of the appeal and indicated that his party was ready to cooperate with the SPD and Greens to dislodge the Kohl government from power.41 Parties of the Center Left The PDS’ steady rise encouraged those Social Democrats seeking a new strategy to deal with the postcommunists. They questioned their party’s policy of nonrecognition and exclusion, which appeared increasingly counterproductive, and were open to cooperation. At this time, Social Democrats in Berlin, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania languished as junior partners in CDU-led grand coalitions. Free of any government responsibility, the PDS had gained ground by attacking the SPD from the left. After nine years of a grand coalition in Berlin, the SPD’s vote share had fallen from 30.4 to 22.4 percent, its worst postwar showing; PDS votes had climbed from 9.2 to 17.7 percent. Likewise, after five years of a grand coalition in Thuringia, the SPD lost 11.1 percentage points between 1994 (29.6 percent) and 1999 (18.5 percent), whereas the PDS increased its share to 21.3 percent. Several leading Social Democrats in the east viewed SPD-led coalitions with the PDS as an attractive strategic alternative to CDU-led grand coalitions. One such politician was Harald Ringstorff, party chair and economics minister in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, whose overtures toward the PDS in 1996 triggered the intervention of the national party. At the time, Ringstorff and the state SPD called for the resignation of the finance minister (CDU) in Schwerin after accusing her of straying from the CDU-SPD coalition’s position on how to rescue the state’s struggling ship-building sector. The PDS backed Ringstorff in the ensuing coalition crisis and talks ensued that pointed toward Red-Red cooperation. SPD general secretary Franz Müntefering, moreover, traveled to Schwerin to impress on Ringstorff the federal leadership’s hostility to a Red-Red alignment. A cabinet reshuffling followed; Ringstorff stepped down as economic minister and became SPD caucus leader in the regional assembly. In 1997, the SPD party congress in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania re-elected Ringstorff as party chair thereby signaling a flexible approach toward the PDS. They also supported a declaration stating that the SPD would enter the 1998 state election campaign without a fixed coalition commitment.42 After spring 1998 elections, Reinhard Höppner (SPD) in SaxonyAnhalt formed another minority SPD government, backed by the PDS, despite pressure from the national party leaders not to do so.43 In summer 1998, Franz Müntefering gave the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania SPD the

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green light to settle on a coalition partner of its own choosing.44 Following the September state election, Harald Ringstorff became the first Social Democrat to establish a formal governing coalition with the PDS.45 This so-called Schwerin model broke new ground in Germany and marked the first time since 1990 that the PDS governed at the regional level. The SPD’s Dresden Declaration of 1994 was now obsolete. Nonetheless, MecklenburgWest Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt were still the exceptions.46 Elsewhere the PDS remained on the sidelines. The next major test in SPD-PDS relations occurred in Berlin. The Schwerin precedent had affected Germany’s northeastern periphery, a thinly populated region known for its nature preserves and beaches. Although this had made it easier for Ringstorff to lead a Red-Red government, it limited its impact. Berlin was a completely different matter, as the nation’s capital, seat of government, and media hub. It was at once west and east, with approximately two-thirds of its residents having been part of the old FRG. As dwellers in a former “front-line city,” many West Berliners had either witnessed or grown up with stories about the 1948–1949 airlift, the June 1953 crushing of the East German workers’ uprising, and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Some had boycotted the GDR-owned city trains (SBahn); others had learned in school not to refer to the FRG because this is what the GDR leadership labeled the Federal Republic. Many West Berliners had been socialized into a staunchly anti-communist environment. It was therefore a sensation of the first order that the Berlin SPD in mid-2001 withdrew from its coalition with the CDU in the wake of a banking scandal and formed a provisional SPD-Green government “tolerated” by the PDS. The national party again pressed a regional branch to refrain from allying itself with the PDS. Worried that Red-Red cooperation in Berlin might damage his re-election chances in fall 2002, Chancellor Schröder let Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) know that the flow of federal monies into the fiscally strapped city might slow in the event of an SPD-PDS coalition.47 Undeterred, the Berlin Social Democrats joined the PDS in coalition following the 2001 election after efforts to forge a “traffic light coalition” of SPD (Red), FDP (Yellow), and Greens had failed. With the PDS now sitting in two state governments, its political exclusion seemed like a thing of the past. The SPD’s relationship to the PDS also improved at the national level. In the 1998 federal election, the PDS had cleared the 5 percent barrier to Bundestag entry. Gregor Gysi’s “colorful corps” (Bunte Truppe) now enjoyed the same parliamentary privileges of a full-fledged caucus. CDU/CSU efforts to change the rules so the PDS would not place one of the parliamentary vice presidents were blocked by the SPD and Greens, thereby ensuring the party a representative (Petra Bläss) within the Bundestag’s Presidium.48 The SPD also extended limited cooperation with the party to legislation. In

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the past, the SPD had omitted the PDS from jointly submitted proposals because the CDU/CSU had rejected any common cause with the postcommunists. In late March 2000, Wilhelm Schmidt, the manager of the SPD parliamentary caucus, signaled that the SPD was considering accepting the PDS as a co-initiator on proposals on which there was common ground among all the parties.49 Caucus leader Struck (SPD) stated about the coming cooperation: “if the CDU does not want to take part, then it has had bad luck.”50 A few weeks later, the governing Red-Green coalition invited the PDS to co-introduce a bill on a foundation for the reparation of Nazi slave laborers. The PDS agreed.51 Although the SPD increasingly treated the PDS as a normal party in the Bundestag, on occasion the PDS was still left out. The SPD had originally planned that all of the Bundestag parties would be represented on the PKK, which oversees the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office of Constitutional Protection, but it decided not to include the PDS after the party’s parliamentary caucus had tried to hire a prominent former GDR spy as part of its staff.52 The PDS was the only Bundestag party not invited in late 1999 and 2000 to top-level meetings on reforming the oldage pension system.53 In October 2000, however, the federal labor minister did convene with Roland Claus, head of the PDS parliamentary caucus, to discuss the government’s planned reform.54 In early 2002, the interior minister, Otto Schily, chose to exclude the PDS’ parliamentary caucus from ongoing multiparty talks on an immigration law.55 By coming to power in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in fall 1998, the PDS acquired a voice in the Bundesrat, the federal assembly comprised of representatives from the sixteen state governments. Some Social Democrats, such as Peter Struck who led the SPD’s Bundestag caucus, recommended that the SPD avoid relying on the Bundesrat votes of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. Chancellor Schröder, however, noted pragmatically, “in the Bundesrat one does not work with political parties but rather with states.”56 In July 2000, he struck a deal with the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania PDS on the federal government’s tax reform legislation. When a majority of the PDS’ state deputies opposed the law, Schröder met with Helmut Holter (PDS), labor minister in Schwerin, in an effort to change the PDS’ position. The chancellor promised more revenue-sharing money for MecklenburgWest Pomerania as well as a high-speed train route from Berlin to Rostock. Thereupon Holter and most of the PDS deputies in the state parliament backed the tax reform. Schröder had cast aside past misgivings about RedRed cooperation in national politics to save his government’s legislation.57 In general, the three PDS ministers from Mecklenburg-West Pomerania were treated much like others in the Bundesrat and in ministerial rounds.58 By fall 2000, Schröder took further steps to improve his party’s relations with the PDS. In October, he met with Lothar Bisky in a Berlin restaurant

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for a meal of veal liver and roasted onions. Journalists viewed the dinner as a sign of acceptance. An SPD spokesperson described the event as “completely normal,” noting, “the red socks don’t stink any more.”59 Franz Müntefering, SPD general secretary, admitted that his party’s overtures toward the PDS are “a matter of totally sober, political calculation.”60 Ten years after German unification, the SPD had embarked on normal relations with the PDS; this bore some resemblance to the SPD’s détente policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The SPD under Willy Brandt had replaced the failed Hallstein Doctrine of nonrecognition of the GDR with a policy of constructive engagement. This new strategy of “change through rapprochement” (Wandel durch Annährung) was predicated in part on the expectation that greater cooperation between the West and the East would benefit local populations. In 1999, the historian Götz Aly advised the SPD to revisit its earlier approach. “Its task today consists of dissolving the PDS internally by way of change through rapprochement.” He predicted, “In the end, the PDS will continue to wither away; a part of its local and state politicians will defect to the SPD.”61 SPD reformers, hoping to demystify the PDS, may have looked to nearby France where the 1970s partnership between the Socialists and the Communists—the so-called Union of the Left—came at a far higher price to the once imposing French Communist Party than to its architect, the Socialist Party leader, François Mitterrand.62 For the Greens, overtures to the PDS were largely moot since the former were absent from the five eastern state parliaments at this time. They were a political force in Berlin, where in 1999 they decided, after a heated internal party debate, not to cooperate with the PDS.63 After the 1999 Berlin election, leading Greens in the city called for more normal relations with the PDS.64 In 2001, they cooperated with the SPD and the PDS to topple the CDU-led grand coalition and precipitate an early election. After the election, the Greens entered the opposition since the SPD and the PDS already had the votes in parliament to govern without them. At the national level, both the Greens and the SPD rejected the PDS as a prospective coalition partner. Parties of the Center-Right By the late 1990s, the FDP had come to resemble a western regional party.65 Given its minimal eastern presence, and its ideological commitment to freer markets, it neither had the option of forming coalitions with the PDS, nor any inclination to do so. Likewise, the CSU, the Bavarian wing of German Christian Democracy, saw little need to soften its strident opposition to the PDS. Because the CSU did not contest elections in the new Länder, it paid little heed to how eastern voters regarded its stance on the PDS. Even as the PDS surged in the region, the CSU continued its attacks. In early 1999,

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Erwin Huber (CSU), who headed the Bavarian state chancellery, created a stir when he indicated that Bavaria would reconsider its financial support to those eastern states with Red-Red governing coalitions. It would not take part in the “build-up of communism in the east.”66 In October 1999 when CSU general secretary Thomas Goppel was asked about finding possible common ground between the two parties, he replied: “Extremists and democrats can have no common interests.”67 Unlike its Bavarian sister party, the CDU had a strong political base in eastern Germany that it sought to protect and expand. Ever since CDU general secretary Peter Hinzte had run the “red socks campaign” in 1994, it was clear that crude anti-communist appeals, while arguably still an effective agent of electoral mobilization in parts of western Germany, were counterproductive in the former GDR. There, voters increasingly viewed the PDS as a normal party rather than a menace to German democracy. As a result, eastern CDU leaders resisted future “red socks campaigns” in the new federal states.68 When the CDU again ran an anti-PDS campaign in the 1998 federal election campaign,69 its eastern vote share declined from 38.5 percent in 1994 to 27.3 percent. The lost election brought forth a change in the party’s leadership, with Helmut Kohl and Peter Hintze departing as chair and general secretary respectively. Nearly nine years after the Berlin Wall opened, anti-communism, a staple of the old FRG’s political culture, had diminished salience. The CDU, like the Christian Democrats in Italy and the Liberal Democrats in Japan, could no longer rely on it to shore up wavering middle class support. Wolfgang Schäuble, as the new CDU chair, and Angela Merkel, the new general secretary, understood the need for less blunt instruments to deal with the PDS, a party that had prospered during the highly charged 1990s. In October 1998, Schäuble indicated that the CDU should open its doors to former SED members on a case-by-case basis. This recommendation struck eastern Christian Democrats as odd because it corresponded to the already existing practice of many local party chapters. Nonetheless, it signaled a more inclusive integration strategy on the part of the federal CDU.70 The limits of the newfound “pragmatic realism” soon became apparent, however.71 In December 1998, Heiner Geißler, a former CDU general secretary, criticized his party’s refusal to co-sponsor bills with all Bundestag parties solely because of its unwillingness to work with the PDS. He proposed limited cooperation on specific issues between his party and the PDS.72 The reaction was prompt and furious. Schäuble dismissed the proposed cooperation as incomprehensible, while the spokesperson of the eastern CDU Bundestag deputies went so far as to suggest that Geißler might have to leave the Bundestag and the party.73 In late 1999, the federal CDU intensified its efforts to establish a normal adversarial relation with the PDS. Party leaders argued that the CDU

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should challenge the PDS on the basis of its policies rather than just call attention to its SED origins. This new course was opposed by CSU politicians and former CDU general secretary Hintze.74 Volker Rühe, vice-chair of the CDU, disagreed in an October 20, 1999 interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, stating that: “Peter Hintze apparently has the communists of 1989 in mind. This is backward-looking. We have to deal with the PDS of today.” On April 12, 2000, the CDU/CSU Bundestag caucus agreed to introduce jointly with the SPD, Greens, FDP, and PDS, the bill to establish a foundation for the reparation of Nazi slave laborers. The CDU/CSU in parliament acted with the PDS on legislation for the first time. Once the SPD and Greens had made it clear that they were going to do limited business with the PDS in parliament, regardless of what the Christian Democrats did, the CDU/CSU had little choice but to abandon its parliamentary strategy of having no contact with the PDS. The end of its nonrecognition policy resembled in a sense the revoking in the detente era of its support for the Hallstein Doctrine, a cold war policy of severing relations with countries that entered into diplomatic relations with the GDR. In both cases, if the policy had been maintained, those seeking to isolate the GDR or PDS would have risked their own isolation.75 When Gregor Gysi, the former enfant terrible in parliament, gave what at the time was thought to be his final address as PDS caucus chair on September 29, 2000, Helmut Kohl applauded warmly and Chancellor Schröder walked over to shake Gysi’s hand.76 The PDS, or at least its star politician, had arrived in the German political establishment. The PDS’ electoral gains paved the way for more normal party relations. Henceforth, eastern voters did not see PDS politicians automatically excluded from state government, shouted down in federal parliament, regularly banned from multiparty initiatives, or otherwise treated like pariahs largely on account of their SED pasts. Its increased acceptance opened the way for the PDS, as a predominantly eastern party and self-proclaimed advocate of eastern interests, to enter the halls of executive power in the Federal Republic. PDS politicians now sat in state cabinets and negotiated with the federal government in the Bundesrat. Although this did little to change the overwhelmingly western character of the German establishment, it sent a message that even eastern “troublemakers” and “SED Communists” could find a place in executive office, provided they had a mandate derived from fair and free elections.77

NAVIGATING CHOPPIER WATERS As its relations with the established parties improved, the PDS’ place in the German party system shifted. It would benefit less from regional and left-wing protest; struggle to maintain its reputation as an “advocate of the

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east”; and face an erosion of its core milieu. Since protest, regional interest representation, and a vibrant milieu had been the three pillars of its success, these developments complicated matters for the PDS in the early 2000s. The following section considers each in turn. Inclusion and Eastern Protest By 2001, the established parties had accepted the PDS as a more-or-less normal political opponent in the Bundestag, generally granting the party the same rights and honors accorded to other caucuses. The PDS still, on occasion, presented itself as being shut out from a predominantly western club. When snubbed, the PDS sounded the familiar cry that the east was also being excluded. Yet in the wake of more normal interparty relations, it became harder for the PDS to make the case that as a newcomer from the GDR it was unfairly treated. This reduced its capacity to mobilize eastern protest and to fend off charges of being part of the problem not the solution. Whereas in the 1990s, the PDS had engaged in dramatic protest actions, such as a hunger strike in 1995, and given voice to anti-capitalism, by the early 2000s it was cultivating the image of a reliable coalition partner in two state governments. In September 1996, Gregor Gysi could ridicule the German business elite in the Bundestag: “The fact is that Germany has at once the most costly and the most incompetent upper management worldwide. Somehow one gets the impression that the extent of the lack of ideas is closely connected with the level of pay.”78 But six years later, as economic minister in Berlin, he had to court them to invest in the city and coax them to stay. The PDS still pursued a confrontational Bundestag course, yet this sometimes clashed with its activities at the state level. For instance, the PDS caucus in the lower house rejected the government’s tax reform legislation as regressive, while its Mecklenburg-West Pomerania branch backed it in the upper house. Had the PDS opposed this initiative in the Bundesrat, then it would have strained its coalition with the SPD in Schwerin. Yet when it went along with the federal government, it alienated those favoring a principled PDS opposition to the Red-Green reform course. In the Bundestag, where the PDS was least compromising, the party leadership now refrained from dramatic protest. Whereas during the Gulf War in January 1991, Gregor Gysi had appeared in front of the Bundestag wearing a white armband and had spoken out forcefully against the war amidst a cascade of jeers, in May 2002 Roland Claus, as PDS caucus chair, apologized to George W. Bush after three PDS deputies had displayed a sign during the American president’s address to the Bundestag. The banner read: “Mr. Bush, Mr. Schröder, Stop your wars!” The PDS deputies were later reproached by

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Claus for having acted in a manner “unfit for democracy.”79 Claus’ apology to Bush rankled the party left by signaling that the PDS would not disrupt parliament in order to get its point across. At this time, it helped stage a large peace demonstration in Berlin against U.S. foreign policy, but when the city’s lord mayor, Klaus Wowereit, pressed his cabinet to keep clear of the protest, the three PDS ministers dutifully obliged. Once in power the PDS itself became a target of protest. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin, both saddled with tight budgets and high levels of public debt, the SPD-PDS coalitions implemented austerity measures opposed by the very groups (e.g., government employees, students, the poor) with whom the PDS had earlier sought close relations. In Schwerin, for instance, the PDS-led social affairs ministry cut support to families (Erziehungsgeld) and suspended increases in assistance to the blind. The SPD-PDS coalition in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania also kept its budget for pharmaceuticals at levels below those of western Germany; in response, medical doctors organized a petition drive against the budget—Popular Initiative against Two Classes of Medicine in the East—that amassed around 200,000 signatures statewide in 1999.80 When the SPD-PDS coalition formed in Berlin in January 2002, it proposed phasing out the Free University’s medical school and downgrading the Benjamin Franklin Clinic, the university’s teaching hospital, to a regular hospital. Protest erupted as trade unionists, doctors, university administrators and students took to the streets.81 The new culture and science minister, Thomas Flierl (PDS), stood in the line of fire. Likewise, although the PDS in Berlin and in Brandenburg, alongside grassroots activists, had earlier opposed the construction of a large airport in nearby Schönefeld, the Berlin PDS now conditionally accepted the controversial airport expansion. Upon word of the U-turn, community activists quickly turned on the PDS, accusing it of electoral fraud and “treason.”82 In fall 2003, Berlin university students occupied Flierl’s office to protest cuts planned for the three Berlin universities. Flierl and the PDS tried to make the best of the situation by claiming that the occupiers were welcome guests. Yet their hospitality not only had its limits (the students were asked to leave), but it could not hide the fact that the PDS, as a governing party in a city with a vast debt, now had very different interests than the student activists it was hoping to court. As Christian Füller reported in die tageszeitung on November 28, 2003, “Suddenly the PDS stood there looking pretty dumb. A few days earlier the socialist nomenklatura of PDS office holders under the age of 35 had met. Subsequently the slimy message went out to the protesting students in all of Germany that the PDS naturally stands ‘on the side of the students.’ . . . A few days later the PDS in fact stood face to face with students—in the occupied PDS headquarters in Berlin. The students seized the Liebknecht-House because PDS minister

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Thomas Flierl right now in Berlin is pushing through (durchzockt) one of the toughest university austerity programs in the whole republic.” Inclusion and Eastern Interest Representation The PDS had achieved success by becoming the party that articulated eastern protest and asserted eastern interests. This party-system niche had arisen at a time when easterners Germans were experiencing grave economic problems, while holding on to a sense of cultural difference in a country whose leadership was predominantly western German. Yet, as this section will show, some PDS supporters grew dissatisfied with their party’s ability to represent their interests when in office. In the 1990s, the PDS had made promises, especially regarding job creation and social spending, that could not be easily kept. The party had long linked eastern interests with full employment, wage parity in eastern and western Germany, affordable housing, expanded day care, and higher eastern pensions. To the PDS, these policy objectives were consistent with an eastern identity (Ostidentität) that drew on purported social achievements of the GDR and the “eastern” value of social justice. Given its policy emphasis, the PDS in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania headed the state’s labor ministry; the social affairs ministry; and the ministry of the environment. In Berlin, the PDS headed the economics ministry; the culture ministry, and the social affairs ministry. Yet the PDS ministers faced daunting external constraints that limited their policymaking ability. They governed in states that were saddled with debt, making it all but impossible for the party to realize its ambitious economic and social policy objectives. In Schwerin, Helmut Holter and the PDS had to scale back their plans for an ambitious public jobs creation program. In heavily indebted Berlin, the party presided over cuts, which, had they been implemented by the previous CDU-SPD government, would have sparked fierce PDS resistance. Given the severe budget constraints, the Red-Red state governments, especially in Berlin, sought financial support from the federal government that was not sufficiently forthcoming. This dependence on outside support represented another external check on policymaking. The PDS was also constrained by its senior coalition partner, the SPD, which naturally pursued its own policy objectives and political agenda. To this end, it would make sure that the costs of fiscal austerity also were felt by constituencies close to the PDS. In Berlin, those social movements and interest groups that had supported the Red-Red governing coalition soon became disappointed in its performance.83 Internal deficiencies hindered PDS efforts at effective interest representation. The PDS had entered state governments not fully prepared for

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the challenges of policymaking.84 In Berlin, it had unexpectedly assumed power after the midterm collapse of the CDU-SPD coalition in summer 2001. Since the PDS had long been an opposition party, it lacked policymaking experience and the benefits of learning by doing. As a governing party, it would need policy prescriptions compatible with tight budgets and policymaking constraints. Although the PDS had begun the arduous process of preparing itself for government by the mid-late 1990s, it had neither a detailed program on which it could chart its course, nor enough specific, realistic policy positions. The party was now “paying its dues” in an effort to acquire the requisite policymaking expertise. It lacked experienced personnel who could staff and successfully run state ministries. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, it faced a shortage of qualified personnel in part because it did not draw on a reservoir of experienced western officials.85 In Berlin, it struggled in early 2002 to find attractive candidates for its ministerial posts in the state government.86 When Gysi quit as Berlin’s economics minister in summer 2002, he was replaced by the western German Harald Wolf. As a result, two of the three PDS ministers in the Berlin city government were from the west.87 Although descriptive representation may improve substantive representation for minorities, it does not necessarily have this effect. Once in office at the state level, the PDS had trouble converting its celebrated Ostidentität into the effective representation of eastern interests (Ostkompetenz). Heinrich Bortfeldt wrote, “The party, which supposedly avails itself of competence in matters east, cannot itself do it better. This is the news and this is the experience that the people have predominantly had. The PDS has demystified itself as a normal competitor.”88 In Berlin, it could ill-afford to favor the eastern over the western half of the city. In addition to the internal and external constraints mentioned, it governed in states where it competed with other parties featuring eastern politicians.89 In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Harald Ringstorff (SPD) and Eckhardt Rehberg (CDU) were not only “home grown,” but also had publicly asserted their independence vis-à-vis their federal parties. Moreover, unlike the PDS in Schwerin, the SPD and CDU each had considerable experience in state government that allowed them credibly to claim Ostkompetenz. For its part, the PDS linked its participation in state government to recognition for the east. Gabriele Zimmer as PDS party chair decried the 2001 attempt of the Berlin SPD to forge a coalition with the Greens and FDP, rather than with the PDS, as “a decision against the future of the city and against the eastern part of Berlin.”90 Yet the “politics of presence” does not ensure effective representation. Eastern voters, even if pleased by the PDS’ inclusion in government, would soon expect more from the party than filling chairs in a cabinet room. The PDS had achieved its electoral breakthrough in the 1990s in part by transforming itself from a party serving fallen GDR elites to one

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that more broadly represented the problems, concerns and fears of average eastern Germans. As long as it was in opposition, it did not have to choose between the interests of former GDR elites and those of typical easterners. It portrayed both as victims of a harsh unification and proposed remedies, such as larger pensions or public job creation, for problems afflicting both groups alike. Yet as the PDS acquired influence in the Bundestag and Bundesrat and assumed office in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin, it was confronted with difficult choices about its priorities. When the PDS appeared to serve the narrow interests of former GDR elites, it opened itself up to charges of clientelism and cronyism. For instance, in fall 1998, Evelyn Kenzler, the PDS caucus’ legal affairs spokesperson in the Bundestag, created a furor when she proposed a general amnesty as well as reparations for former GDR officials convicted of human rights abuses in the service of the East German regime.91 Its parliamentary caucus again made headlines when it announced that Rainer Rupp, a former high-ranking GDR spy, was to join its Bundestag staff. These initiatives aroused suspicion that the PDS intended to reward its core clientele at the cost of ordinary eastern Germans.92 Likewise, PDS politicians in Schwerin and Berlin had to balance policies that served their core milieu’s interests with those that benefited a broader population. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, one of the first acts of the SPD-PDS government was to stop reviewing possible Stasi connections among applicants to the public service.93 A job creation initiative, a centerpiece of the PDS’ election campaign in this poor northeast region, soon generated controversy. The Mecklenburg-West Pomerania’s labor ministry, headed by Helmut Holter (PDS), introduced an expanded program of public works that, contrary to PDS promises, did not effectively reduce unemployment. Holter’s department became better known for cronyism than for job creation. The PDS had earlier generally avoided scandals (with the major exception of the 1990 scandal involving concealed SED monies), in part because it was not in a position to deliver much patronage. To disillusioned voters, the PDS now appeared no more principled than its competition. In the so-called “Affair of the Wives,” it became known that Holter’s ministry in 2000 had given contracts of more than two million DM to a company managed by the wife of a high ranking ministry official (Joachim Wegrad) from the PDS; Holter’s wife Karina worked for Veronika Wegrad-Paul.94 After the scandal broke, Holter was forced to sack Wegrad; the company dismissed Wegrad’s wife. Later in 2001, Helmut Holter became embroiled in another scandal when it was revealed that he had appointed a PDS member section head (Referatsleiter) in his ministry despite apparently knowing that the official had assisted East Germany’s secret police.95 Several years later in Berlin, the city’s minister of culture, Thomas Flierl, found himself embroiled in a Stasi controversy after attending a stormy meeting in Hohenschönhausen, the eastern district that had housed the secret police’s interrogation center. At

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least two hundred former Stasi employees, some of them high-ranking officers, attended a forum where Flierl and the district mayor (likewise a Left Party. PDS member) discussed an initiative to increase public knowledge about the notorious prison. At the meeting, former secret police aggressively criticized what they regarded as a misrepresentation of their former employer. Because Flierl did not silence them, he was suspected of not wanting to offend voters in an election year.96 Notwithstanding such high-profile controversies, the PDS in Schwerin and Berlin passed austerity measures that the party’s core supporters did not like. As Dan Hough, Michael Koß and Jonathan Olsen have shown, in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania a restive rank and file exerted pressure on reform-minded ministers to adjust their policy course. In contrast, the PDS rank and file in Berlin stood by its leadership, even as it imposed unpopular spending cuts.97 Inclusion and Milieu By participating in government, the PDS experienced deepening rifts among its supporters. In addition to eastern protest and interest representation, the PDS had counted on a loyal socialist milieu that had been reconstituted following German unification. Samuel Johnson once observed that the prospect of hanging wonderfully concentrates the mind. In the case of the PDS, the threat of extinction, whether through ban or electoral defeat, led its rival factions to put aside their many differences and focus on what mattered most: political survival. Restrictions for former SED members on joining the SPD, pension reductions for GDR elites, university and administrative purges, and Stasi reviews instilled a feeling of shared victimhood that forged bonds between young, reform-minded cadres and an older, often backward-looking rank and file. They needed one another if the PDS were to survive in a hostile environment. Franz Walter noted, “in the 1990s it [the PDS] prospered because it had an image of the enemy and for others it was itself an image of the enemy. Such a thing welds parties together and bridges internal contradictions. Yet the image of the enemy is becoming fainter.”98 With its survival no longer at stake by 2000, the PDS struggled to combat complacency within its ranks and to manage its internal party factions. The pull of executive office, made possible by the party’s growing acceptance, tested internal cohesion by pitting those favoring alliances with the SPD against those demanding principled socialist opposition. Participation in government created more opportunities for some segments of the party than it did for others. At a party conference after the 1998 federal election, Lothar Bisky warned of the challenge of normalcy: “So far our norms and experiences are still very strongly shaped by the time when the PDS was firmly excluded. We were virtually all affected in equal measure—the deputies, the elected functionaries of the party in almost the same manner

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as every comrade at the grassroots. We are now less and less obstructed from our societal responsibility and, as a result, ever more starkly confronted with the divergent effects of this recognition of our societal responsibility. This causes us trouble, it leads to conflicts, but we have no choice but to soberly face these processes.”99 With the party’s growing stature in federal and state assemblies, the power of the careerists grew relative to that of the rank-andfile activists who experienced something of a de facto demotion.100 For the PDS to become an acceptable coalition partner at the state and national levels, party leaders needed to develop a more pragmatic party program; to distance the party from the SED; and to show that it was a reliable and responsible junior partner in office. These steps toward greater respectability, however modest, inflamed passions within the party and damaged relations between reformist leaders and the party base. Let us consider each in turn. By the late 1990s, party reformers sought to revise or replace the 1993 party program. In place of knee-jerk pacifism, old-fashioned socialist constructs, and a sugar coating of GDR history, reformers envisioned a program that informed practical responses to real-world problems. To party chair Bisky, “Our political activity, precisely because from now on it will be of greater consequence, requires more exact yardsticks and long-term bearings.”101 Bisky reasoned that a pragmatic, responsive PDS, equipped with a convincing party program, would attract new voters, interest groups and prospective coalition partners. In January 1999, a PDS party congress charged a new commission with the preparation of talking points for a new or revised program. It was hoped that the commission would present tentative theses by fall 1999; that a draft of the new or revised program would be ready by summer 2000, to be voted on by a party congress in the first half of 2001; and that the PDS would have a new program in time for the 2002 Bundestag election.102 Traditionalists and orthodox Marxists reacted with suspicion and hostility. They valued the 1993 program’s pacifism and anti-capitalism, while suspecting that reformers would hollow out core party principles to make the PDS more attractive to the SPD. The process of drafting a program moved forward slowly amidst mutual recrimination and mistrust. Two internal caucuses, Communist Platform and Marxist Forum, spearheaded opposition to the reform positions of the party modernizers.103 In November 1999, the program commission released its programmatic theses, while a minority in the commission presented its own. The majority report signaled that the achievements of modern society, such as democratic pluralism, rule of law, market efficiency, and individualism, had created space for a socialist party to end the “dominance of the profit motive” without expropriation or revolution.104 Predictably, the party’s left-wing called for a stronger criticism of capitalism and warned of the PDS’ transformation into another social

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democratic party.105 It also rejected the majority report’s suggestion that the PDS might conditionally support German military involvement abroad under UN auspices. At the Münster party congress in April 2000, the party voted to continue working toward a new program. Given the party’s internal divisions, however, the party congress revised its timetable because it had become clear that the party would not have a revised or new program in place by federal elections in 2002. Reformers suffered a further setback when the Münster party congress rejected a motion, endorsed by the federal executive, to empower PDS Bundestag deputies to support on a case-by-case basis humanitarian military operations under UN auspices. Lothar Bisky announced at the Münster congress that he would not seek another term as party chairman. Gregor Gysi, in turn, refused to stand for re-election as the party’s Bundestag caucus chair, or to assume a party office. Taken as a whole, the Münster party congress was widely viewed as a disaster inside and outside of the party. Not only had the traditionalists triumphed on the issue of UN peacekeeping missions, but the PDS lost two of its best-known and most respected leaders. Münster showed how the debate over a new program, deemed necessary in view of the new political realities, was exposing serious rifts in the PDS. As the prospects for SPD-PDS cooperation improved, party reformers issued critical statements on aspects of GDR history. To PDS traditionalists, many of whom had faithfully served East Germany for decades, the reformers were betraying the SED’s legacy for short-term political gains. The first caused the greatest stir. In April 2001, Gabriele Zimmer, who had recently succeeded Bisky as party chair, and Petra Pau, head of the Berlin state branch, met with journalists to present a statement on the forced merger of the KPD and SPD that had brought forth the SED fifty-five years earlier. Although the document avoided the words “apology” and “forced merger,” it acknowledged that SPD opponents of the fusion had suffered grave injustice. “The founding and formation of the SED was also carried out (vollzogen) with political deception, coercion, and repression.” “Many who at the time resisted the fusion of the KPD and SPD paid with their freedom, their health, and not a few paid with their lives.”106 The statement neither advanced new historical information nor marked the first time that the PDS had spoken to the issue. The Zimmer–Pau initiative, which was widely viewed as a political overture toward the SPD at a time when CDUSPD relations in the Berlin state government were deteriorating, had many elderly PDS members feeling confused, ill-represented and even betrayed by politicians who had not personally experienced the SED’s founding. Some called on the SPD to apologize for its past treatment of communists.107 PDS members wrote incensed letters to Neues Deutschland, vented at local party meetings, and quit the party. In an effort to calm the storm, Gysi responded

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in Neues Deutschland and the party executive issued its own statement on the forced merger. Harald Wolf, who headed the PDS caucus in the Berlin state assembly, defended the declaration and underscored the importance of better relations between the SPD and PDS: “One must now address the obstacles to cooperation that are a legacy of the past.”108 In early July 2001 as the fortieth anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall approached, the PDS leadership issued a declaration that sharply condemned the wall: “The building of the Berlin Wall was the proof, poured in concrete, that the model of socialism stamped by Stalinism was inferior to the actual model of capitalism in the Federal Republic at that time.”109 The PDS did not explicitly apologize, but it did express its regret for injustices caused by the SED.110 Gregor Gysi dismissed calls that the PDS apologize to the victims of the Berlin Wall on the grounds that the wall cannot be excused. He also argued that an apology is of a personal rather than collective nature and therefore inappropriate in this instance. Communist Platform and Marxist Forum representatives, as well as the GDR’s last SED prime minister, Hans Modrow, criticized the party’s declaration. Although there was some protest among members, it was more muted than the disturbance that had followed the Zimmer–Pau statement in April.111 PDS traditionalists had to stomach an especially blunt condemnation of the GDR found within the January 2002 coalition agreement between the Berlin SPD and Berlin PDS. According to its preamble, the Berlin Wall became “above all a symbol of totalitarianism and inhumanity. The shootings at the wall caused great suffering and death for many people. . . . Even though the cold war was carried out by both sides, responsibility for this suffering lay solely with the rulers in East Berlin and Moscow.”112 Moreover, the SED “carries a lasting guilt” for its persecution of Social Democrats and other democratic elements in the GDR.113 The Berlin PDS, contrary to the party program of 1993, endorsed NATO and the “Western community of values” as part of the coalition agreement.114 Predictably, the Communist Platform objected to the preamble’s historical section and its acceptance of NATO, a hostile institution in the eyes of many party traditionalists. The party’s federal leadership did not second the preamble’s interpretation of history and made it clear that it would not serve as a model for future positions. Nonetheless, this episode again left members feeling ignored by party reformers that were willing to ruffle feathers within the party if it advanced the party’s electoral and coalitional prospects. Upwards of one hundred Berlin members quit the PDS when it formed the governing coalition with the Berlin SPD in 2001–2002, with most of them citing the preamble as the reason.115 Joining coalitions came at the cost of milieu cohesion as reformers risked membership revolts by distancing themselves from deplorable episodes in GDR history. A modern party program and a critical assessment of GDR history would not suffice, according to party reformers, if the PDS were to take full

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advantage of the opportunities of normalization. The PDS, they believed, had to prove itself a responsible and reliable coalition partner once in power, even if this caused further problems amongst the party’s base. This imperative helped explain why a left-socialist party accepted cuts in social spending in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin that adversely affected many disadvantaged groups. It also accounted for PDS willingness to accept only three of nine cabinet seats (counting the lord mayor) in the Berlin government, although its 22.6 percent of the vote compared favorably with the 29.7 percent won by the SPD. When Mecklenburg-West Pomerania’s minister president Harald Ringstorff violated the SPD-PDS coalition agreement in May 2001 by unilaterally casting the state’s Bundesrat votes for a pension reform bill that the PDS in Schwerin opposed, the PDS neither quit the government nor created much of a fuss.116 In short, the PDS went out of its way in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin to demonstrate that it was a trustworthy and dependable partner in government. PDS members and voters often reacted with dismay as their party accepted austerity measures in these two cash-strapped states. The prospects of trying to explain policies that one did not personally support had a demobilizing, demoralizing effect on the party rank and file in Berlin and in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. Why volunteer to staff a campaign stand if one would be confronted by angry neighbors demanding to know why the PDS had cut spending for daycare and municipal swimming pools? This was not the local recognition of years past when the PDS headed the principled opposition to spending cuts. Although it did provide valuable policymaking experience, participation in state governments widened the gulf between the party in power and the rank and file and thereby limited the PDS’ ability to mobilize its base, which had earlier been a key to its success in eastern Germany. This did not bode well for the party in coming elections in the two states. The Elections of 2002 The PDS began the election year 2002 brimming with confidence. It had won an impressive victory in the Berlin state elections and was putting the finishing touches on its coalition agreement with the SPD in the nation’s capital. Party chair Gabi Zimmer anticipated “the most successful year in PDS history politically.” Its goal was 6 percent nationally, 25 percent of the eastern vote, and 2 percent in the west. Zimmer said she could imagine the PDS winning 8 or 9 percent nationally.117 The PDS also expected a strong showing in the Saxony-Anhalt state election in April that might pave the way for another Red-Red coalition government. This did not occur. In fact, its number of overall votes declined in Saxony-Anhalt, even though its share rose slightly, given a lower electoral turnout.

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The PDS then proceeded to lose badly on September 22. In the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania state election, held on the same day as the federal election, the PDS lost one-third of its 1998 share and settled for a modest 16.4 percent. Just four years earlier, the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania PDS had celebrated the best result among party branches in the five new Länder; now, it had the smallest current share. In the Bundestag election, the PDS suffered a major defeat, as its national vote share fell from 5.1 to 4 percent (Table 5.3). Its eastern vote share declined from 21.6 to 16.9 percent, although its overall vote tally in the east dropped by more than one-fourth. Significantly, the party now won only two direct seats rather than the four it had won in 1994 and 1998. Unlike in 1994, the party could not take advantage of the electoral clause that waived the 5 percent barrier for parties that won three or more districts. The PDS had had difficulty mobilizing its supporters, especially in regions where it had governed or was closely associated with the government. The party also had struggled to articulate a clear strategic message, partly because it was neither fish nor foul; a member of two state governments, it was still excluded from governing at the national level. In 2002, the party itself was no longer a campaign issue; gone were the days when the enfant terrible PDS polarized the body politic. Other issues in 2002 overshadowed the east–west divide and made it harder for the PDS to take advantage of eastern concerns about inadequate representation. The PDS had declined most steeply in the federal states where it had held the most power. In the Bundestag election, its share in MecklenburgWest Pomerania fell from 24 percent in 1998 to 16.3 percent. This was the largest single drop in support (7.3 percentage points) for the PDS in any state. In eastern Berlin, the PDS won 24.5 percent of the second ballot votes cast in 2002, compared with 30 percent in 1998. Its overall vote share in Berlin was 11.4 percent, down from 14.5 percent won in 1998 and from the 22.6 percent won in the fall 2001 state election. The PDS also sustained heavy losses in Saxony-Anhalt, where it had tolerated an SPD-led minority government for eight years. Its second ballot vote share fell decreased

Table 5.3. PDS Vote Share (Second Ballot) in Bundestag Elections, 1994–2002

1994 1998 2002

National Vote, %

Former West Germany, %

Former East Germany, %

4.4 5.1 4.0

1.0 1.2 1.1

19.8 21.6 16.9

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from 20.7 percent in 1998 to 14.4 percent in 2002. The party’s troubles in Berlin, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt proved especially costly because it was in these areas that the PDS had hoped to win three districts outright. Yet other than in two Berlin districts, it fell short in all its targeted districts, ensuring that it would not re-enter the Bundestag as a parliamentary group. The PDS had to deal with damaging publicity during the election campaign. In late July 2002, Gregor Gysi, the PDS’ most popular figure, resigned unexpectedly as the Berlin economics minister following revelations that he had improperly used frequent flier miles accrued on public business. No one was quite sure why Gysi was leaving office since the infringement was, by all accounts, not particularly serious. Gysi’s departure rattled the PDS just weeks before the federal election. He was the feisty, intelligent politician from the ex-GDR who had succeeded in a western establishment by standing up for the east and the interests of the socially disadvantaged. “Gregor Gysi, as a regular guest seated on the couch of Sabine Christiansen [a popular TV talk show hostess], did in fact symbolize eastern heritage, but in the first instance self-assertion in the west.”118 Without Gysi, the PDS lacked a prominent politician in the Berlin state government. Support for the PDS plummeted in the capital after he resigned. In July, 13 percent of Berlin voters indicated that they would cast ballots for the PDS in the Bundestag elections; by August, 8 percent were indicating such an intention.119 The PDS now lacked a charismatic alternative to Gysi and settled on a “quartet” of four largely unknown party leaders.120 This put the PDS at a distinct disadvantage vis-à-vis the Social Democrats who were led by Schröder and the Greens who rode the long coattails of Joschka Fischer, the popular foreign minister. The PDS struggled to energize its eastern base during the election campaign. An estimated 260,000 voters who had voted for the party in 1998 stayed home in 2002. This was more than for any other party.121 The PDS reformers’ efforts to modernize their party had turned off traditionalists who objected to the party’s more critical portrayal of the GDR. To Paul Schäfer, “the share of those who view the PDS above all as a political and cultural home has not become larger, but their estrangement from the party has increased.”122 The party suffered heavy losses in the previous administrative centers where many of the GDR’s Dienstklasse (upper service class) no longer supported it.123 Forged under the SED and renewed during unification, the inter-generational coalition between elderly traditionalists in the base and younger reformers in the leadership increasingly came undone in the early 2000s. The core milieu’s growing alienation deprived the PDS of its greatest asset: a committed and motivated base. Although no longer an outcast, the PDS remained on the outside looking in. Both the SPD and Greens had ruled out a coalition with the

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party or a minority government propped up by its votes. The voters had a choice between two rival blocs: SPD-Greens and CDU/CSU-FDP. Some PDS tacticians tried to make their party appear relevant by indicating that it might help Red-Green to power. This offer, however, was frivolous in light of Schröder’s categorical rejection of PDS support in parliament. Likewise, although Gabi Zimmer argued that a vote for the PDS would best stop Edmund Stoiber (CSU) from becoming chancellor, it was unclear why a vote for a party that was to be excluded from the next government would more effectively keep the center-right at bay than a vote for the governing center-left coalition.124 In the election, 290,000 voters left the PDS for the SPD.125 In 2002, the PDS itself was no longer a central issue in the election campaign. Whereas earlier it had campaigned under the slogan “Change begins with opposition,” it now presented itself as the “force on the left” (die linke Kraft) that would exert pressure on the SPD. The party featured the Reichstag dome, a symbol of parliamentary power, on its campaign poster, implying that the PDS was an established presence. At the same time, the CDU/CSU no longer ran a high profile “red socks” campaign warning of an SPD-PDS coalition at the national level. Instead, the CDU/CSU attacked the failings of the Red-Green government, while the SPD and Greens focused on Stoiber and largely ignored the PDS. No longer in the limelight, the PDS struggled to receive any significant media coverage at all.126 Other issues overshadowed the east–west conflict. For the first time since 1980, when Franz-Josef Strauss had run against Helmut Schmidt (SPD), the CDU/CSU placed a CSU politician, Edmund Stoiber, atop the ticket. This was risky because the CSU was widely identified with the interests and culture of Bavaria, in particular, and southern Germany more generally. As Bavarian minister president, Stoiber had aggressively articulated the cultural and economic concerns of his home state. For instance, he had criticized a court ruling to remove crucifixes from public schools, and complained about financial transfers from the rich federal states like Bavaria to poorer states in eastern and northern Germany. The SPD ran an effective anti-Stoiber campaign in the economically needy, largely secular eastern Germany. Easterners, who might have otherwise voted for the PDS, saw Schröder and the SPD as the lesser evil to a Stoiber-led center-right government. The final election results showed a pronounced north–south divide. The CDU/CSU dominated in southern Germany, whereas the SPD prevailed in the north and east.127 The east–west regional divide was now less apparent. Two unexpected campaign issues undermined the PDS’ efforts to present itself as the most effective eastern interest representative. The first was whether Germany should assist the United States if it invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. Chancellor Schröder vociferously ruled out German military involvement in a U.S.-led operation in Iraq. His anti-war stance

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was especially popular in eastern Germany. Whereas the PDS had earlier presented itself as the sole anti-war party during the Kosovo war of 1999 and the Afghanistan war of 2001, it was suddenly deprived of this niche. On issues such as social justice and opposition to military involvement, Schröder was tacking leftward during the 2002 campaign to the detriment of the PDS. “The PDS occupied these positions like one would occupy a vacated apartment. However it resided as an unprotected sub-tenant that might be shown the door.”128 The PDS ceded to the SPD further ground in the wake of the epoch flooding of the Elbe River in August 2002. During this crisis Schröder acted decisively, showing a willingness to use state resources to alleviate the suffering of ordinary citizens struck by catastrophe. Eastern Germans identified with his statist response.129 They also experienced western charity and solidarity because many reached out to help eastern flood victims. This renewed (and short-lived) sense of national unity dampened enthusiasm for the PDS’ regional populism. The party had little chance to demonstrate its own leadership as an opposition party at the federal level and in the regions hit hardest by the flooding. It again struggled to make the headlines. The PDS in Crisis A familiar pattern has characterized intraparty relation since the early 1990s. As elections neared, the PDS’ rival wings brokered an uneasy truce; once the disciplining effects of elections receded, then factionalism returned with a vengeance. The highly successful election cycle of 1998–1999, for instance, set the stage for the contentious Münster party congress in 2000. This pattern reappeared in 2002. A defeat in Bundestag elections, moreover, left the party with neither shared glory nor the extra resources to smooth over its factional differences. Mutual recriminations became the order of the day as the party experienced its worst crisis since unification. Soon after the election, the PDS held a party congress in the Thuringian city of Gera. Gabi Zimmer, who was re-elected as party chair, later reflected that it was a mistake to have held the party congress so soon after the election defeat.130 In Gera, traditionalists and orthodox socialists blamed the PDS’ defeat on its failure to maintain a clear socialist profile. They lamented a weakening of core socialist principles and the pragmatism (dismissed as opportunism) of PDS ministers in state government. For the party left, the PDS should have been less preoccupied with forming governments and courting Social Democrats, but rather, as a socialist opposition, it should have worked with social movements to transform society. Zimmer, not known as a riveting speaker, delivered a rousing address in which she warned the PDS against becoming an “eastern German social democratic project” and urged it to be

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an “opposition that shapes” (gestaltende Opposition). In a scarcely veiled jab at her colleagues in Berlin and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, she declared that “unconditional participation in government, unconditional support for minority governments, agreement at any price—that is opportunism!”131 On the defensive, prominent party reformers refused to stand for election at the Gera conference, and individuals, like Roland Claus, who did run found little support. The national leadership tilted left at Gera.132 Political gridlock ensued as the party’s new leadership emerged internally divided and at odds with powerful state-level reformers. Diether Dehm, deputy chair and prominent left-wing representative in the newly elected executive, caused a furor when he was accused of directing that Dietmar Bartsch, former PDS business manager and party centrist, be searched for documents by a watchman as he left the party headquarters. The resulting scandal not only brought back bad memories of past SED leaders abusing their authority but showcased a fractured, inward-looking party.133 To some, the lost election and its chaotic aftermath heralded the PDS’ demise. The managing director of the polling institute Forsa concluded that “there is certainly much to suggest that what the election analysts had expected right after unification will—with the corresponding time delay—henceforth commence: namely, that the PDS gradually exits the party system.”134 Chancellor Schröder stated that the PDS was disintegrating and offered its reform-minded members a “new political home” in the SPD.135 Gysi, who had contributed to the debacle by abruptly resigning from the Berlin government in 2002, chided those at Gera who had “voted for hazy visions and a couple of principles and against pragmatism. This too must lead to the party’s gradual irrelevance.”136 The PDS faced an uncertain future with limited national presence. It now had only two representatives in the Bundestag—neither initially equipped with regular telephone connections or even proper chairs, nor with the privileges and rights of those in a caucus.137 Moreover, as its membership continued to shrink,138 it had to make do with fewer resources and less patronage, while its ministers in state government struggled with tight budgets and, at times, a restive base. By spring 2003, it had become clear to Gabi Zimmer that she could no longer work with the federal executive elected in Gera. She singled out party manager Uwe Hiksch and PDS vicechair Diether Dehm—both western Germans on the left—for sharp criticism, and, in the case of Hiksch, charges of disloyalty.139 Zimmer agreed that an extraordinary party congress should elect a new leadership in June 2003. Promising to move the PDS forward, Lothar Bisky, who had served as party chair in the 1990s, ran again. Both Zimmer and the party reformers backed his candidacy. Bisky and a new executive were elected by the Berlin congress in June 2003, thereby settling the post-Gera leadership crisis.

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A new platform followed. After nearly five years of wrangling, the PDS approved a party program in Chemnitz in October 2003 that positioned the party further to the right than had its 1993 program. The party still called for socialism, yet it had become a distant objective. The party still opposed capitalism yet recognized that “entrepreneurial activity and the profit motive are important requirements for innovation and economic productivity.”140 The PDS called itself a “socialist civil rights party” and condemned economic neoliberalism and American foreign policy, asserting that: “The United States government pursues the geo-strategic goal of world hegemony with its imperialistic policies, its economic and political blackmailing, and its wars of aggression.”141 The party remained highly critical of unification policy, lamenting that the GDR’s “historical legacy” had been disregarded; that the experiences of eastern Germans were ignored; that easterners confronted “growing social inequality and political and legal discrimination”; and that unification had demanded the “unilateral conformity” of the east to the west.142 The party program maintained that easterners were more critical of capitalism and committed to social justice. On their behalf, it demanded equal wages, working hours, and pensions.143 Moreover, the PDS professed to have “a special responsibility for the east that derives from the circumstances of history” and underscored its service to former elites and non-elites alike: “We have confronted the political persecution, exclusion and discrimination of eastern Germans at all levels.”144 To party chair Bisky, the new program sent the signal that the PDS “again stands as the party of the social question in public political debate.”145 By fall 2003, the PDS had mastered its internal crisis. Reformers, headed by the experienced Bisky, had forged a functioning, cohesive party executive and had put in place an updated political program that positioned the party as reform-socialist. Despite these steps, the PDS still languished at the 4 percent mark in polls and its prospects of reentering the Bundestag, one of its central goals, remained uncertain. As a party of regional interest representation and protest, the PDS had staged its comeback against the backdrop of economic crisis, cultural difference in the east, and disproportionately few eastern leaders. These conditions cleared the way for the PDS, as a national outsider with a strong grassroots presence, to rally easterners who felt short-changed in unified Germany. This chapter has shown that as the PDS and its rivals began normalizing relations by the late 1990s, the PDS stumbled. Its previous formula for success—the mobilization of regional protest, the promise of assertive, effective eastern interest representation, and a cohesive, mobilized milieu—proved less effective as the PDS began to join the political establishment. Internal divisions, previously papered over to ensure survival in a hostile environment, grew in intensity, adding to the party’s crisis.

SIX

FROM PDS TO LEFT PARTY

This chapter examines how the PDS, a de facto eastern party in the 1990s, became the Left Party and in the process achieved electoral success in the west. Although conditions for regional protest and interest representation persisted, providing the party with a favorable environment in the former GDR, a second dynamic would contribute to its western resurgence. Despite its past futility in the old Länder, the PDS in the early 2000s still attempted to woo western opponents of Schröder’s centrist Red-Green government. Yet its representation of, and close identification with, eastern interests and cultural markers turned off most westerners. After four years as the sole leftwing opposition in the Bundestag, the PDS had managed to win a scant 1.2 percent of the western vote in the 2002 general election. Party reformers still held out hope that they could fill what they saw as a widening party system gap for a left-socialist party. In June 2003, party chief Lothar Bisky reaffirmed what he regarded as the party’s obligation to represent interests neglected by the established parties: Dear comrades, the party–political representation gap is large for millions of people. The state of this society and the state of politics in this country call for, at the very least, one party that does not say “there are no alternatives”; for one party that says that social justice and social security are modern, humane and provide the conditions for freedom; and for one party that does not derive its policy from the material interests (Gewinninteressen) of the economy, the corporations and the banks, but rather from the interests, hopes, and demands of the people.1 As this chapter illustrates, the opportunity for a left-socialist party did increase as the Schröder government enacted controversial economic reforms in

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2003–2004. The ensuing protest buoyed the PDS in the east, but, with its regional center of gravity, outside help was needed in the west. This took the form of dissident Social Democrats (most notably, Oskar Lafontaine) and trade union functionaries rallying behind the newly created WASG. By backing the PDS in the 2005 Bundestag election, the WASG helped the party, now renamed Left Party.PDS, secure its long elusive western breakthrough. Although uneven economic development, a sense of cultural difference, and a lack of descriptive representation continued to sustain the PDS in the east, these conditions did not account for its newfound prosperity in western Germany. By the mid-2000s, the party and key allies had begun to tap into western frustration with the Schröder government. The so-called vacuum thesis, as discussed in chapter 1, foresaw just this development. As the SPD and Greens shifted rightward, the PDS would win over disillusioned left-wing voters by occupying space in the party system that the governing coalition’s centrist policies had created. This hypothesis, long a strategic outlook among party reformers, was vindicated by the 2005 Bundestag election.2 In the ensuing four years, the Left Party made further inroads among center-left constituencies as the SPD languished in grand coalition with the CDU/CSU, culminating in its stellar 2009 Bundestag election result of 11.9 percent nationally. This chapter explores the PDS’ electoral resurgence, its merger with the WASG, and the Left Party. How new is the Left and what are its prospects? Does the lack of descriptive representation still matter in German party politics? To answer these questions, we analyze the Left’s members, leaders, voters, and program, as well as its place in the evolving German party system.

AGENDA 2010 AND THE PDS RESURGENCE After its 2002 election victory, the SPD-Green government embarked on ambitious reforms with unforeseen political consequences. In March 2003, Chancellor Schröder delivered a televised Bundestag speech in which he proposed his government’s “Agenda 2010,” a set of measures intended to revitalize the German economy by paring welfare state entitlements, reforming health care and pensions, and loosening labor market regulations. He stressed that structural reforms were imperative and, in language unusually blunt for a Social Democratic politician, that “no one will be allowed to sit back at the country’s expense.”3 Related Agenda 2010 legislation, known as the Hartz laws, drew on the proposals of an expert commission chaired by Volkswagen executive Peter Hartz. A particularly controversial measure, known as Hartz IV, shortened the period in which full unemployment benefits would be paid out. It combined long-term unemployment and welfare benefits within a single program that decreased benefits, toughened penalties

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to induce unemployed to fill open positions, and linked benefits to need. With CDU/CSU and FDP upper-house support, the Schröder government implemented policies in 2003 and 2004 that introduced a neoliberal approach to welfare state restructuring.4 Left Social Democrats and trade union activists viewed Agenda 2010 as a betrayal of the principle of solidarity with society’s most vulnerable. Disillusioned SPD members quit their party in record numbers; the SPD lost more than 43,000 members in 2003 (a decline of 6.2 percent) and nearly 45,000 in 2004 (a decline of 6.9 percent) as opposition to Agenda 2010 mounted.5 Middle-aged men in their fifties, in particular, abandoned the party.6 Voters turned their backs on the SPD in a series of state elections that gave the center-right parties the control of the Bundesrat. The SPD won 21 percent in the 2004 European Parliament election, its worst showing ever in a nationwide election. Trade union members and left-wing intellectuals mobilized to counter the Red-Green government’s policy agenda. In early 2004, left-wing activists, many of whom had been associated with the PDS in western Germany, formed “Electoral Alternative” (Wahlalternativ), conceived of as a populist, welfare statist alternative to the SPD and PDS.7 At the same time, trade union functionaries and others in southern Germany founded the association “Labor and Social Justice” (Arbeit und Sozialgerechtigkeit, ASG). These two Agenda 2010 foes joined forces in “Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice,” which in late 2004 decided to become a political party.8 In January 2005, the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) entered the party political fray, casting itself as the German welfare state’s staunchest defender and calling for demand-side economic policies, an end to Hartz IV, more progressive taxation and no German military engagements abroad. Rooted in the western trade union milieu, the WASG—whose fourteen-person executive committee contained one easterner—appeared more threatening to the SPD than the PDS.9 Its very formation though was further proof that the PDS had failed to close the deal with western Germans on the left. Former Social Democrats, trade union functionaries and intellectuals in the WASG were put off by the PDS’ organizational weakness in the western states, its ties to former SED cadres, and its governmental record in Berlin and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.10 At first glance, the WASG seemed destined to undercut PDS efforts in the west, by all accounts necessary if the PDS was to clear the five percent barrier in the next federal election. Hartz IV sparked resistance in the new Länder as well. Eastern politicians lamented that the Hartz Commission was proposing reforms that did not fit eastern realities. In summer 2002, they questioned its emphasis on streamlining the job referral process; in the east, the number of open positions was negligible in comparison to those seeking work.11 Two years later, they warned

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of negative Hartz IV consequences in light of high structural unemployment. Others asked why easterners were to receive less unemployment support than their western cousins. When the Bundesrat passed the Hartz IV legislation on July 9, 2004, the eastern states either abstained or voted against it. At this time, the PDS emerged as a leading Hartz IV opponent. Trade union leaders, church officials, and anti-globalization activists joined with its members to oppose the law. Although it did not orchestrate Monday evening protests (Montagsdemonstrationen) that spread across Germany in August and September 2004, the PDS actively supported the movement. The Monday marches were meant to invoke the spirit of the heroic fall 1989 demonstrations in Leipzig that had shaken the GDR to its core. In summer 2004, hundreds of thousands of easterners, many of them affected by the new regulations, participated in the marches. The PDS printed a combative poster, “Hartz IV: that is poverty by law—Do away with it!” and dismissed charges that it was fueling an eastern populism from which the far right would also profit. The anti-Hartz IV groundswell revived the PDS’s electoral fortunes. In June 2004, it received 6.1 percent of the vote in European Parliament elections, winning 25.2 percent in eastern Germany. In this election, it finished first in Brandenburg with more than 30 percent of the vote, capturing at least 2 percent in five western states.12 Gysi attributed his party’s strong showing to inadequate eastern interest representation in a parliament with only two PDS members: “Evidently the people no longer accept that their interests are not represented in the Bundestag.”13 On June 13, the PDS won 26.1 percent in Thuringia state elections, dwarfing the SPD’s 14.5 percent. In September state elections, the PDS won 28 percent in Brandenburg and 23.6 percent in Saxony—high water marks. For a party whose very survival was threatened just two years earlier, the PDS finished the 2004 election cycle with its best performance to date (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1. PDS/Left Vote Share (Second Ballot) in Eastern State Elections in 2000s

Berlin, % 2001 22.6 2002 2004 2006a 13.4 2009b a b

MecklenburgBrandenburg, West SaxonyThuringia, % Pomerania, % Saxony, % Anhalt, % % 16.4 28.0

20.4 23.6

16.8 27.2

Contested as Left Party.PDS Contested as the Left

26.1 24.1

20.6

27.4

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Yet the news was not all good for the PDS. One fly in the ointment was its vote share in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin in the European Parliament election. As a governing party in both regions, the PDS did not benefit from the groundswell that was lifting its fortunes elsewhere. The Brandenburg and Saxony state elections revealed that the PDS had not been the sole beneficiary of the protest climate. In Saxony, the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD)—with ties to the violent skinhead movement—won nearly one-tenth of the vote; in Brandenburg, the anti-foreigner DVU garnered more than 6 percent.14 These right-wing advances cast doubt on whether the PDS, as its outsider role faded, would remain the primary address for eastern protest. The specter of right-wing extremism loomed. Significantly, the PDS had not capitalized on massive frustration with the SPD-Green government in the west. Even as the SPD faltered badly in the European Parliament election, the PDS managed a modest 1.7 percent in the former West Germany. The PDS won 2.3 percent in Saarland regional elections on September 5, something of a success, but far from the 5 percent needed to enter parliament. By early 2005, protest was subsiding and the PDS, according to surveys, again had dipped below the critical 5 percent mark nationally.15 Voters in the traditionally SPD bastion of North Rhine-Westphalia headed to the polls in May 2005. For nearly four decades, the SPD had governed this populous, industrial region, whose eighteen million residents outnumbered those in all five eastern Länder. Unpopular SPD economic and social policies, however, had revitalized CDU fortunes and given rise to the WASG, which was competing for the first time. Despite its limited resources and no well-known candidates, the WASG won 2.2 percent of the vote (circa 182,000 overall votes), which was more than twice that of the PDS, whose share had fallen from 1.1 percent in 2000 to 0.9 percent (with approximately 73,000 votes received.) The SPD was the big loser, winning 37.1 percent compared with 44.8 percent for the CDU. What followed came as a shock to almost everyone. Chancellor Schröder called for federal elections to be held in September 2005, a full year ahead of schedule. This was surprising because by all accounts the SPD stood to lose badly. It had after all just been trounced in its North Rhine-Westphalia stronghold.

FROM PDS TO LEFT PARTY.PDS With Agenda 2010, the SPD had shifted rightward and created opportunities for a party to court disillusioned center-left voters. Although the PDS rebounded in the east, it confronted cultural barriers in the west that made a breakthrough there unlikely. The WASG was poised to receive western protest votes, but stood almost no chance of overcoming the 5 percent

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mark in the upcoming Bundestag election. In light of this situation, Oskar Lafontaine announced on May 24, 2005 that he was leaving the SPD and would run for the Bundestag if the WASG and PDS joined forces. His proposition raised eyebrows. After all, Lafontaine had served for many years as the SPD minister president in the western state of Saarland, had been the SPD chancellor candidate in 1990, had led the party as federal chair when it came to power in Germany’s first SPD-Green coalition, and had sat as a powerful finance minister in the first Red-Green cabinet. In March 1999, he dramatically quit the federal government, relinquishing the SPD chair and his Bundestag seat. He became a harsh critic of Chancellor Schröder and a self-proclaimed champion of core social democratic values. Lafontaine cemented his break with the SPD by speaking out against Hartz IV at a Monday demonstration in Leipzig in late August 2004. When Oskar Lafontaine returned to active politics in 2005, he was accused of being driven by a desire to exact revenge on Gerhard Schröder. Many had not forgiven him for the way he had abruptly left office in early 1999 or for his subsequent attacks on the Red-Green government that he had helped bring to power. To his critics, his welfare state defense and support for a more regulated capitalism embodied traditional left-wing positions that were out of place in an age of globalization. Although neither a darling of the mainstream media nor of the political establishment, Lafontaine gave the WASG an energetic, prominent front man with a sizable national following, especially among the unemployed and prospective losers of welfare state reform. Nicknamed Napoleon from the Saar, he personally embodied the deep gulf that separated Schröder’s SPD from its left-wing critics. In coordination with Lafontaine, Gregor Gysi also announced his intention to run for the Bundestag and expressed strong support for PDS-WASG partnership. With his quick wit and rhetorical flair, Gysi remained among the best known and most popular of all PDS politicians. However, he too returned to political life as a controversial figure. Like Lafontaine, he faced charges of being a quitter who had sidestepped responsibility when the going got tough. Recall that Gysi in August 2002 had unexpectedly resigned as economics minister in the Berlin government. He resumed work as a lawyer, but then experienced serious health problems that included heart attacks and brain surgery. On June 3, after consulting his doctors, he announced that he would contest an electoral district in eastern Berlin in the coming federal election and called for PDS-WASG partnership.16 Suspicion and mutual recriminations marked ensuing PDS-WASG talks that began in late May. The two parties, each with its own conception of an ideal alliance, struggled to reach an agreement. WASG leaders had initially envisioned a new left party, fearing that otherwise their small band would be overwhelmed by the larger, richer, and more established PDS. They did not merely want a few spots on PDS party lists, nor did they want to run under

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its name, which in western Germany was widely associated with left-wing extremism. In turn, the PDS leaders, who entered the negotiations with a much stronger hand, argued that there was simply not enough time to form a new party. They also pointed out that Germany’s election laws did not permit joint lists; if the PDS attempted to sidestep the law by giving the WASG parity on its lists, then it risked disqualification. Any name change might damage the PDS brand in the east. Complicating matters further, each party contained members wary of the venture. In the WASG, many western trade unionists and former Social Democrats had little in common with the retired SED functionaries in the PDS and had no use for the party’s eastern regionalism or its revisionist views on the GDR. In addition, the WASG included numerous ex-PDS members who were critical of the party they had left. The PDS had its own orthodox wing that was concerned that the party would lose its socialist identity by allying itself with the WASG, a party identified with a spirited defense of the capitalist welfare state. Others worried that the PDS would no longer be a strong eastern advocate. Others, especially in the west, resented that WASG newcomers would leapfrog ahead of them on regional party lists. The two sides nonetheless reached broad agreement in mid-June 2005. The PDS would make places on its party lists available to WASG members; the WASG would not compete in the Bundestag election; the PDS would change its name to Left Party.PDS (although in the west, the party’s state organizations could campaign simply as the Left Party); and the parties would negotiate a possible merger within two years.17 Lafontaine and Gysi were jointly to chair the Left Party.PDS caucus in the newly elected Bundestag. On July 15, a plebiscite (Urabstimmung) among WASG members revealed that 81.8 percent backed the candidacy of WASG politicians on PDS party lists and that 85.3 percent supported future negotiations on party merger. On July 17, 74.6 percent of the delegates at a PDS party conference approved the party’s name change to Left Party.PDS and agreed to place WASG politicians on party lists. By August 7, the Left Party.PDS’s sixteen state organizations had finalized their lists for the coming election. Critics in the WASG expressed frustration that their party had not received more places on the lists, but Left Party.PDS leaders, and their allies within the WASG, countered that to do so would have risked violating the law. The pressures to reach a settlement had been great. Gregor Gysi, Oskar Lafontaine, and Lothar Bisky all strongly favored the alliance. In fact, Lafontaine had made his candidacy contingent upon cooperation between the two parties. Without him, the WASG—short on money, members, and organization—would have faced an uncertain future. Although the PDS might have crossed the 5 percent threshold on its own, its 2002 election defeat and the messy aftermath had shaken a party leadership that regarded the 2005 election as the last best chance to enter the Bundestag at full

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caucus strength. Proponents of PDS-WASG partnership held that only a strong, unified left could stem the tide of neoliberal economic reform and welfare state retrenchment. They pointed to excellent polling numbers, which in early July had put the Left Party.PDS at 11 percent nationally, 30 percent in the east, and 7 percent in the west.18 These unexpectedly strong figures emboldened the advocates of a partnership while helping to silence skeptics. In the 2005 election campaign, the Left Party.PDS made the repeal of the Hartz IV law a centerpiece of its platform. More than any other, this issue had united WASG and PDS supporters. The Left Party.PDS even held its pre-election party congress in the Berlin hotel where the SPD in June 2003 had approved Agenda 2010.19 Its platform—“For a New Humane Vision” (für eine neue Soziale Idee)—called for a minimum wage; a shorter work week; an expanded public works sector; a minimum pension of 800 euros a month; free day care; and more financial support to families with children. It opposed the privatization of public services and assets, tuition for a university education, and the liberalization of labor markets. The Left Party.PDS stood for welfare state expansion, more worker rights, and demand-side economics. It also called for additional financial support for eastern Germany. To pay for its policies, it proposed heftier taxes on the wealthy and taxes on international capital flows. In terms of foreign policy, it opposed German military operations abroad.20 The election campaign soon turned hard-edged. The Left Party.PDS labeled its rivals the “Grand Cartel of the Uncaring” (das große Kartell der sozialen Kälte) and singled out the Red-Green government: “Hartz IV stands for poverty and humiliation by law. Agenda 2010 stands for voter deception and the absence of solidarity.”21 Oskar Lafontaine, whose presence in the campaign had a polarizing effect, hammered away at the SPD for betraying social democratic principles and at the Greens for supporting NATO’s 1999 war with Yugoslavia. For their part, the center-left and center-right parties dismissed the Left Party.PDS as being hopelessly out-of-touch with the realities of the global economy and shamelessly populist. In the SPD’s election platform, it was relegated to the section entitled “the Demagogues.” On June 17, Lafontaine gave a campaign speech in the eastern city of Chemnitz, in which he claimed that since the government is obligated to look after its own citizens, it cannot allow it to happen “that German family men (Familienväter) and women become unemployed because low-wage foreign workers (Fremdarbeiter) take their jobs.”22 Not only had Lafontaine stoked resentment toward non-Germans, he had chosen the controversial term foreign workers (Fremdarbeiter) that the Nazis had employed to describe compulsory labor from the east. He was thus accused of violating a taboo by deliberately invoking Nazi language. It was not left unremarked that Lafontaine had made his controversial statement in a region where many

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voters gravitated toward the overtly racist NPD. Was Lafontaine trying to broaden Left Party.PDS support by fishing in right-wing waters? The former SPD chief countered that Fremdarbeiter was not a Nazi word (saying it was not his fault that the Nazis had spoken German), that others had recently used it, and that he was strongly against the exploitation of non-German nationals. Media, the established parties, and many within the Left Party. PDS nonetheless objected to Lafontaine’s linguistic initiative. The prestigious weekly, Die Zeit, went so far as to refer to him as “Oskar Haider,” linking him to Jörg Haider, Austria’s notorious, far-right politician. Lafontaine’s opposition to Turkish membership in the EU, his alleged anti-Americanism, his apparent support of heavy-handed interrogations in some criminal cases, and his broadsides against Hartz IV were interpreted by his critics as an attempt to weld left-wing and right-wing populism into a potent cocktail.23 In early July, he apologized for using the term Fremdarbeiter in Chemnitz.24 Although it is not clear if the Fremdarbeiter controversy actually hurt the Left Party.PDS much—during the debate the party was surging in the polls—it did give the party’s opponents another line of attack, while exposing rifts between Lafontaine and his colleagues.25 The PDS had avoided anti-immigrant appeals in the past. In August, another controversy engulfed the party. The popular tabloids Bild and Bild am Sonntag characterized Lafontaine as a Luxus-Linker (a limousine leftist) who, while publicly decrying social injustice, enjoyed an exorbitant lifestyle that included a magnificent villa and costly vacations. Lafontaine had reportedly insisted on being flown for an interview in Germany on a private jet from his vacation spot in the Spanish Balearic islands. Andrè Brie—a Left Party.PDS deputy in the European Parliament—was quoted as agreeing with those in his party that viewed Lafontaine as a “limousine leftist.”26 While Lafontaine contested the Bild am Sonntag’s version of the private jet dispute in court, and the Left Party.PDS subsequently rallied around its candidate, the Luxus-Linker discussion of late August and early September likely cost the party support among working-class voters turned off by politicians living grandly. At this time, the party was sinking in the polls, which no longer projected a double-digit finish. The personalization of the campaign—an objective of the SPD with its popular leader Schröder—shifted attention away from the Left Party.PDS. A study of television news coverage revealed that the Left Party.PDS had received the third most coverage among the five major parties in June and July; by September, it was receiving the least. What news there was of Lafontaine and Gysi, whose alleged Stasi ties had resurfaced as an issue, was largely negative.27 Although the anti-Hartz IV sentiment helped the Left Party.PDS throughout the country, it remained strongest in the new Länder. Eastern Germany with its far higher unemployment rate was more affected by Hartz IV. Moreover, the party retained impressive organizational assets throughout

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the region. In August 2005, 40 percent of easterners polled regarded the Left Party.PDS as the party that best understood eastern Germans; this was far more than that of any other party, including the CDU with Angela Merkel atop the ticket.28 Despite her GDR upbringing, she was widely perceived as a politician in a mostly western party rather than as a champion of the east.29 As a result, the CDU struggled to win an “Ost-Bonus” (eastern bonus) in 2005 and in fact performed worse in the new states than in any federal election since unification. Two high profile campaign controversies drew attention to east–west differences in August. Although initiated by western Christian Democrats, both played into the hands of the Left Party.PDS, while damaging the CDU’s standing in the new federal states. The first incident involved Brandenburg’s interior minister, Jörg Schönbohm (CDU), who associated eastern violence with the region’s communist past after a mother was discovered to have killed nine of her newborn children. Schönbohm concluded, “the SED’s coerced proletarianization in agrarian areas was one of the main causes for the waywardness (Verwahrlosung) and disposition to violence.”30 The Left Party.PDS and others roundly criticized him for generalizing; in response to the public outcry, the CDU politician apologized. A second incident involved Edmund Stoiber, minister president in Bavaria and chair of the CSU. Stoiber had been the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate in 2002 and had lost narrowly to Gerhard Schröder, in part because of the CDU’s relatively poor showing in eastern Germany. On campaign stops in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in August 2005, the CSU leader disparaged easterners for supporting the Left Party.PDS. In Baden-Württemberg, he was quoted as saying: “But I don’t accept that the east again decides who will be chancellor in Germany. Frustrated people should not decide Germany’s future.”31 In Bavaria, he was quoted as saying that “only the stupidest calves pick out their butcher themselves” in reference to eastern support for Oskar Lafontaine.32 At another Bavarian campaign stop, Stoiber lamented, “unfortunately we do not have such clever parts of the population everywhere as in Bavaria. . . . I do not want the election to be decided once again in the east.”33 Stoiber’s comments, widely condemned, added to a sense of regional degradation in the east. A mid-August poll showed a growing divide. In September 2004, 57 percent of easterners had indicated that differences between the east and the west outweighed similarities. By August 2005, 76 percent believed the differences between east and west were more substantial than the commonalities.34 Regionalism remained a prominent feature of German politics nearly fifteen years after unification. On September 18, the Left Party.PDS won 8.7 percent nationally, more than twice its 2002 share. In eastern Germany, it finished in a second-place tie with the CDU at 25.3 percent, increasing its vote share in Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Thuringia by 12.2, 9.3, and 9.1 percentage

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points, respectively. In the two states where the party governed, the Left Party.PDS did well, winning 23.7 percent in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (an increase of 7.3 percentage points) and 29.5 percent in the eastern districts of Berlin (an increase of 4.9 percentage points). A comparison of its 1998 and 2005 results revealed that it had essentially stagnated, however, gaining 0.1 percentage points in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and losing 0.5 percentage points in eastern Berlin. The Left Party.PDS won 4.9 percent in the west, a fourfold increase over its 2002 result. In the Saarland, where Lafontaine had been minister president, it received 18.5 percent. The party had previously never won more than 2.7 percent in any western state in a Bundestag election. With help from the WASG, it performed strongly in Bremen, Hamburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. Overall, the Left Party.PDS had achieved its long-awaited breakthrough in western Germany. Although its vote share was about five times higher in the east, western votes now comprised around 45 percent of its total. Who voted for the Left Party.PDS?35 The party netted nearly one million votes from the SPD—380,000 in the east, 590,000 in the west. This was its single largest source of new support. The Left Party.PDS performed strongly among blue-collar workers, trade union members, and middle-aged men. With its Hartz IV opposition, the party received the support of nearly one-fourth of all unemployed voters. Although it still attracted GDR elites, it made inroads among economically disadvantaged groups and, in the words of one analyst, “became the party of the unemployed in the west as well as in the east.”36 The party now performed disproportionately well among eastern blue-collar workers and those with the least education, strata the PDS had earlier struggled to attract.37 According to July 2005 polls, 61 percent of easterners generally viewed the Left Party.PDS as the most convincing champion of eastern interests; two-thirds generally agreed that it was the party most engaged on behalf of society’s weak.38 Although the party attracted protest voters, mobilized by Hartz IV, many supporters thought that it could provide solutions to pressing problems. The former federal finance minister Lafontaine may have enhanced its problem-solving reputation.39 The 2005 election marked an important step on route to unifying the Left Party.PDS and WASG by demonstrating the electoral appeal of the joint venture.

FROM LEFT PARTY.PDS TO THE LEFT Without the intense election pressures that had brought the WASG and the PDS together in summer 2005, underlying rifts between the two parties became more pronounced and troublesome. Initial hopes for a harmonious union were dashed. The two parties had committed themselves to a process that would, or so their federal executives hoped, yield a unified party in two

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years. In December 2005, they laid out steps to union by June 30, 2007. The parties appealed to “all people who offer up resistance to present conditions in capitalist society and who wish to change and gradually overcome them,” except those with fascist, racist or anti-Semitic beliefs.40 They planned joint discussions and forums on a variety of contentious issues, such as whether the new party should focus on parliamentary work or grassroots opposition, what “left” should mean, whether it should participate in governing coalitions, and how it related to the GDR’s history. They supported party parity on the expert boards dealing with new by-laws, a programmatic foundation and party finances. The Left Party.PDS and WASG reaffirmed that they would not compete against one another in elections at any level. They further proposed opening up their ranks to each other’s members.41 Dual membership would, it was hoped, underscore the two parties’ special relationship prior to merger. Gysi joined the WASG and Lafontaine became a Left Party.PDS member. After the 2005 election, the WASG was wracked by internal division. Whereas the old battles between rival PDS factions had grown ritualized over the years, straining but never tearing the party asunder, the WASG had not yet established a core consensus amongst its members or across its state branches, several of which were small and radical. Far-left activists who had earlier floundered in obscurity flocked to the new party in the hope of steering it in a resolutely anti-capitalist direction. Some WASG state-level branches rejected the plan, favored by the party’s federal executive, to deepen cooperation with the Left Party.PDS as a prelude to a new party. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin, WASG activists, many of whom had earlier been PDS members, flaunted federal party directives by challenging the Left Party.PDS in September 2006 state elections.42 Left-wing critics of Red-Red governing coalitions transformed their fledgling WASG chapters into renegade, anti-Left Party.PDS bastions. Without the support of the federal parties, the rebellious WASG chapters fell far short of the 5 percent threshold. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the WASG received 0.3 percent of the vote; in Berlin, it received 2.9 percent. Yet even when it had the Left Party.PDS’s blessings, the WASG struggled in western elections. It contested state elections in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate on March 26, 2006, hoping to replicate the Left Party.PDS’s success in the Bundestag election. The WASG disappointed its supporters, however, winning just 3.1 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. And even though its performance was an improvement on past PDS results, the outcome was sobering for party leaders. For its part, the Left Party.PDS had mixed results in three 2006 state elections. In March, it received 24.1 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, its best showing in the state. This outcome was consistent with its strong performances in neighboring Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Its robust support in

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these states contrasted sharply with that of Berlin and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania where state elections took place on September 17, 2006. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the Left Party.PDS received 16.8 percent, a slightly higher share than in 2002, yet much less than the 24.4 percent of 1998. When the PDS joined the state government in 1998, it had the highest vote share among the five eastern chapters; when it left office in 2006, it had the lowest. The party had hoped to enhance its reputation for solving problems, yet voters in 2006 still did not regard it as competent in many policy areas.43 Still, it had recorded slight gains since the last election and this time it was the coalition partner, the SPD, that faltered badly. After the election, an SPD-CDU governing coalition took over in Schwerin, while the Left Party.PDS returned to the opposition. In Berlin, the governing Left Party.PDS’s vote share plummeted from 22.6 to 13.4 percent. It received just over half the votes garnered in 2001. In eastern Berlin, the party’s share dropped from 47.6 to 28.1 percent, erasing most of the PDS’ post-1990 gains.44 Many past PDS voters defected to other parties or did not vote. By all accounts, the Left Party.PDS paid a heavy electoral price for its time in office. By distancing itself from the GDR and presiding over cuts to social programs, the party lost party traditionalists and protest voters, some of whom now turned to the renegade Berlin WASG. Without the dynamic Gregor Gysi topping the ticket, the Berlin Left Party.PDS was led by the western German Harald Wolf, the city’s economics minister who stood for fiscal austerity. Gysi conceded that “psychologically we did not sufficiently attend to the eastern Berlin side, the eastern German soul was, to be sure, somewhat absent.”45 Berlin’s voters handed the party a stinging rebuke and further emboldened Red-Red coalition critics. The Left Party.PDS, which had shown itself to be a reliable governing party, renewed its coalition with the SPD and hoped that its greater experience and enhanced policymaking expertise, acquired under difficult circumstances in the nation’s capital, would improve its fortunes in the coming years. The SPD-PDS government in Berlin complicated the new party’s genesis. Oskar Lafontaine criticized the Berlin governing coalition, which he regarded as too neoliberal. Lafontaine, who with Gysi headed the party’s Bundestag caucus, was poised to become federal co-chair in mid-2007. He played a leading role in drafting the document, “Call for the Founding of a New Left,” in spring 2006 that opposed privatization, social spending cuts, and reductions in the number of government workers.46 In other words, it took a hard line on the issues with which the PDS in Berlin had grappled and compromised. Influential Left Party.PDS politicians in the eastern states came to regard Lafontaine as a threat to their pragmatic course. With Oskar Lafontaine at its helm, a new left-wing party would presumably have a troubled relationship with the SPD at the national level. They also were concerned

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about his policy preferences, which were regarded as nostalgic for the West German welfare state of the 1970s. Prominent Left Party.PDS politicians issued a declaration in July 2006 that warned against excessive statism.47 In August 28, 2006, Der Spiegel wrote of a coming “red uprising in the east” among regional party leaders seeking to curb Lafontaine’s influence. In what was regarded as an anti-Lafontaine initiative, Saxony-Anhalt’s Left Party. PDS executive introduced a motion at a state party congress in September 2006 declaring, “Globalization is an irreversible process. . . . Traditional concepts operating within a narrow nation-state framework will no longer function in a European area. The call for anti-capitalism with national and statist markers is not only politically unrealistic, but it paves the way for nationalist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic mobilization.”48 The motion also called for a more nuanced approach to privatization. A toned down version of the motion passed comfortably, underscoring the differences between statelevel pragmatists in the east and the more oppositional Bundestag caucus, co-chaired by Lafontaine.49 The path to a new party was proving difficult. The Left Party.PDS fought for an explicit commitment to “democratic socialism,” while defending coalitions with the SPD. The WASG did not identify as strongly with the term democratic socialism and tended to be more skeptical of cooperation with the SPD. Additionally, Left Party.PDS leaders, with insight into the authoritarian SED’s “democratic centralism,” were arguably less accepting of party hierarchies than persons coming from the SPD, where party discipline was regarded as necessary for an effective leadership.50 Different interests played a role as well. A state-level PDS politician in the east would have an interest in improving relations with the SPD in the hope of governing. In contrast, national politicians, such as Lafontaine, had a greater stake in highlighting Left Party-SPD differences in the hope of siphoning off left-SPD supporters. Determined not to be swallowed up by the larger Left Party.PDS, the WASG proved a tenacious negotiating partner on matters such as internal quotas for former WASG members. Some even grumbled that WASG politicians, many of whom had trade union backgrounds, were emulating the powerful German metalworkers’ union by following a strategy of setting maximum demands.51 Left Party.PDS and WASG leaders pressed to meet their mid-2007 merger deadline. They justified their exertions by claiming that the 2005 election outcome had provided a mandate for party unification. Claudia Gohde compared the two parties to an engaged couple that had to marry because they already had a child together. Other reasons for unity included the Left Party.PDS’s continuing strength in the polls and the need for a strong counterweight to neoliberalism.52 In meetings and forums, the two parties discussed a future party program and bylaws. By late 2006, both federal executives had concluded that there was sufficient common ground to form the new party. Twin party congresses approved the guidelines on a

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program and bylaws in March 2007. In spring 2007, party members voted for the merger. In June, the new party, known officially as the “Left,” held its first party congress.

THE LEFT As the PDS rose from the ashes of the discredited SED, it strove to transform itself from a pro-GDR party serving former elites into a credible representative of eastern interests broadly defined. The party presented itself as the voice of the east at a time when easterners had concerns about effective interest representation by a mostly western establishment. Looking back one can judge the PDS’ efforts to become a recognized eastern interest representative as largely successful. Seventeen years later when the Left Party. PDS merged with the WASG in 2007, it sought to transform itself from a de facto regional party into a national one. The new Left Party aimed to move beyond eastern Germany to establish itself nationwide as a leftsocialist force. Just as it took several years for the PDS to emerge in the eyes of many eastern Germans as a viable regional interest representative, the Left’s transformation into a party with broad national appeal, if it were to happen, would take time. In 2007, two scenarios seemed likely. According to the first, the party would extend its electoral success in the west and continue to attract new members. Lafontaine and other prominent former WASG politicians would retain leading roles and help craft a new program that reflected the policies of the WASG and the identity of the old West Germany. The Left would establish itself throughout the republic and, albeit on a much smaller scale, approach the CDU and the SPD in terms of its all-German credentials. According to a second scenario, former PDS members would take their place in leading party positions as quotas for former WASG members lapsed. In the west, the party would struggle to expand on its 2005 vote totals or enlarge its membership. It would gradually re-emphasize its eastern roots and identity. Like the Greens and the FDP in the 1990s, the Left would be much stronger in one part of the country in terms of its electorate, its membership and its identity; it would only sporadically enter state parliaments in its “weaker” region; and it would clear the 5 percent Bundestag hurdle by modest margins. Without question, the former WASG activists hoped to avoid this scenario. They did not join with the PDS in order to be absorbed by a regional party. Leadership The PDS had had an overwhelmingly eastern leadership. Its three party chairs, Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky, and Gabi Zimmer, along with the chairs of the influential eastern state chapters, had East German pasts. Although

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its Bundestag delegations always contained numerous western Germans, they were led by former East Germans. The party’s public face was an eastern one, with Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky, and others in the media spotlight. In at least two ways, the WASG-PDS merger made the new Left Party’s leadership less regional. First, it added high-profile western politicians to the top tier of the federal party leadership. Its 2005 Bundestag caucus, in fact, contained more westerners than easterners (32 vs. 53).53 With the Left’s formation in 2007, WASG politicians, the vast majority from western Germany, assumed half the posts in the federal executive committee (Bundesvorstand) and its steering board (Geschäftsführender Vorstand). Westerners now comprised approximately two-thirds of the federal executive committee.54 Oskar Lafontaine, who had joined Lothar Bisky as federal chair, had worn two important hats (co-parliamentary chair until fall 2009 and co-federal chair until May 2010, when he stepped down for health reasons) and increasingly represented the party to the public. Some went so far as to refer to the Left as the “Lafontaine party.” Gregor Gysi noted how the WASG had turned the PDS into a national party in the eyes of western Germans: “The PDS was always regarded in the west as a foreign party. Through the addition of Oskar Lafontaine and the WASG we suddenly became [in the west] a domestic party—their party. They are now voting for a party left of the SPD, not for an east party.“55 In a second way, the WASG-PDS collaboration made the party leadership less eastern in composition and outlook. Because the PDS had been all but absent from the Bundestag after 2002, the formation of a large, assertive parliamentary caucus in 2005 shifted power to the center at the expense of the regional chapters, even though these remained influential. Given the enhanced role of westerners at the federal level and the predominance of eastern elites at the state level, the party’s national–regional divide and its east–west cleavage were to a large degree overlapping. That the Bundestag caucus struck a more oppositional tone than many of the regional party organizations was not surprising. By attacking Hartz IV and the Bundeswehr’s Afghanistan mission, Lafontaine and Gysi spearheaded a Bundestag opposition that courted those disappointed with the governing CDU/CSU-SPD coalition. In contrast, regional actors in the east sought bridges to the SPD in the hope of coming to power. This federal–regional divide bore some resemblance to that of the SPD in the early 1950s, when Kurt Schumacher, as national party leader, had led a spirited assault on the foreign and domestic policies of the Adenauer government. Like Lafontaine, his harsh language and strident opposition provoked resistance among regional SPD leaders who, like the Left’s regional politicians, favored a more measured approach. In particular, he crossed swords with his party’s “mayoral wing,” which favored a less combative stance on Adenauer’s foreign policy. In a sense, Lafontaine’s approach as federal party leader resembled that of Schum-

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acher, while his critics in the east, such as Wulf Gallert (Saxony-Anhalt) and Klaus Lederer (Berlin), had an institutional perspective not unlike that of lord mayors Ernst Reuter (Berlin), Wilhelm Kaisen (Bremen) and Max Brauer (Hamburg) in the early 1950s. Membership In terms of what it brought to the table, the WASG’s membership was among its least impressive organizational assets. At the time of merger, it listed around 12,000 members, 20 percent of that of the Left Party.PDS. It was later reported the WASG actually had had only 8,563 paying members then.56 In any case, its members did little to correct the stark regional imbalance of the old PDS, which by the end of 2004—the last year before its cooperation with the WASG began, was reporting 4,320 members in the west, 56,907 in the east, and 61,385 overall.57 Membership density rates revealed an even more striking eastern center of gravity, with the west comprising more than 80 percent of the FRG population, but around 7 percent of party members. Although the PDS had aggressively courted western members, it had had virtually no organizational presence throughout large swathes of the former West Germany (Table 6.2). At the end of 2007, the recently constituted Left reported 71,711 members. A year later, it had 75,968 members, among them 26,669 western members. Although its western members far exceeded those in the PDS prior to merger, they remained greatly outnumbered by former East Germans. In the west, this hindered the Left’s efforts to expand beyond the larger cities and certain strongholds (such as university towns, industrial pockets, and

Table 6.2. PDS Membership, 1992–2006a

1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 a

Total Membershipb

Eastern Germanyc

Western Germany

146,742 123,751 105,029 94,627 83,478 70,805 61,385 60,338

146,086 121,848 102,976 91,530 79,349 65,883 56,907 52,917

617 1,871 1,943 2,917 3,959 4,708 4,320 7,257

End-of-year membership levels. The 2006 figures are for the Left Party.PDS. Including party executive members not listed by region. c The five eastern states and Berlin. Source. Die Linke.PDS b

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Table 6.3. Left Party Membership, 2007–2008a

2007 2008

Total Membershipb

Eastern Germanyc

Western Germany

71,711 75,968

50,940 49,220

20,658 26,669

a

End-of-year membership levels. Including party executive members not listed by region. c The five eastern states and Berlin. Source. Die Linke, http://die-linke.de/partei/fakten/mitgliederzahlen_dezember_2008/ b

the Saarland region), to find attractive candidates for local and regional assemblies, and to run effective election campaigns. Nonetheless, the new Left Party had more dynamic western chapters than did the PDS at any point in time. Along with far-left activists, they contained many middle-aged trade union members that, in the opinion of one analyst, were hastening the party’s “transformation from a colorful eastern German catchall party (Volkspartei) into a graying, all-German programmatic party (Richtungspartei).”58 There was even some speculation that the Left Party might become a de facto extension of the German trade union movement.59 Although the party featured a stronger political center, it housed numerous, opposing ideological factions.60 In western Germany, former WASG members often favored a strident, oppositional stance that was at odds with the less ideological approach of many former PDS politicians. Party Program The PDS had presented itself as an all-German, left-socialist party that opposed capitalism, German military engagement abroad, racism and environmental degradation, while supporting expanded social and civic rights. Nonetheless, its programs and policies had contained features of a regional party. As seen, the party gave voice to the grievances of the old GDR elite, yet cast a broad net by promising solutions to problems that affected millions in the new Länder. In its pronouncements, the PDS stressed problems of representation: “What is good or bad is decided according to the criteria of the old Federal Republic. The majority of eastern Germans hardly see for themselves opportunities to have influence. East German origin is often the reason for discrimination.”61 Even as it courted western voters, the PDS portrayed itself as an aggressive eastern advocate. Rooted in Social Democracy and trade unionism, the WASG focused on preserving and expanding the German welfare state rather than on vanquishing capitalism. Furthermore, because the WASG had arisen in

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opposition to the Schröder government (and to the PDS to a lesser extent), its members were wary of coalitions with the SPD and extremely critical of the Agenda 2010 reform agenda. The new Left Party formed without a party program. In June 2006, prominent Left Party.PDS and WASG politicians, among them Oskar Lafontaine, presented a “Call for the Founding of a New Left” that decried “a barbaric world economic order,” “predator capitalism” and the evils of privatization and deregulation, while calling for more regulation, a generous welfare state, and the transfer of key economic sectors into public hands. It declared that the party, on entering governing coalition, would remain opposed to the privatization of public agencies that provided essential services, social spending cuts, and reductions in government personnel.62 As the Left Party.PDS and WASG prepared their merger, they settled on provisional “programmatic cornerstones” (Programmatische Eckpunkte) until a new party program could be drafted.63 The document called for resistance to neoliberal economic doctrine and limits to corporate power. It offered a general definition of democratic socialism: “Freedom and social security, democracy and socialism require one another. . . . The goal of democratic socialism, which wants to overcome capitalism in a transformative process, is a society in which the freedom of others is not the limit to, but the condition for, one’s own freedom.”64 The document cataloged party demands, such as a shorter workweek, public jobs programs, a minimum wage, higher pensions, progressive taxation, more democratic controls over the economy, and possibly increased public ownership in certain economic sectors. It was not specific on issues of gender equality, global inequality, and environmental protection.65 With its programmatic cornerstones, the Left put forth a populist agenda that included a critique of capitalism and policy demands generally more radical than those of the PDS’ 2003 program.66 Unlike past PDS programs, the document did not emphasize a distinct cultural foundation in eastern Germany. Whereas in its 1993 program the PDS had opposed the westernization of the east, and in its 2003 program it had detected an egalitarian ethos among easterners, the Left’s 2007 cornerstones covered eastern problems within a section titled: “A new beginning for eastern Germany and the structurally weak regions of western Germany instead of more lagging behind and division.” Because the Left Party.PDS had failed to incorporate into the document language on the GDR taken from its earlier program, the programmatic cornerstones offered a more critical historical interpretation of East Germany.67 However, it recognized that even with the Left’s enhanced western presence it would “assume its historically derived responsibility to represent eastern German interests in the German party system.”68 Highly critical of unification policy, the document called for mutual respect, recognition, equal pay, and a new public investment program for the east.

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In the lead-up to the 2009 Bundestag election, the Left agreed on an election platform that projected a strongly oppositional stance. It demanded once more an end to Hartz IV, the immediate withdrawal of Bundeswehr troops from Afghanistan, nationalization of the banks, tighter regulation of the financial sector, a robust public jobs creation program, the dissolution of NATO, equal wages and equal pensions for the east, increased taxes on the wealthy, and a long catalogue of social, environmental, and institutional reforms. With its emphasis on promoting social justice, and its attacks on the capitalist system, the party sought to underscore its chief selling point: “the stronger the Left, the fairer (sozialer) the country.”69 Voters In the east, the PDS had attracted voters of all ages and occupational groups, leading analysts to describe it as a Volkspartei (catchall party) in terms of electorate. The Left drew on many of its predecessor’s organizational assets in the east and although its overall message was not as regionally based, the new party enjoyed disproportionate support among eastern voters. Although the PDS had contested elections in western Germany, its anemic results there were consistent with those of a de facto regional party. Its collaboration with the WASG in 2005, and the subsequent 2007 merger, broadened its electorate in terms of territory and overall size, yet narrowed it in terms of social class and generation. Its western voters were disproportionately found among blue-collar workers, middle-aged men, and the unemployed. This signaled that the party was less of a regional catchall party and more of a party of have-nots.70 Election results in the city-state of Bremen on May 13, 2007 confirmed this trend. For the first time ever, the Left entered a western state parliament after receiving 8.4 percent. It performed strongly among the unemployed (approximately 20 percent), among blue-collar workers (approximately 12 percent) and men in the age group forty-five to fifty-nine (14 percent).71 State elections in early 2008 indicated that Bremen was no fluke. In Hesse, the Left Party narrowly overcame the 5 percent barrier to enter for the first time a parliament in a western region not a city-state. The same day, it comfortably passed the 5 percent mark in neighboring Lower Saxony. In both states, it campaigned against Hartz IV and the Merkel-led grand coalition. Another victory followed in Hamburg when the Left Party won 6.4 percent and entered its fourth western regional parliament. In January 2009, voters in Hesse went to the polls again after the SPD had attempted but failed to forge a Red-Green minority government following the 2008 election. The Left again cleared the 5 percent barrier and rejoined the assembly. In June 2009, it received 7.5 percent in the European Parliament election, winning 21.4 percent in the east and 3.9 percent in the west.72 In the August 2009 Saarland election, favorite

a

1.7 (2003) 8.4 (2007)

– (2003) 5.1 (2008) 5.4 (2009)

Hesse, % 0.5 (2003) 7.1 (2008)

Lower Saxony, % Bavaria, % – (2003) 4.4 (2008)

Hamburg, % 1.1a (2004) 6.4 (2008)

The PDS supported the party list of the left-wing Rainbow (Regenbogen) in Hamburg

2003–05 2007–09

Bremen, %

2.3 (2004) 21.3 (2009)

Saarland, %

Table 6.4. PDS/Left Party Vote Share (Second Ballot) in Western State Elections, 2003–2009

0.8 (2005) 6 (2009)

SchleswigHolstein, %

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son Oskar Lafontaine led the Left Party to a nineteen-percentage point improvement on the PDS’ 2004 showing and to 21.3 percent of the vote. The following month, the Left entered its sixth western state parliament by garnering 6 percent in Schleswig-Holstein regional elections. The PDS had made do with 0.8 percent in 2005. In western state elections, the Left tapped into disproportionate support among the unemployed, blue-collar workers and trade union members, performing especially well among men in the forty-five- to fifty-nine–year-old age group and among those without religious affiliation. In Hesse, 8 percent of those polled attributed to the Left problem-solving competence in the area of social justice; 75 percent of its supporters considered it competent in this area.73 In all four western states, the Left drew votes from former Social Democrats, as was consistent with the vacuum thesis, which had foreseen opportunities for a left-wing party to make inroads among left-leaning voters disillusioned by the SPD’s and the Greens’ shift to the center. The SPD had in fact lost ground among its traditional backers. In Lower Saxony, trade union members comprised a greater share of the Left’s voters (28 percent) than they did of the SPD’s voters (24 percent.)74 In the 2009 Saarland state election, the Left Party actually performed better among blue-collar voters (Arbeiter) than either the SPD or CDU.75 In the Bundestag election of September 27, 2009, the Left won 11.9 percent nationally, 8.3 percent in the west, and 28.5 percent in the east—a record result for the party across the board. For the first time, the Left received more overall votes in the former West Germany than in the ex-GDR, thereby extending its rapid advance westward. In each of the ten western states, it received more than 6 percent, with its best showing (21.2 percent) in the Saarland. To recall, the PDS had received 1.1 percent of the western vote in the 2002 Bundestag election. In the east, the party finished in second place, more than ten percentage points ahead of the struggling SPD and just 1.3 percentage points behind the CDU, whose focus on its popular (and eastern) chancellor candidate—Angela Merkel—brought the party dividends in the new federal states. For the first time in a Bundestag election, the Left was the top votegetter in a state, winning the most party-list votes in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. Whereas in past federal elections, the PDS had managed to win as many as four electoral districts outright—all in the former East Berlin—the Left now triumphed in sixteen, securing four in eastern Berlin, four in Brandenburg, five in Saxony-Anhalt, two in Thuringia, and one in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. The Left’s strong showing in Berlin demonstrated that the Red-Red regional government, although a favorite target of party leftists, had not hurt the party at the polls. National survey data revealed that the Left had performed comparably well across age groups, with the exception of its relative weakness (10 per-

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cent of the vote) among those over age sixty and its relative strength (15 percent) in the forty-five- to fifty-nine-year-old age cohort. The data also showed that the Left did somewhat better among male voters (13 percent) than female voters (11 percent); that the party fared poorly among the selfemployed and civil servants; and that it did disproportionately well among blue-collar workers and the unemployed. In fact, the Left received one-fourth of the unemployed vote, more than any other party.76 The composition of its electorate considerably varied in the two parts of Germany. In the west, the Left performed twice as strongly among blue-collar workers (12 percent) than it did among civil servants (6 percent) and self-employed (6 percent); in the east, the Left, drawing on the PDS’ strength among GDR elites, showed considerable support among civil servants (about 26 percent) and salaried employees (29 percent), as well as among blue-collar workers (31 percent). Even among self-employed in the east, the Left received more than one-fifth of the vote.77 The SPD had lost an estimated net 1,100,000 voters to the Left in 2009, more than to any other party. The Greens sustained a more modest but still substantial net loss of 130,000 votes to the Left.78 To recap, if the Left’s national leadership was its most all-German feature after 2007, its membership remained the least, with eastern members far exceeding westerners. In the east, its voters resembled those of a catchall party; in the west, they aligned with the traditional working class. Despite the party’s stellar 2009 showing, it still remained to be seen whether the Left’s western voters would stay with the party as the SPD shifted leftward, or if the protest mood subsided further, or if the Left entered governing coalitions in western Länder or at the national level. Likewise, it remained an open question whether those eastern Germans who resented what they regarded as the continuing economic, cultural, and political discrimination of their region at the hands of a predominantly western establishment would stand by a party that in terms of its leadership, membership, and electorate had become more western. The 2009 election result helped allay such concerns among Left Party leaders. Table 6.5. Left Party.PDS/Left Vote Share in Bundestag Elections, 2005–2009

2005a 2009b a b

National Vote, %

Former West Germany, %

Former East Germany, %

8.7 11.9

4.9 8.3

25.3 28.5

Contested in eastern Germany as Left Party.PDS Contested as the Left (die Linke.)

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THE LEFT IN THE GERMAN PARTY SYSTEM In the early to mid-1990s, the leading political parties marginalized the communist successor party. Rather than remain content on the sidelines, the PDS instead prepared itself for eventual coalition government by revising its program, its views on GDR history, and its policy prescriptions. By the early 2000s, the PDS had achieved a foothold in the German political establishment, forming coalitions with the SPD in two eastern states, influencing federal policies through its Bundesrat presence, and encountering less hostility in the Bundestag. Although the PDS never achieved “normal” competitor status, in the eyes of many Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and the offices of constitutional protection, it had come a long way in rehabilitating its reputation since arriving on the political scene in 1989–1990 as the SED-PDS. Reformers hoped the new Left Party one day would find its way into national government. Bad blood between the SPD and former WASG politicians in the Left Party strained relations between the two parties. Prominent Left politicians, most notably Oskar Lafontaine and Ulrich Mauer, who had broken with the SPD over Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV, were regarded by SPD loyalists as traitors sabotaging their party at its moment of need. For their part, former Social Democrats in the Left Party accused the SPD of abandoning its core values. Of course, the SPD-PDS relationship had also carried considerable historical baggage—much of it stemming from distant battles between Communists and Social Democrats in the early and mid-20th century—yet the two parties had nonetheless governed together in eastern Germany. The SPD-WASG split, in contrast, had occurred more recently than the SPDSED conflict of the 1940s and by all accounts the wounds were still raw. Personal attacks abounded as Oskar Lafontaine and SPD leaders regularly traded insults. Would the SPD-Lafontaine feud spill over to the state level and jeopardize future Red-Red coalitions? Kurt Beck, the SPD national party chair from May 2006 to September 2008, at first indicated that the SPD would not cooperate with the Left Party in western Germany or at the national level. His hard line resembled the now defunct SPD’s Dresden Declaration of 1994, although Beck had made an exception for eastern Germany.79 Lafontaine initially seemed intent on charting a rigid anti-SPD course. He criticized the Red-Red coalition in Berlin and helped pen the “Call for the Founding of a New Left,” outlining tough conditions for Left participation in governing coalitions. Reformers in eastern Germany worried that the orthodox left and ex-SPD trade union activists from the WASG would set the Left on an intransigent, oppositional path and thus reverse recent PDS reforms. In 2009, these concerns mounted after the Left Party denied two prominent eastern reformers promising party-list positions in the upcoming

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European Parliament election, thereby ensuring that Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann and André Brie would not return to the Strasbourg assembly after years of pragmatic service there. Kaufmann subsequently joined the SPD. Brie remained in the Left, but warned that under Lafontaine an internal party consensus was degenerating into “countless factions that primarily debate amongst themselves, not with the party nor least of all with society and political opponents.”80 He urged his party to focus on building political coalitions to effect societal change.81 In addition to lingering SPD-WASG animosities, there was another reason to expect bad relations. The Left Party presented a much more direct threat to the SPD than had the PDS. As a de facto regional party, its predecessor had only challenged the SPD head-on in eastern Germany, where the latter was relatively weak electorally and organizationally. Although the SPD tried to undermine the PDS in the east, and win over its voters, it was not fundamentally threatened by a de facto eastern party in a thinly populated part of the country. In comparison, the Left Party was now challenging the SPD in its bastions—the industrial and urban settings of western Germany. Lafontaine and his new party aimed to win over previously Social Democratic elements among the trade unions, the industrial working class, and the unemployed. Moreover, if it could secure former SPD and Green support in populous western Germany, the Left stood to become an established left-wing presence. The SPD had much to lose from further fragmentation on the left. In the 1980s, the Greens had emerged as a new challenger; after 2007, the Left showed signs of becoming a permanent party system fixture as well. Dieter Dettke has referred to the Greens’ emergence and the Left Party formation as a first and second bloodletting for German Social Democracy.82 The SPD reacted to the Left Party defensively and dismissed its claim to be a progressive force. Like the SPD, the CDU/CSU had an interest in portraying the new party as radical populists. As the Left advanced in western Germany, the CDU/CSU played on residual anti-communist sentiment to mobilize its own conservative base while putting the SPD on the defensive. Neither the CDU/CSU nor the SPD initially cooperated with the Left in the Bundestag. As a full-fledged parliamentary caucus, the party had a right to name one of the chamber’s vice presidents. In fall 2005, it nominated Lothar Bisky for the office, but he was defeated four times in a secret ballot. This was unprecedented and, to some observers, unseemly because the other Bundestag parties had not given the Left advance notice that Bisky was not viable. Humbled, Bisky eventually withdrew his candidacy and the Left caucus nominated Petra Pau whom the assembly approved. In the federal parliament, parties refused to co-sponsor legislation with the Left, even when there was consensus. For instance, the CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, and Greens supported a resolution calling on the federal government “to more strongly use political

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influence to end the conflict in northern Uganda.” The Left caucus, which was excluded from co-introducing the measure, proposed its own with the identical wording, but received no support. When asked why the CDU/CSU caucus did not vote for a resolution it favored, a spokesperson for the caucus explained: “we do not want to create the impression, even on minor issues, that we are working together with the Left caucus.”83 As examples such as this showed, the Left Party experienced treatment similar to what the PDS had endured in the Bundestag in the 1990s. There was another reason to expect rocky relations between the established parties and the Left in western Germany. In contrast to their eastern counterparts, the western chapters were less professionally run and less prepared to govern. In the PDS, pragmatic former SED cadres from the lower nomenklatura had acquired political experience and policymaking expertise. Despite its factions, the Left possessed a sizeable, battle-tested reformer wing in the new Länder that competently represented the party to the media and in local and state assemblies.84 This was not the case in the west. Although the Left Party had larger western branches than did its PDS and WASG predecessors, it still faced many of the problems that had plagued the PDS in the west: relatively few members and too few pragmatic, seasoned politicians. The Left did possess former SPD politicians, but also trade unionists and far-left activists with limited political experience. Occasionally, it awarded spots on state and local party lists to members of the DKP. Between 2007 and 2009, the Left entered western state parliaments for the first time and struggled with the pressures and responsibilities of its growing stature. In Bremen, the party’s parliamentary caucus was beset by internal division and unprofessional conduct, resulting in the dismissal of two caucus business managers (Fraktionsgeschäftsführer) and the resignation of a caucus spokesperson after only three days on the job. The federal party intervened in an effort to fix what the newsmagazine Der Spiegel described as a “mosaic of chaos.”85 In Lower Saxony, Christel Wegener, a DKP member elected on the Left Party list, created an uproar when on television she not only appeared to defend the East German secret police (Stasi), but seemed principally in favor of installing another one as needed: “I think that if one establishes a different societal form, then one again needs such an organ because one has to protect oneself against other forces, reactionary forces, that seize upon the opportunity to weaken such a state from the inside.”86 Wegener was promptly expelled from the Left’s parliamentary caucus in Lower Saxony. In April 2008, the Left Party’s deputy chair caused a furor in the newly convened Hamburg state assembly when she indirectly likened Tibet’s Dalai Lama to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.87 Pit Metz, a former top candidate in Hesse, quit the Left Party in the lead-up to new elections in January 2009. The resignation of Metz, who described the internal state branch dynamics as “a panorama of misery,” occurred at a time when numer-

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145

ous others were leaving Hesse’s chapter because of its allegedly sorrowful state.88 As the Left Party in the Saarland prepared for a state election in summer 2009, its own members filed more than six lawsuits against fellow members, several of whom had received favorable billing on the election party list.89 In short, even if the SPD were to pursue closer ties with Left Party chapters in western states, it risked relying on a partner that was less disciplined, experienced and pragmatic than its eastern component. There were reasons, however, to believe that the mainstream German political parties and the Left would eventually establish a more normal adversarial relationship. Although the Left had formed in 2007 as the successor to the PDS, and therefore by extension the SED, it was less burdened by human rights issues. Nearly eighteen years had passed since the breeching of the Berlin Wall and, unlike the PDS, the WASG had had few ties to the GDR. Lafontaine and western Left leaders simply did not have to answer for the GDR in a way that many PDS politicians had. When at the start of the Hesse election campaign, Roland Koch (CDU), the state’s minister president, called on the Left to expel its members that had authorized Berlin Wall patrols to shoot at those fleeing East Germany, the Left Party state chair could credibly declare that to the best of his knowledge there were no such party members in Hesse.90 The Left’s founding marked a de facto demotion for Hans Modrow, a PDS politician closely associated with efforts to defend aspects of GDR history. Although he now chaired the Left Party’s advisory council of elders (Ältestenrat), Modrow, the last SED prime minister of the GDR, had to relinquish his position as honorary party chair (PDS) when the Left formed in 2007. Whereas the established parties in 1990 had anticipated that the PDS would soon exit the party system, they had little reason to expect this of the Left nearly two decades later. The Left Party’s 11.9 percent in the 2009 election was comfortably above the 5 percent threshold; by May 2010, it sat in thirteen state parliaments, seven of which were in the west. In short, there was little evidence to suggest that if ignored or excluded, the Left would simply fade away. This pointed SPD reformers toward an inclusive approach, as first practiced in Saxony-Anhalt, then in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin, that had allowed the SPD to govern without the CDU. The SPD had found the PDS to be a reliable, disciplined coalition partner and knew that the PDS had at least initially fared electorally worse as a governing party. A similar pattern might emerge in the west, with probable high start-up costs for a party that drew many protest votes. After its 2009 federal election debacle, the SPD, which had its worst result ever (i.e., 23 percent) in a Bundestag election, initiated personnel changes that portended a more flexible policy toward its left-wing rival. Party chair Franz Müntefering, an outspoken Lafontaine detractor, announced that he would not be seeking another term as party leader. Sigmar Gabriel, former federal

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environmental minister in the Merkel-led grand coalition, was tapped to succeed him. He would be joined by the left-wing Social Democrat Andrea Nahles who was designated to become SPD general secretary. Gabriel and Nahles voiced support for a less complicated relationship with the Left Party, including the possibility of future coalitions.91 Since, as Bismarck famously remarked, politics is the art of the possible, the SPD, Greens and the Left showed signs of yielding to the logic of the emerging party system. A five-party system made it less likely that either a center-left Red-Green coalition or center-right CDU/CSU-FDP coalition would suffice, even if the latter did form at the federal level in fall 2009. This increased the probability of grand coalitions, something that the CDU/CSU and SPD did not regard as optimal, or unorthodox coalitional constellations. The latter might include a CDU-Greens coalition, as formed in 2008 in Hamburg; a CDU-FDP-Greens coalition, as forged in the Saarland region in fall 2009; an SPD-FDP-Greens alignment, as previously practiced at the state level in western Germany; or SPD-Greens-Left cooperation, as had been the case in Saxony-Anhalt from 1994 to 1998 when a Red-Green government was backed by the PDS in opposition. Sober political considerations began to trump comfort zones or wish lists. In February 2008, the SPD federal executive moved that western state branches could decide for themselves on the governing coalition they would enter. This opened the door in Hesse for a possible Red-Green minority government, backed by the Left. The SPD had finished first in the 2008 election, but Red-Green fell short of a majority in the assembly.92 In August 2008, Lafontaine and the Left Party in Hesse indicated general support for a Red-Green minority government in Wiesbaden.93 When the SPD leader in Hesse attempted to build such a government in 2008, her efforts faltered due to internal SPD opposition rather than Left Party intransigence. At the June 2009 party congress in Berlin, Lafontaine underscored that “we do not refuse to cooperate in a governing coalition; we do not refuse to cooperate with a left-wing majority in the German Bundestag.”94 Following the Saarland election in August, the SPD and Left envisioned a possible Red-Red-Green constellation, but the Greens preferred to govern with the CDU and FDP in Saarbrücken. After a September state election, the SPD and Left joined forces in Brandenburg, which followed neighboring Berlin as the second federal state with a Red-Red government at this time. In summary, no one explanation accounted for the Left Party surge, but rather two regional dynamics were apparent. Although concerns about representation continued to favor the Left in eastern Germany, the party also benefited from a sense among many western voters that the SPD was no longer representing their interests. Its shift to the center under Gerhard Schröder had set the stage for Left Party advances. The PDS had not capitalized in the west, registering few gains there, even as opposition to

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Agenda 2010 roiled German politics. Instead, Agenda 2010 prompted SPD elements to break with the Red-Green government. Only when the PDS combined with the upstart WASG did it achieve its western triumph. The new party now attracted left-wing western voters frustrated by the rightward shift of the SPD and Greens. In the east, a potent mix of economic factors, perceived cultural otherness, and a lack of descriptive representation persisted two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even as the overall German unemployment rate dipped in the mid-2000s, it remained high in the east. In November 2008, the eastern unemployment rate had fallen to 11.8 percent, the lowest level since 1991, yet nearly twice as high as the western rate of 6 percent.95 Survey data from 2008 showed that a significant share (28 percent) of easterners regarded themselves as unification losers. After eighteen years of unity seven percent of easterners reported “mostly losses,” 19 percent reported “more losses than gains,” 29 percent indicated “equal gains and losses,” 23 percent signaled “more gains than losses,” and 16 percent indicated “mostly gains.” Women (31 percent), residents in their fifties (37 percent) and the unemployed (55 percent) disproportionately reported net losses resulting from unification.96 According to a 2006 study, 25 percent of easterners (as compared with 4 percent of westerners) belonged to an underclass (abgehängtes Prekariat) shaped by downward social mobility and marginalization. Relatively deprived, persons in this group were favorably predisposed to socialism, regarded equal living standards in the east and west as a priority, disproportionately considered themselves the losers of economic reform, disapproved of the governing grand coalition’s record, and disproportionately supported the Left Party or far-right protest parties.97 Many residents in the new states maintained a distinctly “eastern” identity and sensibilities. In 2006, 15 percent claimed that they wanted the GDR back, whereas 22 percent saw themselves foremost as citizens of the Federal Republic. Sixty-two percent neither wanted the GDR back nor identified themselves as FRG citizens.98 Seventy-one percent of eastern Germans considered themselves disadvantaged in the Federal Republic, whereas 12 percent viewed themselves, on whole, as receiving preferential treatment. By contrast, 42 percent of western Germans regarded easterners as disadvantaged, whereas 43 thought they were on average favored.99 A 2008 survey found that 70 percent of easterners reported a “strong” or “rather strong” attachment to eastern Germany, whereas 42 percent felt strongly or rather connected to the Federal Republic.100 A dearth of descriptive representation for easterners still characterized the German political landscape. In national politics, prominent easterners generally remained few and far between. After the 2009 Bundestag election, for instance, the new federal cabinet included fifteen westerners and the easterner Angela Merkel. In the new Länder, the share of state secretaries (the

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highest-ranking civil servant in the state ministries) of eastern background actually decreased from 20 percent between 2000 and 2004 to 14.3 percent between 2005 and 2007.101 By summer 2008, four of the five eastern state chancellery heads came from western Germany. Eight of nine Berlin state ministers in the SPD-Left government were from the west. A brief period when easterners headed state government in the five new Länder ended in fall 2008 when the westerner Erwin Sellering replaced Harald Ringstorff as minister president in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.102 Overall, as one analyst concluded, “the trajectory measuring success in politics for eastern Germans shows, aside from the single exception of the federal chancellor, on the whole a downward rather than upward slope.”103 Combined with a distinct economic and cultural landscape in the east, lagging descriptive representation portended future electoral success for the Left in eastern Germany as long as it followed in the PDS’ footsteps as a representative of regional interests and protest. This was certainly the Left Party’s intention even as it directed resources and energy westward. When the PDS began to cooperate with the WASG in 2005, Gysi promised the party convention in July that: “in the process we will not give up one iota of our competence in matters east.”104 The Left Party continued to focus on eastern interest representation; this remained a priority for a party that relied heavily on eastern voters, members and leaders. After 2007, the Left showed signs of housing two parties under one roof.105 The western membership, leadership, and electorate differed in size, composition, and orientation from that of the east. This engendered an awkward balancing act and brought forth a host of new challenges.

CONCLUSION

This study has focused on representation in a time of state building. In 1990, the Federal Republic expanded the reach of its institutions to include sixteen million eastern Germans, among them the GDR administrative elite. This was not the first time that the Federal Republic was compelled to deal with the officials of a fallen dictatorship. In the 1950s, West Germany had restored many former Nazi civil servants, including judges, to their posts in the interest of administrative efficiency, domestic harmony, and anti-communism. Transitional justice became a casualty of social order. In 1990, the Federal Republic again made administrative efficiency a priority as it extended its institutions—often headed by western elites—to the new Länder. This effectively marginalized many GDR nomenklatura, ensuring that they would not retain their status and influence, as had widely happened in the 1950s. As the SED successor representing the GDR’s fallen upper service class, the PDS became a pariah in German politics at the national and regional levels. This time descriptive representation was sacrificed to an integration strategy favoring administrative efficiency, anti-communism, and transitional justice. The exclusion of the PDS, a mostly eastern party, widened the descriptive representation gap in unified Germany and provided the party with an opening in the east. At this time of economic hardship, the overwhelmingly western character of the political establishment reinforced a sense of second-class citizenship among eastern Germans. This, in turn, slowed eastern identification with the institutions of unified Germany, fostered regional protest, and strengthened calls in the new states for more assertive interest representation. It displaced former elites, many of whom became engaged on behalf of the SED successor. The PDS now positioned itself within the German party system as a homegrown regional advocate, a champion of the aggrieved, and as a thorn in the side of the prevailing powers. It demanded inclusion, recognition, and rights for itself, its core milieu, and the east more generally. Internally, it forged an interclass, intergenerational alliance. In the late 1990s, the established parties softened their stance toward the PDS. What followed marked a partial correction of an integration strategy that had proven counterproductive, at least in its goal of hastening the demise

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of the SED successor. Exclusion gave way to greater inclusion; by 2002, the PDS and SPD shared governing responsibilities in two states. SPD reformers had reached out to the PDS in an effort to demystify it, an approach that had a historical precedent in François Mitterrand’s alliance with the French Communists in the 1970s and early 1980s. Something similar also had occurred in Italy. In 1976, Christian Democracy (DC), led by Aldo Moro, helped broker the so-called “historic compromise” with the PCI. Under its terms, the PCI tolerated two DC-minority governments (“governments of national unity”) from 1976 to 1978. Although the PCI remained formally in the opposition, it consulted with the Christian Democrats and supported government initiatives. It paid a price, however. In the 1979 general election, its share of the vote fell four percentage points, marking the first time in postwar Italy that the PCI had declined in a national election. As the PDS acquired influence in the early 2000s, it confronted new challenges. A “principled” base challenged an “opportunistic” leadership; protest voters turned elsewhere or simply stayed home; and the ties between the party and its core milieu weakened. The opportunity to wield power carried a cost. Divisive debates over East Germany’s history, the party program, and governmental policies erupted as the PDS tried to show that it was ready to govern. The controversy over the Hartz IV cuts in long-term unemployment benefits covered up these tensions without resolving them. After entering the Federal Republic in 1990, the PDS leadership pushed steadily into the west, odd for a party so often accused of being nostalgic for the GDR. Its efforts to court western voters met with little success, however. Party leaders seized at the chance to cooperate with Oskar Lafontaine and the WASG, a mostly western party that had formed in opposition to RedGreen economic policies. In June 2005, Gregor Gysi framed the PDS-WASG alliance in terms of east–west integration:1 Everyone in Germany has banded together—the only ones who are not unified are on the left. On the one side, we have the PDS that has scarcely succeeded in make the leap westward; on the other side, we have the newly formed left-wing party WASG, which is all but absent from the east. The PDS must recognize two things: there is obviously a growing need for a left-wing alternative in the old federal states as well. Yet these people are hardly drawn to us. So we have to band together. He had a point. Fifteen years after unification, estranged Social Democrats and western German trade union functionaries were willing to join forces with the PDS. Given its declining membership and scant appeal in the west, the PDS hoped that this partnership would improve its long-term

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prospects for survival. It adopted the prefix Left Party ahead of the 2005 Bundestag election. Earlier, the BHE, an overwhelmingly expellee party, had pursued a similar enlargement strategy to very different effect. The BHE did not find greener pastures after adding the prefix “GB-” (All-German Bloc) to its name in 1952 in an effort to attract western Germans. This decision rankled party members without achieving the desired benefits; the GB-BHE remained an expellee party. In 1961, the BHE eventually fused with the German Party (DP), a conservative party in northern Germany, to form the All-German Party (Gesamtdeutsche Partei). This ill-fated merger alienated elements within both parties and did not bear fruit in the 1961 federal election. Soon most members from the DP had turned their back on the party, leaving its diminished core of expellees with bleak electoral prospects.2 However, the German party system of the mid-2000s offered far more opportunities for a left-wing party than did the 1961 party system for a right-wing one. The SPD’s shift, embodied by Agenda 2010, had created party system space for a political party left of the Social Democrats. The PDS recognized that it could not fill this vacuum in the western states on its own. By forging an alliance with the WASG, the PDS embarked on something of a “great leap forward” that promised gains in the September 2005 federal election and the possibility of establishing a left-wing party throughout Germany. It hoped that by renaming itself the Left Party.PDS and later merging with the WASG, it would finally make inroads among disaffected trade union and left-SPD elements in the old FRG. Success in the 2005 and 2009 federal elections bore this out. It came at a cost, however, as former WASG and PDS members competed for influence within a new party that was unified in name only. This study concludes by returning to descriptive representation and its relationship to political regionalism. Under what circumstances does inadequate descriptive representation matter politically? A comparative perspective reveals that it matters most at times of uneven economic development, distinct regional identities and the presence within a party system of a local insider and national outsider that mobilizes anti-establishment protest.3 A lack of descriptive representation can create an opening for a party to channel regional resentment and present itself as an authentic champion of allegedly overlooked interests. Parties that are at once local insiders and national outsiders are well situated to exploit the issue of descriptive representation for electoral gain. Regional parties often trumpet constitutional reform in response to their voters’ dissatisfaction with the current state of representation. Their demands may include independence, devolution, federalism, greater regional autonomy, or power-sharing arrangements that will ensure regional repre-

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sentation. Lieven De Winter noted that ethno-regional parties face three tasks: “First, they have to convince their publics that the inhabitants of their region form a specific cultural group. . . . Second, they have to argue that this group is discriminated against or menaced by the centre, and third that they offer the only way of defending and preserving the ‘people’s soul’ and its ‘sacred homeland.’ ”4 As intrinsic catchall parties, they offer policies that find support across class lines.5 In the early 1990s, regional parties in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada expanded their electorates beyond the confines of a narrow cultural milieu, as would the PDS at this time. In Italy, the Northern League, a merger of northern regional movements (the most prominent being the Lombard League), became the largest political party in the north in 1996. In the United Kingdom, the Scottish National Party (SNP) had won less than 15 percent in Scotland during the 1980s, yet jumped to 21.5 percent of the Scottish vote in 1992, 32.7 percent in the 1994 European Parliament election, and 21.9 percent, and six seats won, in the 1997 general election. The Reform Party’s breakthrough in western Canada was even more sudden. Founded in 1987, it fell just a few seats short of becoming the official opposition in parliament in 1993. Of its fifty-two seats in the House of Commons, forty-six were won in British Columbia and Alberta, whereas only one was captured east of Manitoba. In the 1997 election, the party emerged as the official opposition in parliament with sixty seats after taking fifty-seven of the seventy-four electoral districts in Canada’s three most western provinces; it won no seats east of Manitoba. As in unified Germany, uneven development fostered a climate favorable to regional protest in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Among the most prosperous regions of Europe, industrial northern Italy featured competitive, family-run firms, high wages, and poverty and unemployment rates much lower than those in the mostly agrarian Italian south. On issues such as taxation and regional development projects, northerners, as net payers, and southerners, as net recipients, often had opposing interests. Likewise, in Canada the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta enjoyed a living standard far above that of the Atlantic provinces. With a high per capita GDP and a vibrant energy sector, prosperous Alberta reacted with dismay when in the early 1980s a newly introduced National Energy Program increased federal control of oil and natural gas production in the province. Meanwhile Scotland, in contrast to prosperous southeastern England, had high unemployment rates and low incomes. The discovery of North Sea oil off the Scottish coast produced conflicts over how oil revenues should be distributed. Distinct subnational identities provided regional parties with a cultural basis that they could highlight and claim to defend. In Italy, although local identities were historically rooted and often very pronounced, there were

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nonetheless broad differences across the regions. In his book Making Democracy Work, Robert Putnam distinguished between the robust civil society of northern Italy and the lower levels of civic-ness and trust in the south.6 In Canada, francophone Quebeckers held a cultural identity distinct from that of the majority Anglophone culture. For its part, “the West is typically characterized as being more right-wing in both economic and social terms than other parts of Canada.”7 In particular, influences such as individualism, evangelical fundamentalism, and earlier immigration from the United States shaped the political culture of Alberta. Albertans resented calls for multiculturalism and bilingualism that arose in the powerful central Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario. In the United Kingdom, strong regional identities, whether northern or southern English, Scottish, Welsh, Ulster, or Irish, have long existed. At times, these identities coexisted in harmony with a British identity; at other times they have stood in opposition to British-ness. Not a few Scots prided themselves on a Scottish political culture supposedly based on egalitarianism, compassion, and solidarity rather than the allegedly more individualistic culture of southern England.8 Many voters in Italy, Canada, and Britain came to believe that their regions were being neglected by a political establishment beholden to another part of the country. Leading federal parties became identified with the representatives, interests, and culture of a particular region. As voters in certain regions shifted support away from an allegedly biased governing party (or parties), and the composition of the parliamentary caucuses came to reflect this change, the ruling parties often became less descriptively representative of the country as a whole. This imbalance, aggravated by the multiparty, first-past-the-post systems of Canada and Britain, contributed to regional protest. In Italy, the center-right DC had governed without interruption since the late 1940s by relying on its organizational ties to the strongly Catholic subculture of northeastern Italy, on its anti-communism, and on clientelist networks in the south. As its northeastern Catholic milieu gradually eroded, the party increasingly channeled patronage to the south, in the form of social programs and development funds, in exchange for votes. What followed was a “southernization” of the DC and by extension the Italian state. Whereas the party was losing support in the 1980s and early 1990s in the formerly heavily Catholic (“white”) north-east, it increased its vote share in the south. The DC had averaged 51 percent of the vote in the northeast and 37 percent in the south from the 1940s to 1970s (omitting the results of the 1948 election); in the 1980s, it averaged 40 percent in the northeast and 37 percent in the south. In the 1992 election, the DC won just 27 percent of the vote in the northeast and 40 percent in the south.9 The electorate of the second largest governing party, the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI), also became more southern in composition in the 1980s after the PSI, led by

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the forceful Bettino Craxi, followed a similar patronage strategy.10 The DC had disproportionately many party members in the south (in 1982, 62.3 percent of its members were from southern Italy), and a regional concentration in Sicily and Campania, which held a key strategic position within the party.11 In the mid-1980s, there were 14 party members for every 100 DC voters in the mainland south but only 9.3 members for every 100 voters in the northeast.12 The last DC prime minister from northern Italy held office in 1974.13 An indication of political connections, southerners increasingly dominated the Italian senior civil service. By the early 1990s, eighty to ninety of the one hundred top-ranking officials in Italian civil service had either come from the south or attended school there. Although southerners comprised 34 percent of the population, they made up 70 percent of the civil service.14 As the links between southern Italy and the DC deepened, more northern Italians felt that Rome was serving southern interests rather than their own.15 Regional leagues formed to channel northern protest against institutions and political elites who were perceived as unrepresentative. The most successful was the Lombard League, which would later form the Northern League. According to Leonardi and Kovacs, “At its birth, it was primarily a regional league giving voice to local issues not adequately represented by the other parties.”16 In Canada, descriptive representation fanned a widespread concern among western Canadians that their interests were being overlooked in national politics, whereas those of Ontario and Quebec, the two central Canadian heavyweights, prevailed. Together, these two provinces comprised 54.4 percent of Canada’s population in 1996, as compared to 29.6 percent for the four western provinces.17 As Barry Cooper points out, “In caucus, therefore, even the most loyal MP would, when regional issues divided the parties, invariably be outvoted. . . . What in caucus looks like majority rule back on the farm looks like a member Ottawashed.”18 Moreover, with the exception of three transitional prime ministers who together governed for less than eighteen months, all the Canadian prime ministers since 1968 had come from Quebec, whose nationalism severely tested not only the unity of the state, but also the patience of western Canadians. In 1980, the Liberal Party and Pierre Trudeau, who had previously governed as prime minister from 1968 to 1979, recaptured a parliamentary majority despite winning only two of seventy-seven seats in Canada’s four western provinces, long a bastion of the center-right Progressive Conservative Party (PC). In fact, Trudeau and the Liberals had sealed their victory before votes in the four western provinces had even been tallied.19 In 1984, Brian Mulroney (PC) and the Tories recorded a landslide electoral victory that included winning fifty-eight of the seventy-seven western ridings and a strong showing in Mulroney’s home state of Quebec. Although westerners assumed a high-profile position within the PC’s cabi-

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net and parliamentary caucus, many in the western provinces were soon disappointed with the new government.20 Mulroney followed a strategy of placing Quebec at the center of the Conservative party’s electoral hopes and as prime minister he directed vast quantities of patronage toward Quebec. For instance, within one year of the Conservatives’ return to power in Ottawa, Quebec had received nearly four times as much money from the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion than had the four western provinces together; additionally, the federal government encouraged the Korean company Hyundai to settle in Quebec and in a controversial decision the government awarded a major aerospace contract (CF-18) to Canadair-CAE Ltd in Montreal despite a better bid from Bristol Aerospace LTD of Winnipeg. The Mulroney government also defended a number of controversial cabinet members, several of them from Quebec, who were eventually forced to resign from 1985 to 1987 due to scandal.21 Given the Mulroney government’s close ties to Quebec, westerners increasingly suspected that Ottawa was favoring Quebec at their expense. As Mulroney and the PC lost support in the four western provinces, political conservatives, especially in Alberta, grew concerned that they would no longer have a strong federal voice defending their values and interests. Together these two concerns helped inform the decision to found the Reform Party in 1987 to compete in federal elections. In late 1988, the PC government was reelected, yet in Alberta its vote share plummeted 17 percentage points from the 68.8 percent it had garnered in 1984. After the election, a poll showed that 60 percent of the French speakers but only 46 percent among English speakers had supported the Progressive Conservatives.22 In 1993, after nine years in federal office, the Progressive Conservatives failed to win a single seat in western Canada. The lack of descriptive representation contributed to political regionalism in the United Kingdom as well. The Conservative Party dominance in the 1980s fueled political alienation in Scotland in part because Thatcher’s Tories were closely identified with the interests and culture of southeastern England. Although Thatcher’s calls for privatization, deregulation, and an “enterprise culture” struck a favorable chord in the prosperous, dynamic southeastern region, they did not resonate among voters in economically depressed Scotland who relied more heavily on public assistance and were less likely to eschew “collectivist” values. The Conservatives won few seats in Scotland in the 1980s and early 1990s, but given their lock on southern English districts, enhanced by the first-past-the-post electoral system, they remained securely in power in Westminster. In the unitary United Kingdom of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Conservatives, increasingly perceived by Scots as an “English” party, effected critical decisions in Scotland. This happened even as their share of the Scottish vote declined from 28.4 percent (and twenty-one seats) in 1983, to 24 percent (and just ten of seventy-two

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seats) in 1987, and eventually to 17.5 percent and no Scottish seats in 1997. With more and more southerners within Tory ranks in the House of Commons, the “Englishing of the modern Conservative Party” contributed to a sense of foreign rule among the Scottish.23 Under Thatcher, according to David McCrone, “modern Conservatism spoke overwhelmingly with a southern English voice. The populist, nationalist anti-state appeal which sustained Thatcher in England for the whole of the 1980s had distinctively negative resonances north of the border.”24 Although inadequate descriptive representation offers fertile ground for a regional party, it does not ensure its success in elections. Political institutions, such as election laws or federalism, matter greatly as does the party itself and its place within the party system. The Northern League, for instance, initially emerged out of clubs to preserve the local dialects and traditions of northern Italy. Party leader Bossi wrote poems in the Lombard dialect and in his early speeches used dialect.25 In the north, the League made deep inroads within a male subculture, centered around soccer teams and bars.26 By 1992, the upstart party had recruited 140,000 members, mobilized a core of activists and formed sports, artisan, and trade union associations to broaden its grassroots presence in northern Italy.27 It had become a spokesperson of the tightly knit networks of small and medium-sized companies in the north. “Such communities . . . had produced high levels of trust and solidarity which were primarily borne out of living in the same village, speaking the same dialect, sharing family as well as business ties, and having comparable social statuses.”28 Its ideology of political localism extolled the virtues of individual achievement, hard work, and local community and pit them against the values of an allegedly parasitic central government that had been corrupted by the south.29 In Canada, the Reform Party built on the organized conservative subculture of Alberta. The oil companies, as well as groups opposed to gun control, abortion, bilingualism, and multiculturalism, were drawn to this newcomer party. Although not nationally well known at the time, Reform’s leader Preston Manning enjoyed broad name recognition throughout Alberta. His father Ernest Manning had served twenty-five years as the premier of Alberta and had led Social Credit, a conservative party with past roots in prairie populism. In the United Kingdom, the SNP established its presence in Scottish civil society, especially in northern and western Scotland. The SNP drew on activists within the nationalist community and by the early 1990s it had acquired the support of the Scottish tabloid The Sun as well as increased financial backing from the Scottish business community.30 As political outsiders, these three parties mobilized regional protest by attacking the political establishment for its unresponsiveness to the economic and cultural needs of their regions. They also alleged an economic and cultural bias inherent in the existing constitutional order. Their provocative

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rhetoric polarized, underscoring their alienation from the central government. Because they were either new parties (Reform Party, Northern League) or had very limited access to the perks of office (SNP), they portrayed themselves as popular movements, uncorrupted by power and special interests. Despite stark ideological differences, the Northern League, Reform Party, and SNP each called for radical institutional reform to ensure more local political control over taxation, resources and culture. For instance, the Northern League asserted that the Italian state unfairly channeled northern taxpayer lira toward a corrupt south. Bossi championed a strong federal system that would curtail the fiscal authority of the national government, create three new macro-regions (North, Center, and South) to promote regional culture and economy, and grant the regions much greater autonomy over matters such as taxation and the language (or dialect) of instruction in the schools. In Canada, the Reform Party adopted the slogan “The West Wants In!” and demanded far-reaching institutional reform to ensure greater representation for western Canada.31 Reform called for the equal treatment of all the provinces, no special status for Quebec and, in an effort to bolster descriptive representation by drawing on the U.S. example, a stronger senate with an equal number of members directly elected from all the provinces, no matter how sparsely populated. In Great Britain, the SNP in the early 1990s was clamoring for radical institutional reforms that it claimed would allow for democracy and effective representation in Scotland. The SNP called for a devolved parliament in Edinburgh that would lessen the authority of Westminster over Scottish affairs. The SNP also demanded that Scotland be “Independent in Europe,” arguing that Scots would do a better job than Euroskeptical English representing Scottish interests in the EU. As we have seen, the PDS in eastern Germany also benefited from concern over representation after unification. As in Italy, Canada, and Britain, uneven development and distinct regional cultural identities provided the conditions under which the issue of descriptive representation (as measured by the composition of elites) became politically salient. Like its contemporaries—the SNP, the Canadian Reform Party, and the Northern League, the PDS gained strength as regional concerns regarding representation mounted. All four of these parties, and not a few of their voters, equated inadequate descriptive representation with deficient interest representation. As a local insider and national outsider, the PDS seized on the electoral opportunities presented by economic crisis in the east, cultural differences across regions, and the western predominance within the leading institutions to mount its electoral comeback in the 1990s as an “authentic voice of the east.” It was widely perceived as authentic because, unlike the other parties, it came from the former GDR. This continued even after Angela Merkel, an easterner, became chancellor. Several prominent exceptions did not change perceptions. Just as a Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a Scott, did not weaken

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Scottish nationalism, a Chancellor Merkel in an overwhelmingly western administration did not assuage eastern concerns about representation. Even as the new Left Party became more western in composition, it stressed its eastern credentials. Will the new Left pick up where the PDS left off as the voice of the east? In the 2005 federal elections campaign, the PDS hung posters in eastern Germany with the message: “One Hundred Percent for the East: The Left.PDS.” (Its posters in western Germany neither mentioned eastern interest representation nor the suffix –PDS.) Yet western reinforcements tested the party’s cultural unity and shaped its policy focus. These strains became evident by the end of the decade. Even if westerners in the party were fully committed to the east, their prominence risked fostering the impression that, as a headline in an eastern German regional paper blared in August 2005, “the west takes over the Left Party.”32 As its western wing grows, the Left may find that easterners begin to look elsewhere for regional representation or protest. This would signal a new turn in the strange career of the SED-successor party in unified Germany.

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE 1. Quoted in David Childs, “Obituary: Kurt Hager,” The Independent (London), September 21, 1998. 2. As the 2005 Bundestag election neared, the PDS and the WASG, a new left-wing protest party based primarily in western Germany, agreed to cooperate in the coming election. As part of the agreement, the PDS changed its name to Left Party.PDS (Linkspartei.PDS). After the election, the Left Party.PDS and WASG joined forces to create a new party, the Left (die Linke), which formed in June 2007. 3. Shortly before the formation of the Left, the Left Party.PDS entered the Bremen state parliament. The Left Party subsequently joined state parliaments in Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saarland, and Schleswig-Holstein. In Hesse, it cleared the 5 percent threshold in state elections in 2008 and again in 2009, when new elections were held after attempts to forge a stable governing coalition had failed. 4. Henry Krisch, “From SED to PDS: The Struggle to Revive a Left Party,” in The New Germany Votes, ed. Russell J. Dalton (Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993), 185. 5. Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Berlin: Dietmar Bartsch, Bundesgeschäftsführer, 2000), 11. 6. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, May 23, 1996, 9378. 7. Prior to the PDS, only the environmentalist Greens in the 1980s had succeeded in joining the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Free Democrats (FDP) as fixtures in the German party landscape. 8. See Anna M. Grzmala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 9. Herbert Kitschelt, “The Formation of Party Systems in East Central Europe,” Politics & Society 20.1 (March 1992): 26. 10. Scholars disagree on the extent to which economic voting bolstered post-communist opposition parties in eastern Europe. See Joshua L. Tucker, Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Alexander C. Pacek, “Macroeconomic Conditions and Electoral Politics in East Central Europe,” American Journal of Political Science 38.3 (August 1994): 723–44. Marcus A. G. Harper, “Economic Voting in Postcommunist Eastern Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 33.9 (November 2000): 1191–227.

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11. Kohl’s June 1, 1990 address is reprinted in: Die deutsche Vereinigung. Dokumente zu Bürgerbewegung, Annährung und Beitritt, ed. Volker Gransow and Konrad H. Jarausch (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1991). 12. Helmar Drost, “The Great Depression in East Germany: The Effects of Unification on East Germany’s Economy,” East European Politics and Societies 7.3 (1993): 457–9. 13. In 1991, the real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in eastern Germany was 31 percent of the per capita GDP in West Germany. By 1993, the GDP had risen to 51 percent of the western level. Manfred Wegner, “Die deutsche Einigung oder das Ausbleiben des Wunders. Sechs Jahre danach: eine Zwischenbilanz,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40 (September 27, 1996): 16. 14. Thomas Falkner and Dietmar Huber, Aufschwung PDS: Rote Socken—zurück zur Macht (Munich: Knaur, 1994), 308. 15. Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS. Geschichte. Organisation. Wähler. Konkurrenten (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1996), 230. 16. Rainer-Olaf Schultze, “Widersprüchliches, Ungleichzeitiges und kein Ende in Sicht: Die Bundestagswahl vom 16. Oktober 1994,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 26.2 (1995): 343–4. 17. Patrick Moreau and Jürgen Lang, Linksextremismus: Eine unterschätzte Gefahr (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1996), 202. 18. Schultze, “Widersprüchliches, Ungleichzeitiges und kein Ende in Sicht,” 344. 19. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 228. 20. Schultze, “Widersprüchliches, Ungleichzeitiges und kein Ende in Sicht,” 343. 21. Oskar Niedermayer, “PDS im Ostdeutschen Parteiensystem,” in The Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany: Modern post-communism or nostalgic Populism? (German Monitor 42), ed. Peter Barker, 32 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998). 22. Peter Doerschler and Lee Ann Banaszak, “Voter support for the German PDS over time: Dissatisfaction, ideology, losers and east identity,” Electoral Studies 26.2 (June 2007): 364. 23. M. Rainer Lepsius, Demokratie in Deutschland: Soziologisch-historische Konstellationsanalysen. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 38. 24. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 281–8. Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten, “Postkommunisten im Spagat. Zur Funktion der PDS im Parteiensystem,” Deutschland Archiv 30.6 (1997), 864–78. 25. Martin J. Bull, “The West European Communist Movement in the Late Twentieth Century,” West European Politics 18.1 (1995): 80–84. 26. Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss. “Nach der Bundestagswahl 1998. Die PDS in stabiler Seitenlage,” in Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 1998, ed. Oskar Niedermayer, 129–33 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1999). 27. Giovanni Sartori, “From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology,” in Politics and the Social Sciences, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset, 86–89 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). 28. Daniel J. Elazar, The Other Jews: The Sephardim Today (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Sammy Smooha, Israel: Pluralism and conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978).

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29. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), vol. 1, esp. 132–3. 30. See David F. Patton, “Germany’s Left Party.PDS and the ‘Vacuum Thesis’: From Regional Milieu Party to Left Alternative,” Communist Studies and Transition Politics 22.2 (2006): 206–27. 31. “PDS zweitstärkste Partei in Ostdeutschland. Erklärung des Parteivorstandes der PDS zu den Ergebnissen der Landtagswahl in Sachsen,” Press release PDS, September 20, 1999. 32. Paula Blomqvist and Christoffer Green-Pedersen, “Defeat at Home? Issue-Ownership and Social Democratic Support in Scandinavia,” Government and Opposition 39.4 (2004): 606–8. 33. David Arter, “ ‘Communists we are no longer, Social Democrats we can never be:’ The Evolution of the Leftist Parties in Finland and Sweden,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18.3 ( 2002): 25. 34. Patton, “Germany’s Left Party.PDS and the ‘Vacuum Thesis,’ ” 213. 35. Dan Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in eastern Germany (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 2001). David Patton, “Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism in Comparative Perspective,” East European Politics and Societies 12.3 (1998): 500–26. 36. Wolfgang Schäuble, Der Vertrag: Wie ich über die deutsche Einheit verhandelte (Munich: Knauer, 1993), 131. 37. Wolfgang Dümke and Fritz Vilmar, “Was heißt hier Kolonialisierung?” in Kolonialisierung der DDR: Kritische Analysen und Alternativen des Einigungsprozesses, 3rd edition, ed. Wolfgang Dümke and Fritz Vilmar, 12–21 (Münster: Agenda-Verlag, 1996). See also Dorothy Rosenberg, “The Colonization of East Germany,” Monthly Review 43 (1991): 14–33. 38. Dümke and Vilmar, “Was heißt hier Kolonialisierung?,” 14–18. 39. Heidrun Abromeit, “Die ‘Vertretungslücke’: Probleme im neuen deutschen Bundesstaat,” Gegenwartskunde 42.3 (1993): 284–90. 40. Heidrun Abromeit, Der verkappte Einheitsstaat (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1992), 94. 41. Abromeit, “Die ‘Vertretungslücke,’ ” 291. 42. Katja Neller and S. Isabell Thaidigsmann, “Das Vertretenheitsgefühl der Ostdeutschen durch die PDS: DDR-Nostalgie und andere Erklärungsfaktoren im Vergleich,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 43.3 (2002): 424. 43. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 260–3. 44. Daniel Hough, “ ‘Made in Eastern Germany’: The PDS and the Articulation of Eastern German Interests,” German Politics 9.2 (2000): 141. 45. Helmut Wiesenthal, “Die Transition Ostdeutschlands. Dimensionen und Paradoxien eines Sonderfalls,” in Einheit als Privileg. Vergleichende Perspektiven auf die Transformation Ostdeutschlands, ed. Helmut Wiesenthal, 105–40 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1996.) 46. Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer, “The Impact of a Ready-made State,” in Einheit als Privileg. Vergleichende Perspektiven auf die Transformation Ostdeutschlands, ed. Helmut Wiesenthal (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1996). 47. Ulrich Becker, Horst Becker and Walter Ruhland, Zwischen Angst und Aufbruch. Das Lebensgefühl der Deutschen in Ost und West nach der Wiedervereinigung (Düsseldorf: ECON Verlag, 1992), 169.

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48. In the literature, descriptive representation is also referred to as “mirror representation” or the “politics of presence” and has been behind policies such as the French parity law to ensure a greater share of female deputies in local councils or affirmative gerrymandering in the United States. See Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 1–56. 49. Jane Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes,’ ” Journal of Politics 61.3 (1999): 629. 50. Ann Phillips quoted in Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 139. 51. Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 90. 52. See Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?,” 633–41. See also Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 139–42. 53. Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?,” 643. 54. Ibid., 644. 55. Ibid., 649. 56. Ibid., 651. 57. See David F. Patton, “Außenseiter der Republik: In den 50er Jahren der BHE—in den 90er Jahren der PDS. Ein Vergleich,” Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen 28.1 (1999). 58. Michel Hubert, Deutschland im Wandel: Geschichte der deutschen Bevölkerung seit 1815 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 277–8. 59. Willi Albers, “Die Eingliederung in Volkswirtschaftlicher Sicht,” in Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 2, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 437 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959). 60. Werner Nellner, “Grundlagen und Hauptergebnisse der Statistik,” in Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 1, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 91–92 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959). 61. Albers, “Die Eingliederung in Volkswirtschaftlicher Sicht,” in Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland, 436. 62. Eugen Lemberg, “Wandel des politischen Denkens,” in Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland, vol. 3, 443–4. Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat. Die Geschichte der Deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2008), 71–77, 83–84. 63. Federal President Theodor Heuss, “New Years Address 1951,” December 31, 1950, Deutsches Historisches Museum, http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/dokumente/ JahreDesAufbausInOstUndWest_redeSylvesteranspracheHeuss1950/index.html (accessed August 14, 2009). 64. Hans Ulrich Behn, Die Regierungserklärungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Günter Olzog Verlag, 1971), 27. 65. Rainer Schulze, “Growing Discontent: Relations between Native and Refugee Populations in a Rural District in Western Germany after the Second World War,” in West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society and Culture in the Adenauer Era, ed. Robert G. Moeller, 70 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

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66. Everhard Holtmann, “Flüchtlinge in den 50er Jahren: Aspekte ihrer gesellschaftlichen und politischen Integration,” in Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die Westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt and Arnold Sywottek, 359 (Bonn: Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf., 1993). 67. Günter Schödl, “Von Politiktradition und politischer Kultur der Südostdeutschen: Geschichtliche Voraussetzungen der Wiedereingliederung,” in Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte: Bilanzierung der Forschung und Perspektiven für die künftige Forschungsarbeit, ed. Rainer Schulze, Doris von der Brelie-Lewien and Helga Grebing, 105 (Hildesheim: Verlag August Lax, 1987). 68. Timothy Snyder, “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality,” New York Review of Books 56.12 (2009), 16. Andreas Kossert puts the number of deaths at two million. Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 9. 69. Pertti Ahonen, After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 57. 70. Franz Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Struktur einer politischen Interessenpartei (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1968), 18. 71. Jane Perry Clark Carey, “Political Organization of the Refugees and Expellees in West Germany,” Political Science Quarterly 66.2 (1951): 201–2. 72. Schulze, “Growing Discontent: Relations between Native and Refugee Populations in a Rural District in Western Germany after the Second World War.” See also Dieter Brosius and Angelika Hohenstein, Flüchtlinge im Nordöstlichen Niedersachsen 1945–1948 (Hildesheim: Verlag August Lax, 1985), 51–53. 73. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 58–59. 74. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 46. 75. Ahonen indicates that there were probably sixty in the Bundestag, whereas Neumann reports sixty-one expellee deputies. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 63. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 18. 76. Hans W. Schoenberg, Germans from the East: A Study of their Migration, Resettlement, and Subsequent Group History since 1945 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 80–112. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 29–37. 77. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 73–76. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 29. 78. The CDU drew upon former Center politicians and party members, whereas the FDP found support among earlier politicians and supporters of the Weimar era liberal parties, the German People’s Party (DVP) and the German Democratic Party (DDP). 79. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertrieben und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 25. 80. Ibid., 25–26. 81. Ibid., 318. 82. Ibid., 292. 83. Ibid., 351. 84. Ibid., 352. 85. Ibid., 320.

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86. Ibid., 389. 87. Richard Stöss, “Der Gesamtdeutsche Block/BHE,” in Parteien-Handbuch: die Parteien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1980, ed. Richard Stöss, 1441 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1984). 88. Stöss, “Der Gesamtdeutsche Block/BHE,” 1441. 89. Quoted in Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertrieben und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 326. 90. Ibid., 326, fn. 251. 91. Ibid., 27, 35. 92. Ibid., 306. 93. Nine percent had named its engagement on behalf of a unified Germany in its former borders. Ibid., 304. 94. Ibid., 311–13. 95. Ibid., 313–18. 96. Schulze, “Growing Discontent,” 53–72. Brosius and Hohenstein, Flüchtlinge im nordöstlichen Niedersachsen 1945–1948, 51–53. Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 43–86. 97. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertrieben und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 303–4. 98. Pertti Ahonen also points to the increased lobbying clout of the expellee organizations and the fact that the parties tended to equate the influx of Germans from the GDR with the expellee movement. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 64–80. 99. Ibid., 68–69, Sabine Lee, “CDU Refugee Policies and the Landesverband Oder/Neiße: Electoral Tool or Instrument of Intergration?” German Politics 8, no. 1 (April 1999): 139–42. 100. Ahonen, After the Expulsion, 69. 101. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertrieben und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 21–22. 102. Hans-Peter Schwarz, Die Ära Adenauer: Gründerjahre der Republik 1949– 1957 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), 166. 103. Reinhold Schillinger, “Der Lastenausgleich,” in Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, ed. Wolfgang Benz, 186 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985). 104. Nonetheless, the Lastenausgleich neither came close to fully compensating the expellees for their losses, nor altered underlying property relations in postwar West Germany. The expellees on average remained relatively disadvantaged into the 1970s. Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 92–109; Paul Lüttinger, “Der Mythos der schnellen Integration: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Integration der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge in der Bundesrepublik Deuschland bis 1971,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 15.1 (1986): 20–36. 105. Daniel Levy, Remembering the Nation: Ethnic Germans and the Transformation of National Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany, doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1999, 43–44. 106. Levy, Remembering the Nation, 46. 107. Ute Schmidt, “Vom Flüchtling zum ‘Neubürger.’ Die Vertriebenen in der SBZ und in der DDR vor dem Hintergrund ‘verordneter’ Verständigung mit

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dem Osten,” in Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Vertriebenen: Fünfzig Jahre Eingliederung, Aufbau und Verständigung mit den Staaten des östlichen Europa, ed. Christof Dahm and Hans-Jakob Tebarth, 86–87 (Bonn: Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen, 2000). 108. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 133. 109. Bundestags-Drucksache, number 593, February 16, 1950. 110. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 133. 111. If one also counts refugees from the GDR, then the percentage jumps from 27 to 35 percent. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 134. 112. Karl Heinz Gehrmann, “Kulturpflege und Kulturpolitik,” Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 3, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 173 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959). 113. Eugen Lemberg, “Das Bildungssystem vor neuen Aufgaben,” Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 3, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 374 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959). 114. Markus Mößlang, “Elitenintegration im Bildungssektor: Das Beispiel der ‘Flüchtlingsprofessoren’ 1945–1961,” in Vertriebene in Deutschland. Interdisziplinäre Ergebnisse und Forschungsperspektiven, ed. Dierk Hoffmann, Marita Krauss and Michael Schwartz (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000). 115. Mößlang, “Elitenintegration im Bildungssektor,” 384–5. 116. Ibid., 386. 117. Ibid., 386. 118. Gehrmann, “Kulturpflege und Kulturpolitik,” Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland, vol. 3, 181. 119. Ibid., 183. 120. Ibid., 180–187; Karl O. Kurth, “Presse, Film und Rundfunk,” Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 3, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 402–34 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959); Levy, Remembering the Nation, 50–54. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 143. 121. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 256–61. 122. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 345. 123. Ibid., 39–41. 124. Ibid., 347–8. 125. Stöss, “Gesamtdeutscher Block/BHE,” in Parteien Handbuch, 1445–7. 126. Weiss, “Die Organisationen der Vertriebenen und ihre Presse,” in Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, ed. Wolfgang Benz, 196–7 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985). 127. Schoenberg, Germans from the East, 114–5. 128. Ibid., 121. 129. Ibid., 320–1. 130. See Neller and Thaidigsmann, “Das Vertretenheitsgefühl der Ostdeutschen durch die PDS,” 439.

166

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

131. Hans-Heinrich Herlemann, “Vertriebene Bauern im Strukturwandel der Landwirtschaft,” Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Ihre Eingliederung und Ihr Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Geistesleben, vol. 2, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, 119 (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt in Kiel, 1959). 132. It also performed badly among farmers and other self-employed. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 312. 133. The BHE’s participation in the second Adenauer government proved especially divisive within the party. Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950–1960, 112–16. 134. Ibid., 317. 135. Reinhold Schillinger, Der Entscheidungsprozess beim Lastenausgleich, 1945–1952 (St. Katharinen, Mercaturae Verlag, 1985), 285. 136. Theodor Eschenburg, Ämterpatronage (Stuttgart: Schwab, 1961), 50–1. 137. Eschenburg, Ämterpatronage, 51.

CHAPTER TWO 1. Eric Canepa, “Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism,” Socialist Register, ed. Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch (London: Merlin Press, 1994), 314–7. 2. Cordt Schnibben, “Jedes Pissoir beherrscht,” Der Spiegel 50 (December 11, 1989): 29. 3. See Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS. Protokoll der Beratungen am 8./9. und 16./17. Dezember 1989 in Berlin, ed. Lothar Hornbogen, Detlef Nakath and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 1999). See also Heinrich Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS (Bonn, Berlin: Bouvier, 1992), 134–49. 4. Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS, 61. 5. Ibid., 61. 6. In early February 1990, the party executive transferred 3.04 billion marks in party assets into the coffers of the GDR. Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS, 174. 7. Ibid., 231–43. 8. Ibid., 248. 9. Hans Modrow quoted in Manfred Wilke, “Die Dikaturkader André Brie, Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky und das MfS,” Politische Studien 49.360 (1998): 40. 10. For an account of Gysi’s background and early years, see his autobiography. Das war’s. Noch lange nicht! (Munich: Econ & List Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 7–57. 11. Frank Nordhausen and Wiebke Hollersen, “Die Sache mit Erwin,” Berliner Zeitung, May 23, 2008, 3. 12. For instance, Gysi was granted the discretionary power to address the Bundestag at any time during the period allotted to the PDS delegation. By 1993, he was also responsible for the PDS Bundestag delegation’s declarations. Jochen Spöhrer, Zwischen Demokratie und Oligarchie: Grüne und PDS im Deutschen Bundestag (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999). 13. Wilke, “Die Dikaturkader André Brie, Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky und das MfS,” 45. 14. André Brie, Ich tauche nicht ab: Selbstzeugnisse und Reflexionen (Berlin: edition ost, 1996), 65–69.

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167

15. Wilke, “Die Dikaturkader André Brie, Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky und das MfS,” 45. 16. Markus Wehner, “Schröders linkes Baby,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, September 11, 2005, 9. 17. Thomas Falkner and Dietmar Huber, Aufschwung PDS: Roten Socken—zurück zur Macht? (Munich: Knauer, 1994), 47–48. 18. “Bisky streitet Vorwurf der IM-Tätigkeit ab,” Berliner Zeitung, December 12, 1995. 19. Jens König, “Die Gabi aus Suhl,” die tageszeitung, September 18, 2000, 6. 20. “1. Ausschuss stellt MFS-Tätigkeit des Abgeordneten Claus als erwiesen fest,” heute im Bundestag-Meldung, 346/2006, November 16, 2006, http://www.bundestag.de/aktuell/hib/2006/2006_346/05.html (accessed June 10, 2009). 21. Hans-Ulrich Derlien and Stefan Lock, “Eine neue politische Elite? Rekruitierung und Karrieren der Abgeordneten in den neuen Landtagen,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 25.1 (1994): 61–94. 22. Patrick Moreau, PDS. Anatomie einer postkommunistischen Partei (Bonn: Bouvier, 1992), 315–9. 23. The authors note however that not all PDS parliamentarians in the state parliaments reported their earlier party affiliation. Derlien and Lock, “Eine neue politische Elite?,” 68–72. 24. Moreau, PDS. Anatomie einer postkommunistischen Partei, 315–9. 25. This is a finding of a 1997 survey of the chairpersons of party caucuses at the local level in eastern Germany. Günter Pollach, Jörg Wischermann and Bodo Zeuner, Ein nachhaltig anderes Parteiensystem. Profile und Beziehungen von Parteien in ostdeutschen Kommunen (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2000), 37, 57 and 84. 26. This is the breakdown of those active in the workforce. Dietmar Wittich, “Mitglieder und Wähler der PDS,” in Die PDS: postkommunistische Kaderorganisation, ostdeutsche Traditionsverein oder linke Volkspartei? Empirische Befunde & kontroverse Analysen, ed. Michael Brie, Martin Herzig, Thomas Koch, 59 (Cologne: PapyRossa Verlag, 1995). 27. Wittich, “Mitglieder und Wähler der PDS,” 63–64. 28. Among the retired members in 1989, more than half (53 percent) had been blue-collar workers. Wittich, “Mitglieder und Wähler der PDS,” 62. 29. ISDA—Institut für Sozialdatenanalyse, Forschungsbericht: Strukturen, politische Aktivitäten und Motivationen in der PDS. Mitgliederbefragung der PDS 1991 (Berlin, June 1991), 5. 30. ISDA, Forschungsbericht, 8. 31. Wittich, “Mitglieder und Wähler der PDS,” 61–62, 66–67. 32. Lutz Niethammer, “Das Volk der DDR und die Revolution. Versuch einer historischen Wahrnehmung der laufenden Ereignisse,” in “Wir sind das Volk.” Flugschriften, Anrufe und Texte einer deutschen Revolution, ed. Charles Schüddekopf, 258 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990). 33. Ibid., 259–60. 34. ISDA, Forschungsbericht, 6–7. 35. Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS, 61. 36. Tobias Dürr, “Abschied von der ‘inneren Einheit’: Das Lebensgefühl PDS und der alte Westen,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (November 1996): 1353.

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37. Quoted in Joachim Raschke, “SPD und PDS: Selbstblockade oder Opposition?,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (December 1994): 1457. 38. Gysi, Das war’s. Noch lange nicht!, 309. 39. Wittich, “Mitglieder und Wähler der PDS,” 65. 40. “de Maizière: Mit den einstigen NSDAP-Mitgliedern war die CDU gnädiger,” Interview with Lothar de Maizière, Die Welt, October 25, 1999. 41. “Wolfgang Berghofer aus der SED-PDS ausgetreten—Ehemalige Mitglieder fordern Auflösung der Partei,” Neues Deutschland, January 22, 1990. 42. Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS, 166–8. 43. Reprinted in: “Vorstandserklärung der SPD. SED in Auflösung,” Berliner StattBlatt. Sozialdemokratisches Informationsblatt für Berlin, January 27, 1990, 2. 44. Annett Otto, “Wichtig ist die jetzige Einstellung,” Berliner Zeitung, October 1, 1996. 45. Ibid. 46. “Von elf Ost-Bezirken waren neun gegen Uschner,” Berliner Zeitung, March 29, 1995. 47. Nikos Natsidis, “In der SPD ist Aufnahme von SED-Mitgliedern umstritten,” Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, March 24, 1995. 48. Gudrun Sonnenberg, “Auch NVA-Offiziere sind willkommen,” Berliner Zeitung, December 12, 1996. 49. “Statut der SED/PDS—Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus,” in Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS, 438. 50. Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS, 438. 51. Franz Oswald, The Party That Came Out of the Cold War: The Party of Democratic Socialism in United Germany (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 11–12. 52. Andreas Fraude, “Reformsozialismus” statt “Realsozialismus”? Von der SED zur PDS (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1993), 59–63. 53. Ibid., 59–67. 54. The election platform is reprinted in: Der schwere Weg der Erneuerung. Von der SED zur PDS. Dokumentation, ed. Manfred Behrend and Helmut Maier, 366–78, 367 (Berlin: Dietz, 1991). 55. Ibid., 368. 56. The abridged program is reprinted in: Der schwere Weg der Erneuerung, 384–5. 57. Patrick Moreau, PDS: Anatomie einer postkommunistischen Partei, 147–57. 58. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 92–93. 59. Oswald, The Party that came out of the Cold War, 9–10. 60. Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Berlin: Dietmar Bartsch, Bundesgeschäftsführer, 2000), 5–6. 61. Ibid., 6. 62. Ibid., 11–12. 63. Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS, 61. 64. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, 35. Sitzung, June 21, 1991, 2939. 65. Peter Eisenfeld, “Wer wird im Rentenrecht eigentlich bestraft? Ein Beitrag zur Novellierung des Rentenüberleitungsgesetzes,” Deutschland Archiv 29.6 (1996):

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934. Richtig Vorsorgen: Ratgeber Geld. Beispielsrechnungen für die alten und neuen Bundesländer (Berlin: Stiftung Warentest, 1992), 164–73. 66. Henner Wolter, Zusatzversorgungssysteme der Intelligenz. Verfassungsrechtliche Probleme der Rentenüberleitung in den neuen Bundesländern (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992), 23–32, 57–58. 67. The retirement accounts in question are listed in Wolfgang Brachmann and Ernst W. Schmidt, Das neue Rentenrecht. Die gesetzliche Rentenversicherung im alten und im neuen Bundesgebiet nach der Rentenreform ‘92 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rudolf Haufe Verlag, 1995), 312–4. 68. Rainer Wilmerstadt, Das neue Rentenrecht (SGB VI): In den alten und neuen Bundesländern nach dem Einigungsvertrag und der Renten-Überleitung (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1992), 247–8. 69. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, 35. Sitzung, June 21, 1991, 2959–60. 70. Wilmerstadt, Das neue Rentenrecht (SGB VI), 243–4. 71. Ibid., 243–7. Richtig Vorsorgen, 166–9. 72. Brachmann and Schmidt, Das neue Rentenrecht, 316. 73. Henner, Zusatzversorgungssysteme der Intelligenz, 171–172. For an alternative point of view, see Eisenfeld, “Wer wird im Rentenrecht eigentlich bestraft?” 74. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, 35. Sitzung, June 21, 1991, 2950, 2961. 75. The parliamentary group, Alliance 90/Greens, also opposed the bill in parliament. 76. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, 35. Sitzung, June 21, 1991, 2941. 77. “PDS im Bundestag? Damit DDR-Interessen vertreten sind,” interview with Gregor Gysi, Sächsische Zeitung, September 7, 1990. 78. Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS, 246–7. 79. Ibid., 247. 80. Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, 11. 81. Manfred Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft? Von der SED zur PDS (Munich: Tilsner, 1994), 240. 82. Ditfurth quoted in Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft?, 241. 83. Dieter Roth, “Die Wahlen zur Volkskammer in der DDR. Der Versuch einer Erklärung,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 31.3 (1990): 383, 386. 84. Dieter Roth, “Die Volkskammerwahl in der DDR am 18. März 1990. Rationales Wahlverhalten beim ersten demokratischen Urnengang,” in Die Politik zur deutschen Einheit, ed. Wolfgang Merkel and Ulrike Liebert, 136 (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1991). 85. Roth, “Die Wahlen zur Volkskammer in der DDR,” 373. 86. Wolfgang G. Gibowski, “Demokratischer (Neu-)Beginn in der DDR. Dokumentation und Analyse der Wahl vom 18. März 1990,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 21.1 (1990): 12. 87. Heinrich Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS—Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern? Sommer/Herbst 1989—18. März 1990 (Berlin: Kommission Politische Bildung des Parteivorstandes der PDS, 1990), 37. 88. Roth, “Die Volkskammerwahl in der DDR am 18. März 1990,” 137.

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89. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 188. 90. Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS, 251. 91. Moreau, PDS: Anatomie einer postkommunistischen Partei, 140. 92. Thomas R. Cusack and Wolf-Dieter Eberwein, “The Endless Election: 1990 in the German Democratic Republic,” in Political Culture in Germany, ed. Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Ralf Rytlewski, 193–4 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993). 93. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “Der Optimismus hat gesiegt. Eine Nachbetrachtung zur Wahl,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 5, 1990, 5. Renate Köcher, “Die Stimmung im Osten bessert sich. Weniger Angst vor der Zukunft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 30, 1990, 6. 94. Eighty-seven percent of eastern Germans polled in December 1990 agreed that “we will remain second class citizens for a long time despite unification. Wolfram Brunner and Dieter Walz, “Selbstidentifikation der Ostdeutschen 1990–1997: Warum sich die Ostdeutschen zwar als ‘Bürger 2. Klasse’ fühlen, wir aber nicht auf die ‘innere Mauer’ treffen,” in Werte und nationale Identität im vereinten Deutschland. Erklärungsansätze der Umfrageforschung, ed. Heiner Meulemann, 230 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1998).

CHAPTER THREE 1. An estimated 75 percent of the upper service class of the GDR (scientists, doctors, teachers, higher levels of public administration) secured posts in post-unification eastern Germany. Stefan Hornbostel, “Von Überlebenden, Kolonisten und Newcomern: Neue und Alte Eliten in Ostdeutschland,” Kursbuch: Die neuen Eliten 139 (2000): 130. 2. See Gerhard Lehmbruch, “Die improvisierte Vereinigung: Die Dritte deutsche Republik,” Leviathan 18.4 (1990): 462–86. 3. More than two million East Germans had been employed in government, and of these approximately 300,000 were working for the police and state security (Stasi). This represented about 12 percent of the East German population as compared with the 7 percent share of public servants found in West Germany. Berndt Keller and Fred Henneberger, “Beschäftigung und Arbeitsbeziehungen im öffentlichen Dienst der neuen Bundesländer,” Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte 43.6 (1992): 332–3. 4. Hans-Ulrich Derlien, “Integration der Staatsfunktionäre in das Berufsbeamtentum: Professionalisierung und Säuberung,” in Verwaltungsreform und Verwaltungspolitik im Prozeß der deutschen Einigung, ed. Wolfgang Seibel, et al., esp. 191–3 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993). 5. Klaus König, “Transformation einer real-sozialistischen Verwaltung in eine klassisch-europäische Verwaltung,” in Verwaltungsreform und Verwaltungspolitik im Prozeß der deutschen Einigung, 82–8. 6. Derlien, “Integration der Staatsfunktionäre in das Berufsbeamtentum.” 7. Greg O. Kvistad, “What to do with Communist Bureaucrats from Bureaucratic Communism: The German Case,” in The Federal Republic at Forty-Five: Union without Unity, ed. Peter H. Merkl, 148 (New York: New York University Press, 1995). 8. Hans-Joachim Gießmann, Das Unliebsame Erbe. Die Auflösung der Militärstruktur der DDR (Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992), 75.

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9. Egon Bahr, “Vorwort,” in Gießmann, Das Unliebsame Erbe, 11. Whereas the ratio of officers to soldiers was one to twelve in the Bundeswehr, in the NVA it was one to four. Georg-Maria Meyer and Sabine Collmer, Kolonisierung oder Integration? Bundeswehr und Deutsche Einheit—Eine Bestandaufnahme (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993), 40. 10. Jörg Schönbohm, Two Armies and One Fatherland: The End of the Nationale Volksarmee (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), 33. 11. Ibid. 12. Werner Meske, “The restructuring of the East German research system—a provisional appraisal,” Science and Public Policy 20.5 (1993): 300, table 1. 13. Peter Quint, The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 180–2; Charles Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 307–8. Werner Meske, “The restructuring of the East German research system,” 305 14. Quirin Schiermeier, “UN stands up for East German scientists,” Nature 396 (1998), 605. 15. Rose and Haerpfer, “The Impact of a Ready-made State,” 105–40. 16. Hans-Ulrich Derlien, “German Unification and Bureaucratic Transformation,” International Political Science Review 14.4 (1993): 326. 17. Hans-J. Misselwitz, Nicht länger mit dem Gesicht nach Westen. Das neue Selbstbewußtein der Ostdeutschen (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1996), 61. 18. Peter M. Huber, “Personelle Kontinuität an Schulen und Hochschulen in den neuen Ländern,” in Von Erblasten und Seilschaften. Die Folgen der SED-Diktatur und Gefahren für die Demokratie, ed. Hartmut Koschyk and Konrad Weiß, (Munich: Günter Olzog Verlag, 1996). 19. Thomas A. Baylis, “Leadership Change in Eastern Germany: From Colonization to Integration,” The Federal Republic at Forty-Five, 250. 20. Stefan Tillmann and Monika Dunkel, “Tausende Ex-Stasi-Spitzel arbeiten im öffentlichen Dienst,” Financial Times Deutschland, July 9, 2009. 21. Quint, The Imperfect Union, 168–9. 22. The Public Services Workers Union (ÖTV) in Germany estimated that between 600,000 and 700,000 workers were affected. The federal government placed the number at between 100,000 and 150,000. Keller and Henneberger, “Beschäftigung und Arbeitsbeziehungen im öffentlichen Dienst der neuen Bundesländer,” 333, fn. 9. 23. Quint, Imperfect Union, 173–6. 24. Derlien, “German Unification and Bureaucratic Transformation,” 326. 25. Ibid. 26. In a July 2000 interview, Gauck estimated that around 5 percent of the teachers in eastern Berlin had been Stasi informants, yet of these only about one of five lost their jobs due to Stasi connections. “ ‘Ich bleibe Anwalt der Opfer.’ Spiegel Interview with Joachim Gauck,” Der Spiegel 31 (July 31, 2000): 38–41. 27. Hornbostel, “Von Überlebenden, Kolonisten und Newcomern,” 130. 28. Klaus Goetz has estimated that 1,400 came from the federal government and 8,400 from the western state governments. Klaus Goetz, “Rebuilding Public Administration in the New German Länder,” West European Politics 16.4 (1993): 454.

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29. Klaus König, “Bureaucratic Integration by Elite Transfer: The Case of the Former GDR,” Governance 6.3 (1993): 391. 30. Ibid., 392. 31. Baylis identifies the most important posts as economics minister, finance minister, interior minister, justice minister, and minister president. Thomas A. Baylis, “Elite Change After Communism: Eastern Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 12.2 (1998): 273–5. Data drawn from table 1, 274. 32. “Oder ein Brillantring,” Der Spiegel 48 (November 29, 1993): 26–28. “Sprung aus der Hose,” Der Spiegel 49 (December 6, 1993): 27, 29. 33. The four bloc parties were the CDU, the LDPD, the NDPD, and the Democratic Farmer Party of Germany (DBD). 34. According to Günther Krause, former federal transportation minister. Quoted in Peter Joachim Lapp, Ausverkauf. Das Ende der Blockparteien (Berlin: edition Ost, 1998), 189. 35. Ibid, 212. 36. Klaus König, “Transformation als Staatsveranstaltung in Deutschland,” Leviathan Special Issue, 15 (1995): 620–1. 37. Wolfgang Seibel, “Strategische Fehler oder erfolgreiches Scheitern? Zur Entwicklungslogik der Treuhandanstalt 1990–1993,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 35.1 (1994): 5. 38. Hellmut Wollmann, “Entwicklung des Verfassungs- und Rechtsstaates,” in Transformation der politisch-administrativen Strukturen in Ostdeutschland, ed. Hellmut Wollmann, Hans-Ulrich Derlien, et al., 45 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1997). 39. Jörg Machatzke, “Die Potsdamer Elitenstudie—Positionsauswahl und Auschöpfung,” in Eliten in Deutschland: Rekrutierung und Integration, ed. Wilhelm Bürklin, Hilke Rebenstorf, et al., 51–53 and 67 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1997). Of the 42 elites interviewed all were former West Germans. 40. Wolfgang Gülich, “Der Prozess der deutsch-deutschen militärischen Vereinigung aus der Sicht eines Brigadekommandeurs in den neuen Bundesländern—Versuch einer ersten Bewertung,” in Beispielhaft? Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Eingliederung der Nationalen Volksarmee in die Bundeswehr, ed. Paul Klein and Rolf P. Zimmermann, 26 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993). 41. The sole exception was a military doctor who had held the rank of general; he remained on at the level of colonel. 42. Baylis, “Leadership Change in Eastern Germany,” 255. 43. Hornbostel, “Von Überlebenden, Kolonisten und Newcomern,” 131. 44. Machatzke, “Die Potsdamer Elitenstudie—Positionsauswahl und Auschöpfung,” 56–60 and 67. 45. Thomas Ammer, “Der Konflikt um die ‘Abwicklung’ an den Hochschulen in der ehemaligen DDR,” Deutschland Archiv 24.2 (1991): 118–9. 46. Quint, Imperfect Union, 177–8. 47. Ammer, “Der Konflikt um die ‘Abwicklung’ an den Hochschulen in der ehemaligen DDR,” 118. 48. Quint, The Imperfect Union, 178. 49. Wolfgang Schluchter, “Die Hochschulen in Ostdeutschland vor und nach der Einigung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 25 (June 24, 1994): 21.

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50. Between 1989 and 1993, employment in industrial research and development in eastern Germany declined from 86,000 to 22,000, or by nearly 75 percent. Alfred Spielkamp et al. Industrielle Forschung und Entwicklung in Ostdeutschland (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 123. 51. Fritz Vilmar, “Soziale Liqudation oder Diskriminierung ostdeutschen Eliten,” in Zehn Jahre Vereinigungspolitik, 87. 52. Rolf Reißig cited in Vilmar, “Soziale Liqudation oder Diskriminierung ostdeutschen Eliten,” 87. 53. Alison Abbot, ‘Tough measures bring a scarred science back to the world stage,” Nature 401 (1999), 636–7. 54. Quoted in Abbott, “Tough measures bring a scarred science back to the world stage,” 637. 55. Christian Welzel, “Rekrutierung und Sozialialisation der ostdeutschen Elite. Aufstieg einer demokratischen Gegenelite?,” in Eliten in Deutschland, 219. 56. These institutions were for the most part headed by western Germans at the national level. Peter Waldmann, “Elitenwechsel im Zuge der Wiedervereinigung,” Gegenwartskunde 48.4 (1999): 451–4. Wilhelm Bürklin, “Die Potsdamer Elitestudie von 1995: Problemstellungen und wissenschaftliches Programm,” in Eliten in Deutschland, 27. 57. Welzel, “Rekrutierung und Sozialialisation der ostdeutschen Elite,” 201. 58. Robert D. Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1976), 33. 59. Hans-Ulrich Derlien, “Elitezirkulation zwischen Implosion und Integration,” in Transformation der politisch-administrativen Strukturen in Ostdeutschland, 396. 60. Finanzen und Steuern, Fachserie 14, Reihe 6, Personal des öffentlichen Dienstes 1998 (Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt, January 2000), 222, 228. 61. Christoph Reichard and Manfred Röber, “Was kommt nach der Einheit? Die öffentliche Verwaltung in der ehemaligen DDR zwischen Blaupause und Reform,” in Der Lange Weg zur Einheit. Studien zum Transformationsprozeß in Ostdeutschland, ed. Gert-Joachim Glaeßner, 217 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1993). 62. According to Lewis Edinger, 60 percent of the senior civil servants, 71 percent of the senior foreign service elites, and all of the military elites had had the same occupational career between 1933 and 1940. Lewis Edinger, “Post-Totalitarian Leadership,” American Political Science Review 54.1 (1960): 66, 69. 63. Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semisovereign State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 257. 64. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany, 257. 65. “Die Sonderwege sind zu Ende.” Interview with Heinrich August Winkler, Der Spiegel, 40 (October 2, 2000): 89. 66. Maier, Dissolution, 312. “ ‘Ich bleibe Anwalt der Opfer.’ Spiegel Interview with Joachim Gauck,” Der Spiegel 31 (July 31, 2000): 39. 67. A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 23–54. 68. The letter is reprinted in Unfrieden in Deutschland: Weissbuch 2. Wissenschaft und Kultur im Beitrittsgebiet, Gessellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde, ed. Wolfgang Richter, 194–5 (Berlin: KOLOG-Verlag, 1993). 69. Quint, The Imperfect Union, 176.

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70. Robert Gerald Livingston, “German Reunification from Three Angles,” German Politics and Society 17.1 (1999): 129. 71. Freya Klier, “Stapelweise Modrow, Gysi, Kant und Genossen,” in Eine Revolution und ihre Folgen: 14 Bürgerrechtler ziehen Bilanz, ed. Eckhard Jesse, 161 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2000). 72. “Nie wieder Sozialismus? Die Ziele der SED-Fortsetzungspartei. Eine Handreichung zur inhaltlichen Auseinandersetzung mit der PDS,” UiD-Dokumentation 37 (1995), 4–5. 73. “PDS—Gefahr von links,” UiD Extra 25 (1994): 3–4. 74. Manfred Wilke, “PDS-Legenden offensiv bekämpfen!,” Die Welt am Sonntag (January 1, 1995), 56. Manfred Wilke, “Die PDS: Partei der Spaltung,” in Von Erblasten und Seilschaften, 75–80. 75. Gernot Facius, “Die Realität und die Grenze der Anerkennung,” Die Welt (October 1, 1998). 76. See “PDS—Gefahr von links,” UiD Extra 25 (1994), 8–10. See also the Social Democratic response to the PDS “Die PDS—politische Gegner der SPD,” Intern 15 (1994), 9. 77. “Dresdner Erklärung: Die Chancen der Einheit endlich nutzen,” Presseservice der SPD 590 (1994), 2. 78. This refers to the fall 1989 marches in the GDR that contributed to the collapse of the communist dictatorship. “Die linksradikale PDS bekämpfen wie die rechtsextremen Parteien!,” UiD 21 (1994): 9. 79. Ibid., 10. 80. The list of prominent citizen group activists who left the Alliance 90/ Greens included Günter Nooke, Vera Lengsfeld, and Konrad Weiß. “Gegen jegliche Machtbeteiligung der PDS,” Berliner Zeitung, December 17, 1996. 81. “Wahlkampfkeule PDS,” excerpts from Richard von Weizsäcker’s address on Reformation Day 1995 in the Brandenburg Cathedral, reprinted in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 12 (1995). 82. Bertolt Fessen, “Ressentiment und Fehlwahrnehmung,” Berliner Debate INITIAL 6.4/5 (1995): 142. 83. Roland Claus, “Die PDS und die anderen. Palamentarische Arbeit zwischen Ausgrenzung, Wettbewerb und Kooperation,” UTOPIE kreativ 112 (2000): 146. 84. According to data from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 24 percent of western Germans believed that the other parties should cooperate with the PDS. Moreau and Lang, Linksextremismus, 194. 85. Ute Schmidt, “Ost-West-Konflikte in der CDU nach der Wende—Probleme der Integration und Identität,” Berliner Debatte INITIAL 8.4 (1997): 36. 86. Ralph Bollmann, “Ein Gewinn für die Demokratie,” die tageszeitung, June 16–17, 2001, 1. 87. “Ja zur deutschen Einheit—eine chance für Europa. Walhlprogramm der SPD zum ersten frei gewählten Palament der DDR,” in Parteitag in Leipzig, February 22–25 (Berlin: Vorstand der SPD, 1990), 15. 88. “CDU-Ausschluß droht,” die tageszeitung, June 27, 1994. 89. “Dresdner Erklärung: Die Chancen der Einheit endlich nutzen,” Presseservice der SPD 590 (1994), 2. 90. Quoted in Eckhard Jesse, “SPD and PDS Relationships,” German Politics 6.3 (1997): 92.

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91. “Schlau gemacht,” Der Spiegel 23 (August 11, 1992): 34. 92. Christian Füller, “In den Gemeinden gehört die PDS ganz einfach dazu,” die tageszeitung, May 9, 1998, 3; Markus Franz, “SPD auf den Spuren von CDU und PDS,” die tageszeitung, May 15, 1998, 6; “Koalition aus PDS und CDU in Schwerin,” die tageszeitung, November 17, 1998, 7. 93. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 221-2. Kurt Schumacher. Reden—Schriften— Korrespondenzen 1945–1952, ed. Willy Albrecht, 64 (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1985). 94. Neugebauer and Stöss, 220. 95. Johannes Volmert, “Die ‘Altparteien’ außer Fassung. Reaktionen und Kampagnen auf die Wahlerfolge der PDS—ein Pressespiegel,” in Die PDS, 170, 177. 96. “Zitat des Tages,” Neues Deutschland, June 27, 1994. This quote appeared in Bild am Sonntag on June 26, 1994. 97. Ralph Bollmann, “Mitten in Zehlendorf,” die tageszeitung, September 22, 1999, 19. 98. Volmert, “Die ‘Altparteien’ außer Fassung,” 177. 99. Ibid., 174–5. 100. Quoted in “Plakataktion soll ‘Linksfront’ stoppen,” Berliner Zeitung, July 17, 1994. 101. See “Bayerns Innenminister will PDS-Verbot—Stolpe nennt PDS demokratisch,” Die Welt am Sonntag, December 12, 1993; “Waigel will PDS-Vermögen für Kulturförderung einsetzen,” Die Welt am Sonntag, December 19, 1993. 102. Michaela Richter, “The Verfassungsschutz,” German Issues, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies 20 (1998): 31–2. Nadia Leihs, “Linksradikale im Osten gesucht,” die tageszeitung, April 16, 2002, 7. 103. See “PDS wird weiter observiert,” Berliner Zeitung, April 29, 1994; Ulrich Zawatka-Gerlach, “Diepgens schwierige Premiere,” Der Tagesspiegel, February 3, 1995; Daniel Friedrich Sturm, “Der Verfassungsschutz und die PDS,” Die Welt, November 6, 1999. 104. “Dewes sieht PDS in Jokerrolle,” Die Welt, December 22, 1995. 105. Dagmar Enkelmann quoted in Silke Lambeck, “Karriere in der falschen Partei,” Berliner Zeitung, November 24, 1992. 106. Lambeck, “Karriere in der falschen Partei.” Christian Stoll, “Rote Raus: Die PDS in Bonn,” Wiener 4 (1991): 42–46. 107. “Schwer verträglich,” Der Spiegel 30 (July 22, 1991): 33. 108. Gysi’s speech is reprinted in Gysi, Das war’s, 291–5. 109. Excerpts of the suicide note were reprinted in a memoriam appearing in Neues Deutschland, February 21, 1992. 110. “Lebensstationen eines deutschen Sozialisten,” Berliner Zeitung, January 12, 1995. 111. “Umgang mit Rede Heyms spaltet das Parlament,” Berliner Zeitung, January 21, 1995; “ ‘Bulletin’ druckt Heym-Rede,” Berliner Zeitung, March 29, 1995. 112. “schwer verträglich,” 33–34; “Zugang zu den Ausschüssen im Bundestag erleichtert,” Handelsblatt, July 17, 1991. 113. Ursula Knapp, “PDS erreicht nur Teilerfolg in Karlsruhe,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 17, 1991. 114. In 1990, Alliance 90/Greens received 1.2 percent of the vote and eight seats.

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115. “Auch Karlsruhe verweigert der PDS den Fraktionsstatus,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 17, 1991. 116. “Auch Karlsruhe verweigert der PDS den Fraktionsstatus.” Helmut Kerscher, “Das Gericht verbeugt sich vor dem Parlament,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 17, 1991. 117. “Kein Platz für die PDS in wichtigen Ausschüssen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 26, 1995, 6; “Fraktionen engen PDS-Spielraum ein,” Die Welt, January 26, 1995, 3. 118. “Verfassungsrichter billigen PDS keinen Fraktionsstatus zu,” Berliner Zeitung, November 14, 1997. 119. Uta Andresen, “PDS-Anträge im Bundestag erst zu später Stunde,” Berliner Zeitung, January 5, 1998. 120. Stoll, “Rote Raus,” 46. 121. Helmut Lölhöffel, “Kohls PDS-Aussperrung stößt bei Opposition auf Mißfallen,” Frankfurter Rundschau, February 8, 1995, 4; “Mätzchen mit Methode,” Der Spiegel (February 13, 1995): 7. 122. “Rede vor fast leerem Plenarsaal,” Frankfurter Rundschau, October 26, 1991; “LL/PDS wird nicht mehr ‘geschnitten’ ” Sächsischse Zeitung, September 12, 1992. 123. “SPD stimmt geschlossen mit der Opposition,” Der Tagesspiegel, October 17, 1992. “Hammelsprung war notwendig,” Frankfurter Rundschau, October 17, 1992. 124. Hans-Martin Tillack, “Pensioniert die PDS!” die tageszeitung, October 24, 1991.

CHAPTER FOUR 1. Solidarity Service International (SODI), which arose out of the preexisting Solidarity Committee of the GDR, was a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization. 2. In the March Volkskammer election and in the May communal elections, the DFD list received 0.33 percent and 1.23 percent of the vote, respectively. Gerda Weber, “DFD—Letzes Kapitel.” Deutschland Archiv 23.7 (1990): 1092–7. 3. See the dfd pamphlet that catalogs the major activities of the dfd in the 1990s. “27. Oktober 1990—27.Oktober 2000. Grundlegend Erneuerung im ersten Jahrzehnt,” Demokratischer Frauenbund e. V., 2000. 4. See the address of Klaus-Jürgen Warnick in Mitteilungen Nr. 1. Beiträge und Dokumente vom 1. Ostdeutschen Bundeskongreß der Verbände am 2. Oktober 1993 in Berlin, Kino “International” (Berlin: Pressebüro des 1. Ostdeutschen Bundeskongresses der Verbände, 1993): 7. 5. “Für Recht und Würde,” reprinted in Icarus 5.2:2–3 (1996), 2. 6. Ibid. 7. For an overview of its activities, see Icarus 5.2:2–3 (1996): 25–28, 35–36, 39–46. 8. The GBM also helped establish the Alternative Enquete Commission, which challenged the work of a Bundestag commission on the GDR that met between 1992 and 1994 to investigate and report on aspects of East German history for the purposes of political education. According to Professor Prokop of the GBM, it was

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clear that western Germans dominated the official expert commission and hoped to criminalize the GDR. See Siegfried Prokop, “Aus befreundeten Vereinen. Alternative Enquetekommission ‘Deutsche Zeitgeschichte’ (AEK) and GBM,” Icarus 2.5:2–3 (1996): 57–59. The Alternative Enquete Commission had at one point more than twenty-eight working groups (Arbeitskreise) that drew on former GDR intelligentsia. Patrick Moreau, Die PDS: Profil einer antidemokratischen Partei (Munich: Hanns Seidel Foundation, 1998), 89. 9. “10. Jahrestag der GBM. Aus der Rede von Prof. Wolfgang Richter,” GBM Informationen 58 (2001): 4. 10. The January 1993 edition contained additional signatures. Ostdeutsches Memorandum (Berlin: Gesellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde, 1993), 1–23. 11. Ibid., 1. 12. See the opening address of Professor Wolfgang Richter, “Sinn und Ziel der Gemeinsamkeit,” in Mitteilungen Nr. 1. Beiträge und Dokumente vom 1. Ostdeutschen Bundeskongreß der Verbände am 2. Oktober 1993 in Berlin, Kino “International” (Berlin: Pressebüro des 1. Ostdeutschen Bundeskongresses der Verbände, 1993), 1–4. 13. See Wolfgang Richter, “Eröffnung. ‘Dritter Demokratenkongreß’ Berlin, 24. Oktober 1998,” Icarus 14.4 (1998), 3. 14. Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 15. Lothar Probst, “Wer ist die PDS? Einblicke in den Alltag einer postkommunistischen Partei,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 1, 1997. See also, Pollach, Wischermann, and Zeuner, Ein nachhaltig anderes Parteiensystem, 79–80. 16. Data gathered by the Zentralinstitut für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung. Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in Eastern Germany, 71. 17. Werner J. Patzelt, “Die PDS nach 2000: Neugeburt oder Fehlgeburt,” in PDS am Scheideweg, edited by Frank Berg and Lutz Kirschner, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Manuscript 20, Berlin, June 2001, 14. 18. Lothar Probst, “Wer ist die PDS? Einblicke in den Alltag einer postkommunistischen Partei,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 1, 1997. See Probst’s interview with the PDS district chairman Prof. Wolfgang Leuchter on May 10, 1994, reprinted in Lothar Probst, Die PDS—von der Staats- zur Regierungspartei. Eine Studie aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2001), 51. 19. “de Maizière: Mit den einstigen NSDAP-Mitgliedern war die CDU gnädiger,” Interview with Lothar de Maizière, Die Welt, October 25, 1999. 20. Jürgen P. Lang, Patrick Moreau and Viola Neu, Auferstanden aus Ruinen . . . ? Die PDS nach dem Super-Wahljahr 1994, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Internal Study No. 111/1995 (Sankt Augustin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 1995), 87. 21. See Halbherziger Revisionismus: zum postkommunistischen Geschichtsbild, ed. Rainer Eckert and Bernd Faulenbach (Munich: Olzog, 1996). 22. Lothar Probst, “Wer ist die PDS? Einblicke in den Alltag einer postkommunistischen Partei,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 1, 1997. 23. “Die Machtfrage stellen,” Der Spiegel 16 (April 17, 2000). 24. Michael Brie, Die PDS—Strategiebilding im Spannungsfeld von gesellschaftlichen Konfliktlinien und politischer Identität (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000), 32.

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25. Pollach, Wischermann, and Zeuner, Ein nachhaltig anderes Parteiensystem, 37, 57, 84. 26. Ibid., 84. 27. See “Zu sehen waren die Funktionärsgesichter,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 12, 1991; Klaus Hartung, “Protest ist populär,” Die Zeit, December 17, 1993. 28. “Schlau gemacht,” Der Spiegel 23 (June 1, 1992): 34–35. 29. Gero Neugebauer, Oskar Niedermayer, Richard Stöss, et al., Organisation, Politik und Vernetzung der Parteien auf Kreisebene in den fünf neuen Bundesländern. Endbericht des KSPW-Projekts “Kreisparteien” (Berlin: Zentralinstitut für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung at the Free University of Berlin, 1996), 80–87. 30. Günter Pollach, “Die PDS im kommunalen Parteiensystem,” in Die PDS im Parteiensystem, ed. Michael Brie and Rudolf Woderich), 201–3 (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000. 31. Pollach, Wischermann, and Zeuner, Ein nachhaltig anderes Parteiensystem, 99–102. Neugebauer, Niedermayer, Stöss, et al., Organisation, Politik und Vernetzung der Parteien auf Kreisebene in den fünf neuen Bundesländern, 99–100 32. Author’s correspondence with state offices of the PDS in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Saxony-Anhalt, July–August 2001. 33. Author’s correspondence with Dieter Karich of the Saxon state branch of the PDS, August 15, 2001. 34. Pollach, Wischermann, and Zeuner, Ein nachhaltig anderes Parteiensystem, 99–102. Neugebauer, Niedermayer, Stöss, et al., Organisation, Politik und Vernetzung der Parteien auf Kreisebene in den fünf neuen Bundesländern, 99–100. 35. Koch, “Unternehmer als Klientel der PDS,” 93, 99. 36. According to the 1991 study, the mid-range of societal connection was 32 percent for the PDS, 30 percent for the SPD, and 29 percent for the CDU. A summary of the 1999 study is found in: Pollach, “Die PDS im kommunalen Parteiensystem,” 33. 37. The PDS had won 23.6 percent of the eastern Berlin vote in the 1990 Berlin state election. 38. The CDU’s share stagnated at around 35 percent and the SPD’s share rose to 26 percent where it stagnated. Pollach, “Die PDS im kommunalen Parteiensystem,” 195–6. 39. Peter Barker, “The Party of Democratic Socialism as Political Voice of East Germany,” in United and Divided: Germany since 1990, ed. Mike Dennis and Eva Kolinsky, 63 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004). 40. Patzelt, “Die PDS nach 2000,” 6. 41. Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?,” 641. 42. Ibid., 643–8. 43. Rolf Reißig, Die gespaltenen Vereinigungsgesellschaft: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Transformation Ostdeutschlands und der deutschen Vereinigung (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000), 66. 44. See David F. Patton, Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 107–46. 45. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, February 15, 1990, 15110.

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46. Nearly 44 percent of western Germans believed that equal living conditions had been achieved. Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, “Elite West—Elite Ost? Eliten in den alten und den neuen Bundesländern,” in Deutschland Ost—Deutschland West. Eine Bilanz, ed. Hans-Georg Wehling, 126 (Opladen: Leske, 2002). 47. Roland Czada, “Das Unmögliche unternehmen. Die Treuhandanstalt zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft (Teil 1)” Gegenwartskunde 43.1 (1994): 16. 48. Ibid., 20. 49. Max Kaase and Petra Bauer-Kaase, “Deutsche Vereinigung und innere Einheit 1990–1997,” in Werte und nationale Identität im vereinten Deutschland: Erklärungsansätze der Umfrageforschung, ed. Heiner Meulemann, 258 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1998). 50. “Erst vereint, nun entzweit,” Spiegel (January 18, 1993): 53. 51. Siegfried Grundmann, “Zur Akzeptanz und Integration von Beamten aus den alten in den neuen Bundesländern,” Deutschland Archiv 27.1 (1994): 35. 52. Grundmann, “Zur Akzeptanz und Integration von Beamten aus den alten in den neuen Bundesländern,” 37. 53. Ibid., esp. 38–42. 54. Robert Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. 184–5. 55. Ibid., 178–9. 56. Ibid., 198–9. 57. Neugebauer and Stöss, Die PDS, 57. 58. “Zurück in die Kaserne,” Der Spiegel 34 (August 21, 1995). 59. Gregor Gysi, Ein Blick zurück, ein Schritt nach vorn (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2001), 135. 60. Jennifer A. Yoder, From East Germans to Germans: The New Postcommunist Elites (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 211. 61. Quoted in Lapp, Ausverkauf, 89. 62. “Etablierung der PDS bedeutet für die CDU eine Herausforderung in Ostdeutschland,” interview with Heiner Geißler, Die Zeit, 45/2001. 63. “Nun mal Schluss mit Umarmung. Streitgespräch zwischen Roland Claus (PDS) und Christoph Bergner (CDU),” Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, July 8, 2002. 64. Conrad Lay, “Warum sollen ‘Sieger lernen?,’ ” Polis, Hessische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung 11 (1994): 2. 65. Programm der PDS, 1993, 12. 66. Ostdeutschland—Herausforderung und Chance. Forderungen des Parteivorstandes und der Bundestagsgruppe der PDS zur wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und rechtlichen Lage in den ostdeutschen Bundesländern (Berlin: Parteivorstand der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, 1996), 3. 67. Rostocker Manifest: Für einen zukunftsfähigen Osten in einer gerechten Republik (Berlin: Parteivorstand der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, 1998), 1–24. 68. Ibid., 3. 69. Wolfgang Gast, “Rückzug nach dem Osten,” die tageszeitung, April 6, 1998, 3. 70. Dr. Gregor Gysi und Gruppe, “Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Grundgesetzes,” Änderungsantrag der Gruppe der PDS/Linke Liste, Drucksache

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12/8181, Deutscher Bundestag. 12. Wahlperiode, June 28, 1994. “Programm der PDS zur Bundestagswahl 1998,” Pressedienst PDS 51–52 (December 19, 1997): 11–14; Rostocker Manifest, 8. Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in eastern Germany. 71. “Programm der PDS zur Bundestagswahl 1998.” 72. Programm der PDS, 1993, section 5. 73. Uwe Kranenpohl, Mächtig oder machtlos? Kleine Fraktonen im Deutschen Bundestag 1949–1994 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999), 167–78. 74. Kranenpohl, Mächtig oder machtlos?, 174. 75. Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in eastern Germany, 151–2. 76. Jürgen P. Lang, Das Prinzip Gegenmacht. PDS und Parlamentarismus, Konrad-Adenauer–Stiftung, Internal Study No. 166 (Sankt Augustin: Konrad–AdenauerStiftung, 1998), 49–50. See also Horst Dietzel, “Zur Arbeit der Landesverbände (Ost),” in Studien zur inneren Verfaßtheit der PDS, internal study, Parteivorstand der PDS, March 1997, esp. 17–20. 77. In comparison, only one-fifth of the western Germans polled considered the PDS to be a normal democratic party. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Ein demoskopisches Portrait der PDS-Anhänger. Eine Dokumentation des Beitrags in der Frankurter Allgemeinen Zeitung Nr. 147 vom 28. Juni 1994 (Allensbach: Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, 1994), table 1. 78. According to polling data, the share of eastern Germans who considered the PDS most effective at solving policy problems declined after 1998, yet remained above that of the levels of 1991. Wolfram Brunner, Jutta Graf and Viola Neu, “Die Politische Meinungslage in Deutschland 1990–2001,” Arbeitspapier, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin 35 (2001): 38–40. 79. Renate Köcher, “Chancen und Grenzen der PDS,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 292, December 15, 1999, 5. 80. Other commonly mentioned reasons for why PDS voters backed the party included: “good program” (34 percent); a “socialist party” (32 percent); “good politicians” (31 percent); “protest against the federal government” (29 percent); “protest against the predominance of the west over developments in the east” (27 percent); and “protest against unification” (5 percent). “Partei aus dem Osten,” Der Spiegel 32 (August 3, 1998): 32 81. Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?,” 648–50. 82. Ibid., 651. 83. Brunner and Walz, “Die Selbstidentifikation der Ostdeutschen 1990–1997,” 230. 84. Ibid., 248. 85. The polling results are taken from: Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “Problems with Democracy in Eastern Germany after the Downfall of the GDR,” Research on Democracy and Society 2 (1994): 213–31. 86. Wade Jacoby, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 19–20. See also David Patton, “The Allied Occupation and German Unification Compared: The Forgotten Lesson of the 1940s,” German Politics and Society 14.4 (1996), 1–22.

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87. See Carsten Zelle, “Socialist Heritage or Current Unemployment: Why Do the Evaluations of Democracy and Socialism Differ Between East and West Germans?” German Politics 8.1 (1999): 1–20. 88. Noelle-Neumann, “Problems with Democracy in Eastern Germany after the Downfall of the GDR,” 214. 89. See Detlef Pollack and Gert Pickel, “Die ostdeutsche Identität—Erbe des DDR-Sozialismus oder Produkt der Wiedervereinigung?” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 41-42 (October 2, 1998): 9–23. Brunner and Walz, “Die Selbstidentifikation der Ostdeutschen 1990–1997.” Zelle, “Socialist Heritage or Current Unemployment,” 1–20. 90. Detlef Pollack, “Trust in Institutions and the Urge to be Different: On Attitudinal Change in Eastern Germany,” German Politics 8.3 (1999): 92. 91. Quoted in Yoder, From East Germans to Germans, 204. 92. Detlef Pollack, “Wirtschaftlicher, sozialer und mentaler Wandel in Ostdeutschland: Eine Bilanz nach zehn Jahren,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40 (September 29, 2000): 20–1. 93. See Heidrun Abromeit, “Zum Für und Wider einer Ost-Partei,” Gegenwartskunde 41.4 (1992): 444–5. 94. Yoder, From East Germans to Germans, 211. 95. “Krenz vor Kohl,” Der Spiegel 32 (August 3, 1998): 32. 96. Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in Eastern Germany, 138. 97. “Ich bekämpfe DDR-Nostalgie,” interview with Gregor Gysi, Der Spiegel 23 (June 1, 1992): 36–7. 98. Gregor Gysi, Freche Sprüche, ed. Jörg Köhler und Hanno Harnisch, 103 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1995). 99. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 22, 1994. 100. “Unsere Solidarität ist nicht bedingungslos,” interview with PDS party chair Gabi Zimmer, General-Anzeiger (Bonn), November 8, 2001. 101. “Man muß die PDS nicht unbedingt mögen,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 13, 1991. 102. Probst, Die PDS—von der Staats- zur Regierungspartei, 60. 103. “Helfen Sie dem Verfassungsschutz. Beobachten Sie die PDS,” Ortsverband Böhlen der PDS, March 1994. 104. See the September 27, 2001 resolution of the party’s executive committee at the Dresden Party Congress. “Es geht auch anders: Nur Gerechtigkeit sichert Zukunft! Zu Strategie und Programmatik der PDS bis 2003,” Pressedienst PDS 40 (October 4, 2001). 105. “Endlich gleiche Lebensverhältnisse in Ost und West! Forderungen an die Bundesregierung,” Pressedienst PDS 33 (1999). “Vorstand beschloß Unterschriftenaktion,” Pressedienst PDS 33 (1999). Robin Alexander, “PDS—Partei der Sammler,” tageszeitung, August 17, 1999, 6. 106. See Gysi’s speech in the Bundestag on May 26, 1993. It is reprinted in Gysi, Das war’s, 296–305. 107. Ibid., 152. 108. Lothar Bisky, Wut im Bauch. Kampf um die PDS 29. November bis 7. Dezember 1994 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1995).

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NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 109. The letter of September 26, 1994 is reprinted in: Gysi, Freche Sprüche,

170.

CHAPTER FIVE 1. Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology, “Wirtschaftsdaten neue Bundesländer, Stand: Juni 2002,” (Berlin: Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology, August 5, 2002), see table 2.2, 4. 2. Ibid., data drawn from table 2.1, 3. “Miese Zahlen aus dem Osten,” die tageszeitung, November 18, 2003, 6. 3. Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, “The Welfare State: Incremental Transformation,” in Developments in German Politics 3, ed. Stephen Padgett, William E. Paterson and Gordon Smith, 146–7 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). 4. “Eurostat Pressemitteilung.” STAT/03/131, November 17, 2003. 5. According to 2002 Eurostat data, the Budapest region in Hungary had a higher per capita GDP than all five eastern Länder. The Polish province of Mazowieckie (which includes Warsaw) and the Czech Republic both had a higher per capita GDP than Dessau, while Mazowieckie’s per capita GDP was just under the level of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. Uwe Müller, Supergau Deutsche Einheit (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006), 228. 6. Jutta Hoffritz, “Stadt der 1000 Gefeuerten,” Die Zeit 21 (May 19, 2005). 7. Six percent of those polled in the age group twenty-five to sixty indicated that they desired to have the GDR back, whereas 22 percent agreed that “after ten years of unity, I already feel like a proper citizen of the Federal Republic.” See summary findings of the Sozialreport 2000 in “Deutsche Einheit in Zahlen,” Freitag 40 (September 29, 2000). 8. “Presseerklärung zum Sozialreport 2000: Leben in den neuen Bundesländern—Ergebnisse der 11. Welle der repräsentativen Erhebung.” Sozialwissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum Berlin-Brandenburg (SFZ) and the Hans Böckler Stiftung, 8. 9. Wolfram Brunner, Jutta Graf and Viola Neu, “Die politische Meinungslage in Deutschland 1990–2001,” Arbeitspapiere, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 35/2001, Sankt Augustin, August 2001, see tables on 21–2. 10. Erik Kirschbaum, “And the ‘Best German’ of All Time is . . . ,” Reuters, December 1, 2003. 11. Nick Reimer, “Chef trifft Chefsache,” die tageszeitung, December 17, 1998, 2. 12. Peter Heimann, “Auch Grüne wollen mehr Ost-Repräsentanz. Werner Schulz: Nur mit Schwanitz ist es nicht getan,” Sächsische Zeitung, September 27, 2002. 13. Werner Schulz, “Ach Du Grüne 90!” in Der Bündnis-Fall: Politische Perspektiven 10 Jahre nach Gründung des Bündnis 90, ed. Werner Schulz, 142 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2001). 14. Dietmar Volk, “Außer Spesen nichts gewesen?” in Der Bündnis-Fall, 171–2. 15. Schröder’s and Gysi’s addresses are reprinted in Das Parliament 21 (May 19, 2000).

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16. “Brandenburg: Die Gnade westdeutscher Geburt,” Neues Deuschland, January 6–7, 2001, 18. 17. Ralph Bollmann, “CDU-Minister aus dem Westen übernehmen Brandenburg,” die tageszeitung, October 1, 1999, 12. 18. Thomas A. Baylis, “East German Party Elites: The PDS and its Rivals,” paper delivered at the 25th Annual German Studies Association Conference, Washington D.C., October 4–7, 2001, 5. 19. Wolfgang Thierse, “Fünf Thesen zur Vorbereitung eines Aktionsprogramms für Ostdeutschland,” reprinted in Die Zeit, January 3, 2001. 20. Mark R. Thomson and Ludmilla Lennartz, “The Making of Chancellor Merkel,” German Politics 5.1 (2006): 99–110. 21. In late 2005, the eastern German Matthias Platzeck became the SPD chair. He resigned six months later due to health problems and was replaced by Kurt Beck from Rhineland-Palatinate. 22. Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?,” 644. 23. “Platzeck bemängelt fehlende Ost-Perspektive im Hartz-Konzept,” Berliner Zeitung, July 8, 2002, 5. “Kritik aus dem Osten,” die tageszeitung, July 18, 2002, 6. “Schwache Regionen nicht nur im Osten,” die tageszeitung, July 18, 2002, 6. 24. Wolfram Brunner, “10 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall: Die Bewertung der deutschen Einheit und der PDS in Ostdeutschland,” Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 1999, 6–7, 9–10. 25. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Bundestagswahl 1998: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 27. September 1998, report prepared by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V., Mannheim, no. 91, September 30, 1998 (Mannheim: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen E.V., 1998), 85. 26. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Bundestagswahl 1998, 85–86. Exit polls showed that the party continued to perform relatively poorly among farmers and among church members. 27. Neugebauer and Stöss, “Nach der Bundestagswahl 1998,” 133. 28. See Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Wahl in Sachsen-Anhalt. Eine Analyse der Landtagswahl vom 26. April 1998, report prepared by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V., Mannheim, no. 89, April 29, 1998 (Mannheim: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen E.V., 1998), 55–60. 29. Nikolaus Werz and Jochen Schmidt, “Die mecklenburg-vorpommersche Landtagswahl vom 27. September 1998: Weichenstellung zur rot-roten Koalition,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 30.1 (1999): 111, table 4. 30. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Wahl in Berlin. Eine Analyse der Wahl zum Abgeordnetenhaus vom 21. Oktober 2001, report prepared by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V., Mannheim, no. 106 (Mannheim: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen E.V., 2001), see tables on 95, 97, 101. 31. Gero Neugebauer, “Zur Akzeptanz der PDS in der politischen Konkurrenz,” in Die PDS im Parteiensystem, ed. Michael Brie and Rudolf Woderich, 141 (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000). 32. Neugebauer, “Zur Akzeptanz der PDS in der politischen Konkurrenz,” 141.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 33. “In der Bredouille,” Interview with Gregor Gysi, Die Zeit, November 24,

1995. 34. Robin Alexander, “Im Geist der SED,” die tageszeitung, September 14, 1998, 1. 35. In May 1995, prominent left-wing members of the PDS published in Neues Deutschland a proclamation entitled “Of Deep Concern” in which they lamented what they saw as the erosion of the party’s self-understanding as an opposition force; the weakening of its commitment to Marxist class struggle; and its supposed efforts to limit internal party pluralism by labeling its opponents as “Stalinists.” A new internal caucus (“Marxist Forum”) arose to advance the positions put forth in “Of Deep Concern.” See “In grosser Sorge,” reprinted in Die PDS—Phönix oder Asche? Eine Partei auf dem Prüfstand, ed. Heinz Beinert, 227 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1995). See Oswald, The party that came out of the Cold War, 89–91. 36. “Politische Aufgaben der PDS 1996 bis 1998. Beschluss der 2. Tagung des 4. Parteitages der PDS,” quoted in Oswald, The party that came out of the Cold War, 93. 37. Oswald, The party that came out of the Cold War, 92. 38. “Erfurter Erklärung: Bis hierher und nicht weiter—Verantwortung für die soziale Demokratie,” reprinted in: The Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany: Modern post-communism or nostalgic Populism? (German Monitor 42), ed. Peter Barker, 88–92 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998). 39. “Erfurter Erklärung,” The Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany, 88, 91. 40. Jürgen Hoffmann and Viola Neu, “Getrennt agieren, vereint marschieren? Die Diskussion über ein Linksbündnis bei SPD, Grünen und PDS,” Interne Studie, Konrad Adenauer Foundation 162 (1998). 41. Regine Zylka and Ralf Beste, “Bisky will nicht als Ragout enden,” Berliner Zeitung, January 18, 1997, 6. 42. Jonathan Olsen, “Seeing Red: The SPD-PDS Coalition in MecklenburgWest Pomerania,” German Studies Review 23.3 (2000): 563. 43. Jens Schneider, “Die Sprache der Macht—einmal anders verstanden,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 11, 1998, 3; Jens Schneider, “Partnersuche ist Herzenssache,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 5, 1998, 3; Jürgen Gottschlich, “Magdeburg wird Spielball Bonner Wahlstrategen,” die tageszeitung, April 30, 1998, 3. 44. Werz and Schmidt, “Die mecklenburg-vorpommersche Landtagswahl vom 27. September 1998,” 99. 45. See Werz and Schmidt, “Die mecklenburg-vorpommersche Landtagswahl vom 27. September 1998”; Christopher Seils, “Ringstorff: Ich war nie stromlinienförmig,” Berliner Zeitung, August 21, 1998, 6. 46. In February 1999, the PDS and the SPD in Saxony-Anhalt reached a general agreement on what would constitute the major policy priorities of the government. This closer partnership between the two parties marked a new phase in the “Magdeburger Modell.” Christopher Seils, “Verlobung von SPD und PDS in Magdeburg,” Berliner Zeitung, February 25, 1999, 6. See also Nick Reimer, “Reuiger Sünder auf Koalitionskurs,” Freitag 26 (June 22, 2001). 47. Stefan Reinecke, “Dumme Westler, trotzige Ostler,” die tageszeitung, October 31, 2001, 1; “Schröder kauft Ampel,” die tageszeitung, October 31, 2001, 1.

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48. See Ulrich Deupmann, “SPD und Grüne für PDS-Vizepräsidentin,” Berliner Zeitung, October 17, 1998, 5; Ada Brandes, “Parlament wählt Wolfgang Thierse zum Bundestagspräsidenten,” Berliner Zeitung, October 27, 1998, 1. 49. “SPD kritisiert PDS-Blockade durch Union im Bundestag,” Reuters http:// de.news.yahoo.com/000322/4/ngcl.html (accessed March 22, 2000). 50. Quoted in Richard Meng, “Strategie der dosierten Tabubrüche,” Frankfurter Rundschau, October 11, 2000. 51. See “PDS trägt—trotz Vorbehalten—Regierungs-Entwurf zur ZwangsarbeitEntschädigung mit—Schnelle Hilfe für NS-Opfer oberstes Gebot,” Pressemeldungen PDS im Bundestag, no. 1453, April 5, 2000. 52. “Geheimdienst-Kontrolle weiter ohne PDS,” die tageszeitung, June 25, 1999, 6. 53. See Barbara Dribbusch, “Draußen vor der Tür,” die tageszeitung, December 18, 1999, 6. See also, Regine Zylka, “Der Sinn des Rentengipfels,” Berliner Zeitung, December 16, 1999, 4. 54. “PDS noch nicht berentet,” die tageszeitung, October 24, 2000, 2. 55. Jörg Michel, “PDS beschwert sich bei Thierse,” Berliner Zeitung, February 22, 2002, 6. 56. “Die SPD streitet weiter über die PDS,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 8, 1999; “PDS verwirrt die SPD zusehends,” die tageszeitung, March 9, 1999. 57. Christoph Seils, “Triumph der Pragmatiker,” Berliner Zeitung, July 15, 2000, 6. 58. Frank Berg and Thomas Koch, Politikwechsel in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? Die SPD-PDS-Koalition fünfzehn Monate nach ihrem Amtsantritt, Rosa-LuxemburgStiftung, Texte 2 (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000), 110–1. 59. Lukas Wallraff, “Wohl kalkuliertes rot-rotes Geturtel,” die tageszeitung, October 12, 2000, 7. See also, Brigitte Fehrle, “Der Kanzler und die PDS,” Berliner Zeitung, October 11, 2000, 4. 60. Wallraff, “Wohl kalkuliertes rot-rotes Geturtel.” 61. Götz Aly, “Die neue Liebe zur PDS,” Berliner Zeitung, March 2, 1999. 62. For a comparison of the French and German cases, see Anne Sa’Adah, Germany’s Second Chance: Trust, Justice, and Democratization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 272–5. 63. Meike Bruhns, “Grüner Parteitag: Die Linke will sich die Tür zur PDS offenhalten,” Berliner Zeitung, February 22, 1999, 21. Ralph Bollmann, “Abgrenzung von der PDS,” die tageszeitung, August 27, 1999, 3. 64. Stefan Ehlert, “Kreuzberg/Friedrichshain: Grüne wollen die PDS nicht ausgrenzen,” Berliner Zeitung, October 15, 1999, 23. 65. David Patton, “The Rise of Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism: ‘Regionalised Pluralism’ in the Federal Republic?” West European Politics 23.1 (2000): 151–2. 66. Stefan Kuzmany, “Kein schwarzes Geld für den roten Osten?,” die tageszeitung, January 9, 1999, 6. “Empörte Reaktionen auf Hubers Vorstoß zur Einstellung der Ost-Hilfen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 8, 1999. 67. “Können CDU und PDS zusammenarbeiten? Sechs identische Fragen an CSU-Generalsekretär Thomas Goppel und PDS-Chef Lothar Bisky,” Die Welt, October 20, 1999.

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68. Golo Schmidt, “Holzhammer oder Samthandschuh?,” Berliner Zeitung, December 8, 1996. 69. See “Kohl gegen Ost-CDU: Neue Rote-Socken-Kampagne,” Berliner Zeitung, April 9, 1997, 1; Ulrich Deupmann, “Hintze will die SPD mit ‘Roten Händen’ packen,” Berliner Zeitung, April 28, 1998, 6. 70. Peter Pragal, “Vaatz: CDU nimmt seit Jahren SED-Genossen auf,” Berliner Zeitung, October 13, 1998, 5. 71. Peter Pragal, “Schäubles Abschied vom Feindbild,” Berliner Zeitung, October 12, 1998, 4. 72. Ulrich Deupmann, “CDU: Biedenkopf rechnet mit der Ära Kohl ab. Geißler fordert neues Verhältnis zur PDS,” Berliner Zeitung, December 10, 1998, 1. 73. Dieter Rulff, “Heiner Geißler und die PDS bringen die CDU in Wallung,” die tageszeitung, December 11, 1998, 12; “Ost-CDUler fordern Geißlers Ausschluß,” die tageszeitung, December 14, 1998, 7. 74. “CDU-Führung will Politik der Ausgrenzung aufgeben,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 20, 1999, 2. “Nie wieder Rote-Socken-Kampagne der CDU!” die tageszeitung, October 19, 1999, 6. 75. Ulrich Deupmann, “Antrag von CDU/CSU und PDS,” Berliner Zeitung, April 13, 2000, 7. 76. Jens Bisky, “Im Krieg der Zitate,” Berliner Zeitung, September 30, 2000, 3. 77. See Oswald, The party that came out of the Cold War, 135. 78. Quoted in Gregor Gysi, Nicht nur Freche Sprüche, ed. Jürgen Reents and Hanno Harnisch, 18 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1998). 79. Jörg Michel, “Bush-Rede: Die PDS und die Provokation,” Berliner Zeitung, May 23, 2002, 10; Jörg Michel, “PDS-Abgeordnete kritisieren Claus Kotau vor Bush,” Berliner Zeitung, May 25, 2002, 5. 80. Berg and Koch, Politikwechsel in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern?, 73–4. See Plenarprotokoll 3/26 Landtag Mecklenburg, 26. Sitzung, 3. Wahlperiode, September 17, 1999, 1348–59, http://www.landtagmv.de/dokumentenarchiv/plenarprotokolle/3_Wahlperiode/plpr03-0026.pdf. 81. Julia Haak and Tobias Miller, “FU-Klinikum Benjamin Franklin,” Berliner Zeitung, December 22, 2001, 20. “Protest-Trommeln,” Berliner Zeitung, January 26, 2002, 22. 82. Jürgen Schwenkenbecher, “Gysi will Großflughafen—aber nicht in Schönefeld,” Berliner Zeitung, February 18, 2002, 29. 83. On the other hand, those groups that had most opposed the SPD-PDS coalition found it not as bad as they had feared. Rolf Reißig, Mitregieren in Berlin: Die PDS auf dem Prüfstand, 22, Reihe: Texte, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2005), 61–2. 84. Reißig, Mitregieren in Berlin, 15. Berg and Koch, Politikwechsel in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern?, 44. 85. Berg and Koch, Politikwechsel in Meckenburg-Vorpommern?, 83. 86. Adrienne Woltersdorf, “Schwaches Bild,” die tageszeitung, January 12, 2002, 33. 87. Thomas Flierl was the only easterner. Wolf and Flierl were joined by Heidi Knake-Werner who was also originally from western Germany.

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88. Heinrich Bortfeldt, “Die PDS am Ende?,” Deutschland Archiv 36.5 (2003): 739. 89. This was less the case in Berlin where the CDU and SPD leaders were generally western Germans. In May 2003, the eastern German Joachim Zeller became party chair of the Berlin CDU. By 2005, Zeller had relinquished the post to Ingo Schmitt, a former West German. 90. “Eine Entscheidung gegen die Zukunft und gegen den Ostteil Berlins. Erklärung von Gabi Zimmer,” Pressedienst PDS 44 (2001). 91. “PDS will Amnestie für Ex-Funktionäre,” Berliner Zeitung, December 7, 1998, 6; Sigrid Averesch, “Sogar die eigene Partei war überrascht,” Berliner Zeitung, December 9, 1998, 1. 92. See “Von Waschzwängen und Persilscheinen,” interview with Gregor Gysi, chair of the PDS Bundestag caucus, Freitag 3 (January 15, 1999). 93. “ ‘Die PDS hat zu viele Gesichter und auch Fratzen.’ ” Interview with Wolfgang Thierse, Berliner Zeitung, March 2, 1999, 2. 94. Nikolaus Werz, “Die rot-rote Koalition in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania,” in Kommunale Direktwahlen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Rostocker Informationen zu Politik und Verwaltung, issue 15, ed. Nicholas Werz, et al., 19-20, Universität Rostock, Institut für Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaften, 2001; “Böser Schein,” Der Spiegel, 33 (August 13, 2001): 60. 95. Holter eventually dismissed the official claiming that he had hired him without knowledge of the extent of the Stasi connection. The official in question, backed by Joachim Wegrad, disputed Holter’s version of events and took the minister to court on the grounds that he had been wrongfully dismissed. Holter eventually won in court after his lawyers had charged his ministry 129,000 Euro in legal fees. According to the Federation of Taxpayers, Holter had hired for his legal defense one of the most expensive law firms in Germany. The costs far exceeded the 4,000 Euros budgeted for legal disputes. “Mehr als peinlich,” Der Spiegel 47 (November 19, 2001): 689; Andreas Frost, “Ich kündige ihm, ich kündige ihm nicht, ich kündige ihm . . . ,” Tagesspiegel, December 11, 2001. Klaus Walter, “Hitzefrei als Dankeschön für schwitzende Beamte,” Ostsee-Zeitung, October 1, 2003. 96. Claudia Fuchs, “Stasi-Streit: Wowereit soll eingreifen,” Berliner Zeitung, March 20, 2006, 23. Birgit Walter, “Stasi-Debatte. Flierl räumt Fehler ein,” Berliner Zeitung, March 21, 2006, 23. 97. Dan Hough, Michael Koß and Jonathan Olsen, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 84–114. See also Michael Koß and Dan Hough, “Between a Rock and Many Hard Places: The PDS and Government Participation in the Eastern German Länder,” German Politics 15.1 (2006): 78–85. 98. Franz Walter, “Die deutschen Parteien: Entkernt, ermattet, ziellos,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 10 (March 2, 2001): 5. 99. Lothar Bisky, “Chancen für und Herausforderungen an die Politik der PDS nach den Wahlerfolgen 1998,” Pressedienst PDS 46 (1998): 12. 100. Michael Chrapa, “Einstieg oder Abstieg in die Normalität?,” Freitag 15 (April 7, 2000). 101. Bisky, “Chancen für und Herausforderungen an die Politik der PDS nach den Wahlerfolgen 1998,” Pressedienst PDS 46 (1998): 14.

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102. Richard Stöss and Gero Neugebauer, “Mit einem blauen Auge davon gekommen. Eine Analyse der Bundestagswahl 2002,” Arbeitshefte aus dem Otto-Stammer-Zentrum, no. 7, Berlin, November 2002, 70. 103. For example, see Sahra Wagenknecht’s response to the Brie and Klein call for a “left-reformist” modernization of the PDS program. Sahra Wagenknecht, “Veränderte Realitäten—Veränderte Opportunitäten,” Der Freitag 12 (March 19, 1999). See also André Brie and Dieter Klein, “Die Tabus abschaffen,” Der Freitag 6 (February 5, 1999). 104. Oswald, The Party that came out of the Cold War, 137. “Die PDS muss raus aus ihrem Ghetto,” interview with Gero Neugebauer, die tageszeitung, November 30, 1999, 12. 105. Jens König, “Neues Programm—neue PDS?,” die tageszeitung, November 30, 1999, 6. 106. “Vor 55 Jahren: gewollt und verfolgt,” Statement of Petra Pau and Gabi Zimmer concerning the formation of the SED, Erkärungen, Reden und andere Dokumente zur Geschichte der Linkspartei.PDS, April 22, 2001, http://archiv2007.sozialisten. de/partei/geschichte/view_html?zid=3345&bs=31&n=32. 107. Christoph Kleßmann, “Der schwierige gesamtdeutsche Umgang mit der DDR-Geschichte,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 30–31 (July 20, 2001): 4. 108. Gilbert Schomaker, “PDS-Anhänger fühlen sich übergangen. Heftige Reaktionen nach Entschuldigung an die SPD,” Berliner Zeitung, April 20, 2001, 19. 109. “Die PDS hat sich vom Stalinismus der SED unwiderruflich befreit. Erklärung des Parteivorstandes der PDS zum 13. August 2001,” Erkärungen, Reden und andere Dokumente zur Geschichte der Linkspartei.PDS, July 13, 2001, http://archiv2007. sozialisten.de/partei/geschichte/view_html?zid=3340&bs=21&n=28. 110. “ ‘Wir werden Verantwortung übernehmen,’ ” interview with Gregor Gysi, Berliner Zeitung, July 2, 2001. 111. Wolfgang Hübner, “Lange Schatten,” Neues Deutschland, August 11, 2001; Wolfgang Hübner, “Alles nur Wahltaktik?” Neues Deutschland, July 4, 2001. 112. “Koalitionsvereinbarung zwischen der SPD Berlin und der PDS Berlin für die Legislaturperiode 2001–2006,” Pressedienst PDS 2 (2002), reprinted at http://library. fes.de/pd/www.pds-online.de/pd/2002/3232.htm (accessed August 18, 2009). 113. Ibid., 2. 114. Ibid., 4. 115. Reißig, Mitregieren in Berlin, 65–66. 116. Thomas Koch, “(Wie) Ist die Regierungsbeteiligung der PDS bekommen? Politikfähigkeit und aktuelle Situation der PDS im Wettbewerb der Parteien Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns,” in PDS am Scheideweg, 126–7. 117. “Messlatte fürs Wahljahr höher legen,” Pressedienst PDS 2 (2002): 1. 118. Albrecht von Lucke, “Auslaufmodell PDS,” Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte 1–2 (2003): 41–42. 119. Richard Rother, “PDS—Sonne sinkt im Osten,” die tageszeitung, August 12, 2002, 22. 120. They were Gabi Zimmer (party chair), Petra Pau (vice chair), Dietmar Bartsch (federal business manager), and Roland Claus (Bundestag caucus chair). 121. Richard Hilmer, “Bundestagwahl 2002: eine zweite Chance für Rot-Grün,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 34.1 (2003): 202.

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122. Paul Schäfer, “Die Wahl 2002 und die Krise der PDS,” UTOPIE kreativ 146 (2002): 1091. 123. Dietmar Wittich, “Ein langer Abschied,” Neues Deutschland, September 25, 2002, 3. 124. Stöss and Neugebauer, “Mit einem blauen Auge davon gekommen,” 82. 125. Hilmer, “Bundestagwahl 2002: eine zweite Chance für Rot-Grün,” 202. 126. Stöss and Neugebauer, “Mit einem blauen Auge davon gekommen,” 80. 127. Hilmer, “Bundestagswahl 2002: eine zweite Chance für Rot-Grün,” 208. 128. Robin Alexander, “Diese Truppen gibt es nicht,” die tageszeitung, November 1, 2004, 1. 129. Wittich, “Ein langer Abschied,” Neues Deutschland, September 25, 2002, 3. 130. “Dieser Vorstand hat keine Autorität,” Interview with Gabi Zimmer, Neues Deutschland, May 5, 2003. 131. Gabi Zimmer, ‘Kein weiter so—Zukunft durch Erneuerung,’ 1. Tagung des 8. Parteitages (12. und 13. Oktober 2002, Gera), http://archiv2007.sozialisten. de/partei/parteitag/pt0801/view_html?zid=28842&bs=1&n=11. 132. Wolfgang Hübner, “Flucht aus dem Karl-Liebknecht-Haus,” Neues Deutschland, October 14, 2002. 133. See Markus Feldenkirchen, “Luftschlösser der Hoffnung,” Tagesspiegel, December 16, 2002, 3. Sabine Kebir, “Das Wachbuch im Haus erspart den Klabautermann,” Freitag 52 (December 20, 2002). 134. Manfred Güllner, “Die PDS ohne Zukunft,” perspektive 21, no. 17 (December 2002), 9. See also Bortfeldt, “Die PDS am Ende?”; Stuart Gapper, “The Rise and Fall of Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism,” German Politics 12.2 (2003): 65–85. 135. Daniel F. Sturm, “Schröder wirbt um PDS-Mitglieder,” Die Welt, October 21, 2002. See also “PDS bleibt die Partei der demokratischen Sozialistinnen und Sozialisten in Deutschland,” Statement by Gabi Zimmer, Federal Chair of the PDS, Presseerklärungen der PDS, October 21, 2002, http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/presse/ presseerklaerungen/view_html/zid14679/bs1/n32. 136. “ ‘Selbst gewählte Isolierung führt ins Aus’: Erklärung von Gregor Gysi zum Geraer Parteitag,” Statement by Gregor Gysi, Presseerklärungen der PDS, October 15, 2002, http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/presse/presseerklaerungen/view_html/ zid14669/bs1/n47. 137. Uwe Kalbe, “Neues Kapital in unendlicher Geschichte,” Neues Deutschland, May 9, 2003; Uwe Kalbe, “Wie ein Blick ins Aquarium,” Neues Deutschland, June 13, 2003; “Politik ganz am Rande: Die Bilanz der PDS,” Die Welt, September 24, 2003. 138. In 2003, the PDS had 65,753 members; in 1999, it had had 88,594. http:// archiv2007.sozialisten.de/partei/daten/pdf/entwicklung_mitgliederzahlen_bis2005. pdf. 139. Gabi Zimmer, “Linkes Politikangebot kann nicht im Status quo verharren,” Presseerklärung der PDS, May 5, 2003, http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/presse/presseerklaerungen/view_html/zid14946/bs1/n24. 140. Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, Beschluss der 2. Tagung des 8. Parteitages der PDS am 25./26. Oktober 2003 in Chemnitz, 3.

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141. Ibid., 1. 142. Ibid., 12. 143. Ibid., 30. 144. Ibid., quotes on 31 and 33. 145. Lothar Bisky, “Ein neues Programm wird uns Zuversicht und Mut für unseren Kampf um eine alternative Agenda sozial geben,” Address by party chair Lothar Bisky, 2. Tagung des 8. Parteitages (25. und 26. Oktober 2003, Chemnitz), http://archiv2007. sozialisten.de/partei/parteitag/pt0802/view_html?zid=28680&bs=1&n=6.

CHAPTER SIX 1. ‘Verzagen wir, haben wir alles verloren,’ Address by Lothar Bisky, candidate for office of party chair, 2. Außerordentliche Tagung des 8. Parteitages (28. und 29. Juni 2003, Berlin). 2. Patton, “Germany’s Left Party.PDS and the ‘Vacuum Thesis,’ ” 223. 3. Quoted in Gerard Braunthal, “The SPD, the Welfare State, and Agenda 2010,” German Politics and Society 21.4 (2003): 6. 4. Ibid., 20–21. 5. Oskar Niedermayer, “Parteimitgliedschaften im Jahre 2006,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 38.2 (2007): 370. 6. Martin Lutz, “SPD-Chef Müntefering verliert rund 45,000 Genossen,” Die Welt, February 2, 2005. 7. Oliver Nachtwey, “Im Westen was Neues: Die Entstehung der Wahlalternative Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit,” in Die Linkspartei. Zeitgemäße Idee oder Bündnis der Zukunft?, ed. Tim Spier, et al., 170–3 (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007). 8. See Federal Executive of the WASG, “Berliner Erklärung. Die Wahlalternative Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit fordert: Solidarische Reformen statt Zumutungen,” December 19, 2004. 9. Lukas Wallraff, “Ein Verein für das Vakuum,” die tageszeitung, July 5, 2004, 3. 10. Helge Meves, ‘Die Wahlalternative—eine andere Politik ist möglich,’ in Die Linkspartei. Ursprünge, Ziele, Erwartungen. Reihe: Texte/Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, vol. 23 (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2005), 24. 11. “Hartz-Kommission: Kritik aus dem Osten,” die tageszeitung, July 18, 2002, 6. 12. See Andre Brie, “Der prozentual grösste Wahlerfolg in der Geschichte der PDS,” Pressedienst PDS, 25, June 18, 2004. http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/pressedienst/view_html?zid=20387&bs=1&n=5. 13. “Wähler hört die Signale,” die tageszeitung, June 14, 2004, 3. 14. Viola Neu, “Die Landtagswahl in Brandenburg am 19. September 2004. Wahlanalyse,” Onlinepublikation, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Berlin, September 2004, 5–6. http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_5342-544-1-30.pdf. 15. Infratest-dimap put the PDS at 4 percent nationally on December 3, 2004; on August 20, it had been at 8 percent. According to the polling institute EMNID, support for the PDS dipped from 8 percent in late summer 2004 to 4

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191

percent nationally in a poll released on March 9, 2005. Forsa briefly had the PDS at 4 percent in late October 2004. 16. PDS press release, “Gregor Gysi: ‘Ich bin bereit, diese Herausforderung anzunehmen!,’ ” June 3, 2005, http://www.goyax.de/nachricht/2005/06/03/gregor-gysiich-bin-bereit-diese-herausforderung-anzunehmen-48834.html. 17. PDS press release, “Gespräche zwischen PDS und WASG erfolgreich verlaufen,” http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/presse/presseerklaerungen/view_html/zid27710/ bs1/n16. See also, PDS press release, “Lothar Bisky und Klaus Ernst erklären,” http:// archiv2007.sozialisten.de/presse/presseerklaerungen/view_html/zid27859/bs1/n11. 18. See infratest-dimap polling data from July 2005, http://www.wahlrecht. de/umfragen/dimap.htm (accessed February 6, 2006). 19. Wolfgang Hübner and Uwe Kalbe, “Das ist ein historisches Datum,” Neues Deutschland, August 29, 2005. 20. See “Für eine neue soziale Idee,” Election platform of the Left Party.PDS for the 2005 Bundestag elections. Approved at the second session of the ninth party congress of the Left Party.PDS, Berlin, August 27, 2005. For a summary, see “Für eine neue soziale Idee—linke Alternative für den Wahltag,” Pressedienst Die Linke. PDS, 35/2005, (September 2, 2005) http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/pressedienst/view_html?zid=29710&bs=1&n=0. 21. “Für eine neue soziale Idee,” Election platform of the Left Party.PDS, 5. 22. Reiner Burger, “Lafontaine und der rechter Rand,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 17, 2005, 4. 23. Jörg Lau, “Oskar Haider,” Die Zeit, June 23, 2005. 24. Liana von Billerbeck, “Fette Villa und dicke Lippe,” Die Zeit, July 14, 2005. 25. Frank Kästner, “Lafontaines Starrsinn beunruhigt die PDS,” Die Welt, July 12, 2005. 26. Martin Lutz, “Linkspartei erwartet von Lafontaine mehr Bescheidenheit,” Die Welt, August 25, 2005. 27. Frank Brettschneider, “Bundestagswahlkampf und Medienberichterstattung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 51–52 (December 19, 2005): 19–26, esp. 23. 28. Infratest dimap, “ARD-DeutschlandTrend extra: Eine Umfrage zur politischen Stimmung im Auftrag der ARD-Tagesthemen und sieben Tageszeitungen,” August 2005 II, 1–9. http://www.infratest-dimap.de/download/dt0508_2.pdf. 29. Matthias Schlegel, “Ohne Ost-Bonus,” Der Tagesspiegel, July 15, 2005. 30. Christian Semler, “Im verwilderten Osten,” die tageszeitung, August 8, 2005, 14. 31. “O-tone stoiber,” die tageszeitung, August 12, 2005, 3. 32. “Stoiber nennt PDS-Wähler Kälber,” Berliner Zeitung, August 15, 2005, 5. 33. Jens König, “Ich akzeptiere nicht, dass erneut der Osten bestimmt, wer in Deutschland Kanzler wird,” die tageszeitung, August 12, 2005, 3. 34. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, “Politbarometer August III 2005,” 2. http:// www.forschungsgruppe.de/Studien/Politbarometer/Archiv/Politbarometer_2005/ August_III/. 35. Michael Brie and Christoph Spehr, “Der Neoliberalismus hat einen Gegner. Linke Perspektiven nach der Bundestagswahl 2005,” rls standpunkte, Rosa-Luxemburg-

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Stiftung, 19/2005, 1–7, http://www.rosalux.de/cms/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Standpunkte_0519.pdf. Viola Neu, “Analyse der Bundestagswahl 2005,” Arbeitspapiere, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 157/2006, Sankt Augustin (May 2006). 36. Neu, Analyse des Bundestagswahl 2005, 26. See also Harald Schoen and Jürgen W. Falter, “Die Linkspartei und ihre Wähler,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 51–52 (December 19, 2005): 38. Oskar Niedermayer, “Die Wählerschaft der Linkspartei.PDS 2005: sozialstruktureller Wandel bei gleich bleibender politischer Positionierung,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 37.3 (2006): 523–38. 37. Schoen and Falter, “Die Linkspartei und ihre Wähler,” 37, tables 2 and 3. 38. Infratest dimap, “ARD-DeutschlandTrend extra: Eine Umfrage zur politischen Stimmung im Auftrag der ARD-Tagesthemen und sieben Tageszeitungen,” III July, 2005, see table on 6, http://www.infratest-dimap.de/download/dt0507_3.pdf. 39. Richard Hilmer and Rita Müller-Hilmer, “Die Bundestagswahl vom 18. September 2005: Votum für Wechsel in Kontinuität,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 37.1 (2006): 211. 40. “Kooperationsabkommen III: Rahmenvereinbarung zum Parteibildungsprozess zwischen Linkspartei.PDS und WASG,” December 6, 2005, http://archiv2007.sozialisten. de/sozialisten/parteibildung/abkommen/view_html?zid=31506&bs=1&n=0. 41. “Kooperationsabkommen III: Rahmenvereinbarung zum Parteibildungsprozess zwischen Linkspartei.PDS und WASG,” December 6, 2005. 42. Jonathan Olsen, “The Merger of the PDS and WASG: From Eastern Regional Party to National Radical Left Party?” German Politics 16.2 (June 2007), 212. 43. Viola Neu, “Landtagswahl in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Abgeordnetenhauswahl in Berlin am 17. September 2006. Wahlanalyse,” Onlinepublikation, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (September 2006): 65. http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/ kas_9129-544-1-30.pdf. 44. In December 1990 state elections, 23.6 percent in eastern Berlin voted for the PDS. 45. “Die ostdeutsche Seele hat gefehlt,” Spiegel-Online, Interview with Gregor Gysi, September 27, 2006. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,439356,00. html. 46. “Aufruf zur Gründung einer neuen Linken,” June 2, 2006, http://www. dielinke-unna.de/Gruendungsmanifest_Die-Linke.pdf. 47. Jens König, “Unmut über die linke Galionsfigur,” die tageszeitung, July 6, 2006, 4. “Abschied und Wiederkehr: Aufruf aus der PDS zur neuen Linkspartei in Deutschland,” July 6, 2006. http://www.katina-schubert.de/html/abschied_und_ wiederkehr.html. 48. “Offen für Veränderung—Offen für den Dialog. Die neue Linke.” Motion moved by the state executive committee of the Left Party.PDS at the Left Party. PDS’s fifth conference of the ninth state party congress in Magdeburg on September 23–24, 2006. 49. The resolution no longer contained the controversial sentence cited above. 50. “Wir beügen uns nicht,” interview with Gregor Gysi, Der Spiegel 10 (March 3, 2007), http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-50746872.html.

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51. Viola Neu, Die Sonne geht im Westen auf: Die Fusion von PDS und WASG, Online Publikationen, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (June 2007): 9. http://www.kas. de/wf/doc/kas_11146-544-1-30.pdf. 52. Claudia Gohde, “Was bewegt die Partei? Erfahrungen mit Fusion und Parteireform,” in Parteien und Bewegungen: Die Linke im Aufbruch, ed. Michael Brie, Conny Hildebrandt, 137–42 Reihe: Texte, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung 30 (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2006). 53. Dana Micke, “Ost-Realos gegen West-Revoluzzer: Der Linkspartei fehlt ein Programm,” Volksstimme (Magdeburg), May 23, 2008. 54. Micke, “Ost-Realos gegen West-Revoluzzer.” 55. “Wir sind jetzt keine ausländische Partei mehr,” interview with Gregor Gysi, tageszeitung, May 15, 2007, 3. 56. Miriam Holstein, “Geschönte Statistik: Linke gab bei Fusion falsche Mitgliederzahlen an,” Die Welt, November 15, 2008. 57. In addition, 184 members were listed as part of the federal executive. “Entwicklung der Mitgliederzahlen,” Left Party.PDS, http://archiv2007.sozialisten. de/partei/daten/statistiken/mitglieder.htm. 58. Ralph Bollmann, “Rot + Rot = Grau,” tageszeitung, June 15, 2007. 59. Albert Scharenberg, “Dem Morgenrot entgegen,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 5 (May 2007), 523–4. 60. Matthias Micus, “Stärkung des Zentrums: Perspektiven, Risiken und Chancen des Fusionsprozesses von PDS und WASG,” in Die Linkspartei. 61. Rostocker Manifest: Für einen zukunftsfähigen Osten in einer gerechten Republik (Berlin: Parteivorstand der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, 1998), 1–24, 3. 62. “Aufruf zur Gründung einer neuen Linken,” June 2, 2006, http://www. dielinke-unna.de/Gruendungsmanifest_Die-Linke.pdf. 63. Programmatische Eckpunkte. Programmatisches Gründungsdokument der Partei Die Linke, resolution adopted at the WASG and Left Party.PDS party congresses of March 24–25 in Dortmund, Germany. http://die-linke.de/partei/dokumente/programmatische_eckpunkte/. 64. Ibid. 65. Scharenberg, “Dem Morgenrot entgegen,” 522–3. 66. Dan Hough and Michael Koß, “Populism Personified or Reinvigorated Reformers: The German Left Party in 2009 and Beyond,” German Politics and Society, issue 91, 27.2 (Summer 2009). 67. Neu, “Die Sonne geht im Westen auf,” 14. 68. 2003 PDS Party Program, 49. Programmatische Eckpunkte, 14. 69. Die Linke, Konsequent sozial. Für Demokratie und Frieden. Bundestagswahlprogramm 2009, approved at the Bundestag election congress of the party, the Left, June 20–21, 2009, Berlin, 57. 70. Schoen and Falter, “Die Linkspartei und ihre Wähler,” 38. 71. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Wahl in Bremen: Eine Analyse der Bürgerschaftswahl vom 13. Mai 2007, report number 128 (Mannheim: May 2007), 42–44. 72. Viola Neu, “Europawahl in Deutschland am 7. Juni 2009. Wahlanalyse,” Onlinepublikation, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (June 2009): 8, http://www.kas. de/wf/doc/kas_16755-544-1-30.pdf (accessed June 20, 2009).

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73. Viola Neu, “Landtagswahlen in Hessen und Niedersachsen am 27. January 2008. Wahlanalyse,” Onlinepublikation, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (January 2008): 6. http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_12893-544-1-30.pdf. 74. Ralf Tils and Thomas Saretzki, “Die niedersächsische Landtagswahl vom 27. Januar 2008,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 39.2 (2008): 282–99. 75. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, “Wahlanalyse Saarland,” August 31, 2009, http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Aktuelles/Wahlanalyse_Saarland/ (accessed on August 31, 2009). 76. Election analysis data from infratest dimap for ARD, presented in Der Spiegel, election ‘09 special edition, September 28, 2009, 44. 77. Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff and Horst Kahrs, “Die Ergebnisse der Bundestagswahl am 27. September 2009—Wahlnachtbericht und erste Analyse,” Wahlanalysen, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin, September 28, 2009, 4, http://www.rosaluxemburgstiftung.de/cms/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/2009_BTW_ Wahlnachtbericht.pdf (accessed October 22, 2009). Data from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. 78. Election analysis data from infratest dimap for ARD, presented in Der Spiegel, election ‘09 special edition, September 28, 2009, 44–45. 79. “Beck lobt die Pragmatiker der Linkspartei (Ost),” Der Tagesspiegel, July 12, 2007. 80. André Brie, “Der Lafontainismus,” Der Spiegel 24 (June 8, 2009), http:// www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-65640646.html. 81. Ibid. 82. Dieter Dettke, “The SPD’s Electoral Dilemma,” AICGS Transatlantic Perspectives, Washington DC, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, September 2009, 3–4. 83. Dominik Schottner, “Linke Robbe, rechte Robbe,” die tageszeitung, October 30, 2006, 6. 84. For an overview of the eastern state chapters, see Hough, Koß and Olsen, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics. 85. Florian Gathmann and Leonie Wild, “Linke in Bremen: Mosaik des Chaos,” Spiegel-Online, January 16, 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/0,1518,528907,00.html. 86. Oliver Das Gupta, “Abgeordnete fordert Stasi reloaded,” Süddeutsche.de, February 14, 2008, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/429/158006/. 87. “Linkspolitikerin vergleicht Dalai Lama mit Chomeini,” Süddeutsche.de, April 3, 2008, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/385/166906. 88. “Ex-Spitzenkandidat Metz tritt aus Linkspartei aus,” Spiegel-Online, January 6, 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,599791,00.html. 89. Andrea Brandt, Markus Deggerich and Simone Kaiser, “Linke: Lach- und Krachgeschichten,” Spiegel (May 4, 2009): 42–43. 90. Pitt von Bebenburg, “Kampf gegen ‘Kommunisten’ soll Konservative locken,” Frankfurter Rundschau, August 18, 2007. 91. “Gabriel will ‘angstfrei’ mit der Linkspartei umgehen,” Tagesschau.de, October 6, 2009, http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/spd712.html. 92. Stefan Reinicke, “SPD-Linke lobt ‘Quarantensprung,” die tageszeitung, February 27, 2008, http://www.taz.de/1/politik/deutschland/artikel/1/spd-linke-lobtbecks-quarantensptung/?type=98.

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93. “Parteitag der Linken: Linkspartei will Rot-Grün in Hessen tolerieren,” Welt-Online, August 30, 2008, http://www.welt.de/politik/article2373455/Linksparteiwill-Rot-Gruen-in-Hessen-tolerieren.html. 94. Oskar Lafontaine, “Mehr Demokratie und Freiheit wagen!,” Left Party Congress for the Bundestag Election, Berlin, June 20, 2009, http://die-linke.de/ partei/organe/parteitage/bundestagswahlparteitag_2009/reden/mehr_demokratie_und_ freiheit_wagen/. 95. Federal Republic of Germany, Jahresbericht der Bundesregierung zum Stand der Deutschen Einheit 2009 (Berlin: Federal Ministry for Transportation,Construction and Urban Development, June 10, 2009), 11, http://www.bmvbs.de/Anlage/original_ 1079722/Jahresbericht-zum-Stand-der-Deutschen-Einheit-2009.pdf. 96. Liebscher, Reinhard, Sozialreport 2008: Daten und Fakten zur sozialen Lage in den neuen Bundesländern, das Sozialwissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum BerlinBrandenburg e.V. in conjuction with Volksolidarität Bundesverband e.V. (Berlin: Volksolidarität, December 2008), 40. 97. Rita Müller, Gesellschaft im Reformprozess (Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, July 2006): 21, 81–88, http://www.fes.de/inhalt/Dokumente/061017_Gesellschaft_im_Reformprozess_komplett.pdf. 98. Winkler, Sozialreport 2006, 26, table 7.2. 99. “ ’Eher benachteiligt,” die tageszeitung, July 7, 2006, 5. 100. Liebscher, Sozialreport 2008, 42. 101. Sabine Klose and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, “Beamtete Staatssekretäre im Transformationsprozess: Rekrutierungsmuster in den neuen Bundesländern,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 39.2 (2008): 352 (Table 2). 102. Ralph Bollmann, “Die Rückkehr des Westimports,” die tageszeitung, August 25, 2008, http://www.taz.de/1/politik/deutschland/artikel/1/die-rueckkehr-deswestimports/?type=98. 103. Ibid. 104. “Wir sind dabei, eine wirkliche Linkskraft für ganz Deutschland mit zu organisieren,” address delivered at the extraordinary conference of the ninth party congress of the PDS, Berlin, July 17, 2005, Pressedienst PDS, 29, July 22, 2005, http://archiv2007. sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/pressedienst/view_html?zid=28822&bs=1&n=8. 105. Albert Scharenberg, “Die doppelte Linkspartei,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 5 (May 2008): 5–8.

CONCLUSION 1. “Die Grünen sind eine elitäre Partei,” die tageszeitung, June 8, 2005, 4. 2. Richard Stöss, “Gesamtdeutsche Partei,” in Parteien Handbuch. Die Parteien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1980, vol. 3, ed. Richard Stöss, 1461–3 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986). 3. Patton, “Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism in Comparative Perspective.” See also Dan Hough, The fall and rise of the PDS in eastern Germany, 55–69. 4. Lieven De Winter, “Conclusion,” in Regionalist Parties in Western Europe, ed. Lieven De Winter and Huri Türsan, 223 (London: Routledge, 1998). 5. Ibid., 223. 6. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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7. Elisabeth Gidengil, André Blais, Richard Nadeau, Neil Nevitte, “Making Sense of Regional Voting in the 1997 Federal Election: Liberal and Reform Support outside Quebec,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 32 (1999): 247–72. 8. For an examination of whether Scotland has a more egalitarian political culture, see William L. Miller, Annis May Timpson and Michael Lessnoff, Political Culture in Contemporary Britain: Peoples and Politicians, Principles and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 369–70. 9. Mark Donovan, “A Party System in Transformation: The April 1992 Election,” West European Politics 15.4 (1992): 176. 10. See Martin Rhodes, “The ‘long wave’ subsides: the PSI and the demise of craxismo,” in Italian Politics: A Review 8, ed. Stephen Hellman and Gianfranco Pasquino, 70-74 (London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1993). 11. Paul Ginsborg, Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State 19802001 (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 148. 12. Thomas W. Gold, The Lega Nord and contemporary politics in Italy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 59. 13. Ginsborg, Italy and its Discontents, 174. 14. Sabino Cassese, “Hypotheses on the Italian Administrative System,” West European Politics 16.3 (1993): 319, 323. 15. Robert Leonardi and Monique Kovacs, “The Lega Nord: the rise of a new Italian catch-all party,” in Italian Politics: A Review 8, ed. Stephen Hellman and Gianfranco Pasquino, 58 (London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1993). 16. Ibid., 63. 17. Shawn Henry, “Revisiting Western Alienation: Towards a Better Understanding of Political Alienation and Political Behaviour in Western Canada,” in Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada, ed. Lisa Young and Keith Archer (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2002), 78. 18. Barry Cooper, “Regionalism, Political Culture, and Canadian Political Myths,” in Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada, ed. Lisa Young and Keith Archer, 106 (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2002). 19. Henry, “Revisiting Western Alienation,” 78. 20. Keith Archer and Faron Ellis, “Opinion Structure of Party Activists; The Reform Party of Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 27.2 (1994): 281–2. 21. See Trevor Harrison, Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 86–89, 103–4. 22. Ibid., 133–4. 23. David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation (London: Routledge, 1992), 172–3. 24. Ibid., 173. 25. Damian Tambini, Nationalism in Italian Politics: The stories of the Northern League, 1980–2000 (London: Routledge, 2001), 115. 26. Ginsborg, Italy and its Discontents, 175. 27. Gold, The Lega Nord and contemporary politics in Italy, 87–89. See also Carlo E. Ruzza and Oliver Schmidtke, “Roots of success of the Lega Lombarda: Mobilisation Dynamics and the Media,” West European Politics 16.2 (1993): 1–23.

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INDEX

Abromeit, Heidrun, 11 Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 42 Academy of Sciences of the GDR, 42, 51, 55 Adenauer, Konrad, 15, 24, 26, 90–91, 134, 166n133 Affair of the Wives, 107 Afghanistan, 10, 116, 134, 138 Agenda 2010, 120–21, 123, 126, 137, 142, 147, 151 Ahonen, Pertti, 163 Alberta, 152–53, 155–56 All-German Bloc/BHE (GB/BHE), 19, 151 All-German Party (Gesamtdeutsche Partei), 151 Alliance 90/Greens, 46, 53, 61–62, 66, 91, 169n75, 174n80, 175n114 Alternative Enquete Commission, 176n8, 177n8 Altersversorgung der Intelligenz (AVI), 42 Aly, Götz, 100 anti-capitalism, 39, 46, 69, 95–96, 103, 109, 118, 130, 132, 136–37 anti-communism, 21, 59–61, 90, 98, 101, 143, 149, 153 anti-fascism, 8, 32, 37, 39, 41, 75 Arter, David, 10 Article 23 of the Basic Law, 50 Article 36 of the Basic Law, 21 Article 131 of the Basic Law, 22 Ashkenazi, 9 Austria, 29, 127 Babel, Gisela, 42

Bach, Sebastian, 90 Baden-Württemberg, 128, 130 Baltic countries, 90 Bartsch, Dietmar, 117, 188n120 Basic Law, 17, 21–22, 50, 64 Bavaria, 15–17, 20, 24–25, 64, 80, 100–101, 115, 128, 139 Baylis, Thomas A., 91, 172n31 Beck, Kurt, 142, 183n21 Beer Hall Putsch, 19 Bergmann, Christine, 91 Berlin, 9, 32–34, 38, 44, 46, 53, 55, 60, 63–66, 68, 73, 75–76, 85–87, 90, 94–95, 96–100, 103–108, 110–14, 117, 121–24, 126, 129, 130–31, 135, 140, 142, 145–46, 148, 171n26, 178n37, 187n89, 192n44 Berliner Zeitung, 96 Berlin Wall, 29, 34, 52, 59–61, 63–64, 70, 98, 101, 111, 145, 147 BHE (League of Expellees and those Deprived of their Rights), decline of, 25–27, 151 electorate of, 19–20 and former NSDAP functionaries, 19 inclusion of, 23–24 leadership and membership of, 17–18 origins of, 4, 14–15 party program of, 18–19 PDS as compared with, 14, 18–20, 24–26, 151 renaming of, 19, 151 Biedenkopf, Kurt, 53, 79, 92 Bild, 64, 127 Bild am Sonntag, 127

217

218

INDEX

Bisky, Lothar, 31, 33–34, 72, 99, 108–109, 133 and accusations of Stasi involvement, 53 and hunger strike, 87 and nomination for Bundestag vice president, 143 and partnership with WASG, 125 and PDS program, 96, 109, 118–19 and return as PDS party chair, 117–18 and stepping down as party chair, 110, 134 support for cooperation with SPD and Greens of, 97 Bismarck, Otto von, 90, 146 Bläss, Petra, 43, 98 Böhme, Ibrahim, 52 Bonn, 19, 21, 24, 35, 47, 50, 61, 64, 77–79, 84, 86, 88 Bortfeldt, Heinrich, 45, 106 Bossi, Umberto, 156–57 Brandenburg, 33, 52–53, 64, 71, 76, 79, 83, 91–92, 94, 104, 122–23, 128, 130, 140, 146 Brandt, Willy, ix, 90, 100 Brauer, Max, 135 Brazauskas, Algirdas, 6 Bremen, 129, 135, 138–39, 144, 159n3 Breslau, 16 Breuel, Birgit, 54 Brie, André, 31–33, 127, 143, 188n103 Brie, Horst, 32 Brie, Michael, 31, 33, 74 Britain, 153, 157 British Columbia, 152 broadcasting service in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia (MDR), 54–55 Brown, Gordon, 157 Brunner, Wolfram, 83 Bulletin, 66 Bundesrat, 22, 67, 80, 99, 102–103, 107, 112, 121–22, 142 Bundestag, and 1990 election, 2, 9, 43, 45–46, 66, 175n114

and 1994 election, 2, 6, 63–64, 87, 113 and 1998 election, 2, 8, 10, 93, 113 and 2002 election, 5, 10, 89, 109, 113–14, 116, 119, 140 and 2005 election, 5, 10, 92, 118, 120, 124–25, 128–30, 141, 159n2 and 2009 election, 2, 120, 138, 140–41, 145, 147, 151 chancellor addresses in, 15, 91, 120 and eastern interest representation, 11, 44, 53, 80–83, 85, 92, 122, 147 and eastern pensions, 42–43 and expellees, 15, 17, 20–21, 23–25, 151, 163n75 and former Nazi civil servants, 57 and Gregor Gysi, 32, 88, 91, 103, 110, 124–25, 131, 134, 166n12, 181n106 and Gysi’s colorful corps, 32, 87, 98 house rules of, 66–67 and Oskar Lafontaine, 124–25, 131–32, 134, 146 parties in, 10, 80 and PDS deputies, 35, 70, 72, 107, 117, 133–34 and Roland Claus, 34–35, 103–104, 188n120 treatment of Left caucus in, 149–50 treatment of PDS in, 62, 65–66, 93, 98–99, 101–103, 142, 144 and vice presidents from PDS and Left Party.PDS, 34 Bundeswehr, 50, 54, 134, 138, 171n9 Bush, George W., 103–104 Call for the Founding of a New Left, 131, 137, 142 Canada, 5, 152–57 capitalism, 5, 40–41, 47, 51, 58, 109, 111, 118, 124–25, 130, 136–37 catchall party, 8, 75, 94, 136, 138, 141, 152 CDU, 2, 21, 23, 25, 35, 37–38, 43, 46, 53–54, 60–66, 68, 73–75, 77, 79–80, 83, 85–86, 88, 91–92, 94,

INDEX 97–102, 105–106, 110, 123, 128, 131, 133, 140, 145–46, 163n78, 178n36, 178n38, 187n89 CDU/CSU, 1, 10–11, 16, 20, 23–24, 34, 47, 59, 61–66, 83, 85, 96, 98–99, 102, 115, 120–21, 128, 134, 143–44, 146, 159n7 CDU of the GDR, 37, 45, 49–50, 53, 62, 172n33 Center party, 24, 163n78 Central Association of Expelled Germans, 17, 21, 25 Chemnitz, 118, 126–27 Christian Democracy in Italy (DC), 101, 150, 153–54 Christian Democratic Union, see CDU Christian Democrats in Germany, see CDU/CSU Christiansen, Sabine, 114 Christian Social Union, see CSU civil service rank in eastern Germany, 56 Claims and Entitlement Transfer Act (AAÜG), 42 Claus, Roland, 31, 34–35, 62, 80, 99, 103–104, 117, 188n120 Clay, Lucius, 16 cold war, 8, 17, 19, 21, 40–41, 57, 60, 76, 83, 88, 102, 111 College for Film and Television, 33 Committee of the German Bundestag for the Affairs of the New States, 83 Common Committee, 67 communism, 1, 37, 39, 51, 55, 58–59, 85, 101 communist parties, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 16, 32, 40, 59, 76, 88, 100, 142, 150 Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, 7 Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 6, 59 Communist Party of Italy (PCI), 76, 88, 150 Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 6

219

Communist Platform (KPF), 37, 39, 109, 111 communist rule in GDR, 6, 17, 29, 32, 35–36, 43, 45, 58, 60, 68, 78, 81–82, 128, 174n78 communists, 7, 21, 31–32, 37, 40, 44, 59–61, 63–64, 74, 88, 100, 102, 110, 142, 150 communist successor parties, 5–6, 10, 142 Community Initiative for the Protection of the Social Rights of Former Adherents of the Armed Services and Customs of the GDR (ISOR), 72 Conservative Party, 156 consortiums (Arbeitsgemeinschaften— AGs) in the PDS, 39 Cooper, Barry, 154 Council of Nationalities, 81 Craxi, Bettino, 154 CSU, 24, 61, 63–64, 77, 80, 100–102, 115, 128 culture paragraph of the Federal Expellee Law, 23 Czechoslovakia, 16 Czech Republic, 7, 90, 182n5 Czechs, 51, 84 dbd, 70 DC, 101, 150, 153–54 Dehm, Diether, 117 de Maizière, Lothar, 37, 53–54, 73, 84 Democratic Awakening (DA), 52, 92 Democratic Farmer Party of Germany (DBD), 172n32 Democratic Labor Party of Lithuania (LDDP), 6 Democratic Women’s Federation of Germany (in GDR, DFD), 70, 81 Democratic Women’s Federation of Germany (in unified Germany, dbd), 70 denazification, 19, 57 Derlien, Hans-Ulrich, 50

220

INDEX

Descriptive representation, concept of, 3–4, 12–14, 77, 79, 83, 93, 106, 162n48 continuing lack of, 89, 91–93, 120, 147–48 and expellees, 4, 14–17, 21–22, 23–24, 25–27 and Greens in eastern Germany, 91 impact of elite substitution in eastern Germany on, 4, 49–59, 79, 149 impact of the marginalization of the PDS on, 49, 59, 63, 68, 149 and PDS program, 44, 80–81 and PDS success, 2–4, 12–14, 27, 69, 79–80, 83–86, 88, 93, 120, 157–58 and regional parties, 5, 80–81, 151, 153–57 Dettke, Dieter, 143 Deutschmark, 6 Dewes, Richard, 65 De Winter, Lieven, 152 Dienstklasse, see upper service class of the GDR Diepgen, Eberhard, 65 DKP, 44, 144 DP, 23–24, 151 Dresden, 29–30, 38, 75 Dresden Declaration, 63, 98, 142 Dreßler, Rudolf (SPD), 43 Duchac, Josef, 54 Dümke, Wolfgang, 11 DVU, 94, 123 East Berlin, 1, 8, 30, 45, 71, 76, 94–95, 111, 140 East Brandenburgers, 16 eastern German dissatisfaction with FRG democracy, 8, 11, 83–84, 92–93 eastern identity (Ostidentität), 24, 47, 61, 79, 82, 105, 147 East German Curatorium of Associations, 72 East German Memorandum, 72, 177n10

East Germany, ix, 6, 11, 29, 33, 35, 39, 41–42, 49–50, 52, 64, 71, 82, 90, 107, 110, 113, 137, 141, 145, 150 East Prussians, 16, 17, 24 Economic Council, 17 Edinger, Lewis, 173n62 Einstein, Albert, 90 Elbe River, 116 Electoral Alternative, 121 Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice, see WASG elite substitution, and eastern concerns about interest representation, 76–79 and PDS as beneficiary of eastern protest, 83–88 and PDS as eastern representative, 4, 80–83, 149 and post-communist transformation in eastern Germany, 49–59 and reconstitution of a socialist milieu in eastern Germany, 69, 71–74 Emergency Parliament, 67 Engels, Friedrich, 40 equalization of burdens, 19, 21, 26, 164n104 Erfurt Declaration, 96–97 EU, 2, 5, 56, 86, 90, 127, 157 European Parliament, 33–34, 127, 143 European Parliament elections, 34, 93, 121–23, 138, 152 European Union (EU), 2, 5, 56, 86, 90, 127, 157 European United Left/Nordic Green Left, 34 expellees from the east, 3–4, 12–27, 151, 163n75, 164n98, 164n104 Falkner, Thomas, 6 fall 1989 revolution, ix, 1, 6, 29, 36 fascism, 41, 59, 63, 130 FDP, 10, 16, 20, 23–24, 34, 42–43, 46–47, 53, 59, 61–62, 64–65, 68, 75–77, 80, 85–87, 94, 98, 100,

INDEX 102, 106, 115, 121, 133, 143, 146, 159n7, 163n78 FDJ, 31, 33–34, 81, 92 Federal Constitutional Court, 9, 43, 45, 60, 64, 67 Federal Expellee Law, 23 Federal Intelligence Service, 67, 99 Federation of Homeland Provincial Societies, 17 Fehrle, Brigitte, 96 Finland, 10 Fischer, Joschka, 85, 114 five percent hurdle, 9, 66–67, 123–25, 133, 145 Flieg, Helmut, 66 Flierl, Thomas, 104–105, 107–108, 186n87 forced merger of SPD and KPD, 60, 110–11 Forsa polling institute, 117, 191n15 Forum East, 83 Foundation for Societal Analysis and Political Education, 74 France, 8, 26, 100, 150, 162n48 Frankfurt/Oder, 76 Frankfurter Rundschau, die, 85 Free German Youth, see FDJ Fremdarbeiter controversy, 126–27 French Communist Party, 100, 150 Füller, Christian, 104 Gabriel, Sigmar, 145–46 Gallert, Wulf, 135 Gauck, Joachim, 52, 58, 171n26 Gauck Agency, 52, 81 GBM, 71–72, 176n8, 177n8 Gehrmann, Karl Heinz, 22 Geißler, Heiner, 80, 101 Gelsenkirchen, 90 generation of upward social mobility (Aufsteigergeneration), 36 Gera party congress, 116–17 German Communist Party (DKP), 44, 144 German Democratic Party (DDP), 163n78

221

German Democratic Republic (GDR), ix, 1, 2, 4, 21, 32–33, 37, 39, 40, 56, 62, 64, 66, 81, 86–87, 90, 92, 98, 100, 102, 105, 109, 122, 128, 130–31, 137, 142, 164n98, 165n111, 166n6, 176n8 and achievements, 8, 40–41, 45, 84, 105, 118 crimes of, 19, 33, 38, 40–41, 52, 58–59, 61, 72, 110–11, 145, 167n8 cultural legacy of, 8, 14, 24, 40, 45, 79, 84, 90, 105, 118 economic legacy of, 30, 45–46, 54 end of, 1, 6, 29, 33, 35, 39, 47, 57–58, 78, 86, 122, 174n78 former administrative centers of, 8, 20, 45 former elites of, 8, 11, 22–23, 25, 29, 35–37, 41–44, 45–47, 50–61, 69, 73–76, 80–82, 88, 99, 106–108, 114, 129, 133, 136, 141, 149, 170n1, 177n8 former territory of, 2, 7, 9, 12, 46, 50, 53, 63–64, 69–70, 72, 77–78, 80–81, 85, 101, 114, 118, 140, 157 nostalgia for, 25, 84, 147, 150, 182n7 German Party (DP), 23–24, 151 German People’s Party (DVP), 163n78 German People’s Union (DVU), 94, 123 Gies, Gerd, 44 Glöbke, Hans, 57 Goetz, Klaus, 171n28 Gohde, Claudia, 132 Gomolka, Alfred, 54 Goppel, Thomas, 101 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1, 33 Gramsci, Antonio, 40 grand coalition, 62, 97, 100, 120, 138, 146–47 Greens, 44, 46, 59–60, 62, 76, 80, 85, 91, 114, 133, 141, 159n7, 169n75, 175n114 and former eastern German civic group activists, 53, 61, 174n80

222

INDEX

Greens (continued) and former SED members, 38 and relationship to PDS at national level, 65–67, 98, 100, 102, 115, 143–44 and relationship to PDS at state level, 34, 63–64, 94, 96–97, 100, 106, 146 rightward shift of, 5, 9–10, 120, 126, 140, 147 Gregor, 32 Gutenberg, Johannes, 90 Gysi, Gregor, 2, 34, 80, 87–88, 95, 102–103, 110–11, 117, 131, 133–34, 166n12 and allegations of Stasi involvement, 32, 53, 127 background of, 31–32, 65 and Berlin state government, 94, 103, 106, 114, 124 and eastern interest representation, 43–44, 79, 91, 114, 122, 148 and formation of Left Party.PDS, 32, 124–25, 134, 148, 150 and formation of PDS, 30–32, 37, 51 and the Left, 130, 134 and protest, 85, 87 Gysi, Klaus, 32 Gysi’s colorful corps, 32, 87, 98 Hager, Kurt, 1 Haider, Jörg, 127 Halle, 34, 90 Hallstein Doctrine, 100, 102 Hamburg, 46, 129, 135, 138–39, 144, 146, 159n3 Hartz, Peter, 120 Hartz Commission, 93, 120–21 Hartz labor laws, 93, 120–22, 124 Helle Panke, 73–74 Hesse, 19, 138–40, 144–46, 159n3 Heuer, Uwe-Jens, 72 Heuss, Theodor, 15 Heym, Stefan, 66 Hiksch, Uwe, 117

Hildebrandt, Renate, 79 Hintze, Peter, 63–64, 92, 101–102 Hoffmann, Jürgen, 96 Höll, Barbara, 70 Holter, Helmut, 31, 34–35, 99, 105, 107, 187n95 Holter, Karina, 107 Homeland Provincial Societies (Landsmannschaften), 17 Honecker, Erich, 1, 29–30, 32 Höppner, Reinhard, 37, 97 Hough, Dan, 108 Huber, Dietmar, 6 Huber, Erwin, 101 Humboldt University, 32–33, 71 Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP), 16 Hungary, 6, 24, 29, 90, 182n5 Imperial Germans, 15 Imperial Germany, 7 Institute for Social Data Analysis (ISDA), 37 intra-party interest groups (Interessengemeinschaften) in the PDS, 39 Iraq, 115 Iron Curtain, ix, 29, 83 Israel, 9, 67 Italy, 5, 8, 32, 76, 80, 88–89, 101, 150, 152–154, 156–157 Jacoby, Wade, 84 Johnson, Samuel, 108 judges, 43, 54, 56–57, 91, 149 Kaisen, Wilhelm, 135 Kanther, Manfred, 64–65 Karlsruhe, 67 Kather, Linus, 21 Kaufmann, Sylvia-Yvonne, 143 Keller, Dietmar, 74 Kenzler, Evelyn, 107 Kitschelt, Herbert, 5–6 Klein, Dieter, 33, 188n103 Klier, Freya, 59 Knake-Werner, Heidi, 186n87 K.O. group, 26

INDEX Kohl, Helmut, 6, 63, 65, 67, 77, 92, 96–97, 101–102 Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 174n84 Kosovo war, 116 Koß, Michael, 108 Kossert, Andreas, 163n68 Kovacs, Monique, 154 Kraft, Waldemar, 18–19, 26 Krause, Günther, 53–54, 80, 172n34 Kremlin, 29 Kvistad, Greg, 50 Krenz, Egon, 29–30 Kuczynski, Rita, 31–32 Kümmerpartei, 76 Kwasniewski, Alexander, 6 Labor party in Israel, 9 Labor party in the Netherlands, 10 Labor party in Norway, 10 Lafontaine, 128–29 and Fremdarbeiter controversy, 126–27 and Luxus-Linker controversy, 127 as Napoleon from the Saar, 124 oppositional course of, 126, 132, 134–35, 142 and role in Left, 132–35, 137, 140, 142–43, 145–46 and stepping down as Left Party chair, 134 and tension with eastern reformers, 131–32, 143 and WASG-PDS cooperation, 120, 124–25, 130, 150 Landesverband Oder/Neisse, 20 Lang, Jürgen P., 74 Lastenausgleich (equalization of burdens), 19, 21, 26, 164n104 Latin Europe, 8 Latvia, 12 law of increasing disproportion, 56 Lay, Conrad, 89 LDPD, 53, 62, 172n33 League of Expellees and those Deprived of their Rights, see BHE Lebert, Stephan, 91

223

Lederer, Klaus, 135 Left Party (die Linke), 2, 115, 159n2 leaders of, 133–35 members of, 135–36 origins of, 2–5, 120–33 and party system, 3, 9–12, 142–48 program of, 133, 137–38 and vacuum thesis, 3, 9–11, 120, 140, 151 voters of, 8–12, 138–41 Left Party.PDS, 34, 108, 159n3 and Bundestag election of 2005, 10, 120, 126–29, 141, 159n2 and eastern state elections, 122, 130–31 and Left Party compared, 133, 135, 137 merger with WASG, 31, 129–33, 151 origins of, 32, 120, 123–26, 151, 159n2 Left Party in Sweden, 10 Leibniz Society Institutes, 56 Leipzig, 122, 124 Lenin, Vladimir, 39, 40 Leonardi, Robert, 154 Lepsius, M. Rainer, 7–8 Lessing, Doris, 32 Lessing, Gottfried, 32 Levy, Daniel, 21 Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), 53, 62, 172n33 Liberal Democratic Party in Russia, 7 Liberal Party (of Canada), 154 Liberals in the Netherlands, 10 Likud, 9 Lithuania, 6 Livingston, Robert Gerald, 59 Lombard League, 152, 154 losers of transition thesis, 3, 5–6 Lower Saxony, 15, 20, 24–25, 138, 140, 144, 159n3 Luther, Martin, 90 Luxemburg, Rosa, 40 Magdeburg model, 34, 64, 94, 96, 184n46

224

INDEX

Magdeburg party congress, 96 Manitoba, 152 Manning, Ernest, 156 Manning, Preston, 156 Mansbridge, Jane, 13 Marquardt, Angela, 87 Marx, Karl, 40, 90–91 Marxism, 37, 39, 40, 59–60, 95, 109, 184n35 Marxism-Leninism, 31–32, 34–35, 37, 47, 50–51, 55, 57 Marxist Forum, 109, 111, 184n35 Max Plank Institutes, 56 McCrone, David, 156 Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, 35, 63–64, 92–94, 97–99, 103–108, 112–14, 117, 121, 122–23, 129–31, 140, 145, 148, 182n5 Merkel, Angela, 53, 92, 101, 128, 138, 140, 146–47, 157–58 Metz, Pit, 144 Mezzogiorno, 89 milieu party thesis, 3, 7–8 Ministry for State Security (MfS), see Stasi Mitterrand, François, 100, 150 Modrow, Hans, 29–31, 111, 145 Moreau, Patrick, 40, 74 Moro, Aldo, 150 Mulroney, Brian, 154–55 Münch, Werner, 53 Munich Pact, 16 Münster party congress, 110, 116 Müntefering, Franz, 97, 100, 145 Nahles, Andrea, 146 National Democratic Party (NPD), 123, 127 National Front, 62 National People’s Army (NVA), 50, 54, 59, 72, 171n9, 172n41 National Socialism, 15, 23, 57–58, 63, 66 National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), 19, 56 NATO, 5, 10, 95, 111, 126, 138

Nature, 55–56 Nazis, 19, 56–57, 63, 126–27, 149 Nazi slave laborers, 99, 102, 126 Netherlands, 10 Neu, Viola, 97 Neues Deutschland, 110–11 Neugebauer, Gero, 95 Neumann, Franz, 26, 163n75 “new center” (Neue Mitte), 10 Niedermayer, Oskar, 7 Niering, Rolf, 71 Nooke, Günter, 83, 174n80 Northern League, 80, 152, 154, 156– 57 North Rhine-Westphalia, 123, 129 Norway, 10 Notar, 32 NPD, 123, 127 NSDAP, 19, 56 Nuremberg Laws, 57 NVA, 50, 54, 59, 72, 171n9, 172n41 Oberländer, Theodor, 19, 26 Of Deep Concern, 184n35 offices of constitutional protection, 1–2, 37, 64–65, 67, 85–86, 99, 142 officials on loan (Leihbeamte), 51, 171n28 Olsen, Jonathan, 108 Ontario, 153–54 oriental Jews in Israel, 9 Ostalgie, 24–25, 84 Ostidentität (eastern identity), 24, 47, 61, 79, 82, 105, 147 Oswald, Franz, 40 Ottawa, 155 pacifism, 44, 109 Palace of the Republic, 87 Parliamentary Control Commission, see PKK Parliamentary Council, 17 Party of Democratic Socialism, see PDS Patzelt, Werner, 73, 76 PCI, 76, 88, 150

INDEX PDS, attempted isolation of, 1–2, 24, 59–68 and BHE compared, 14, 18–20, 24–26, 151 and eastern interest representation, ix, 11–12, 13–14, 27, 33, 43–44, 47, 80–83 and eastern socialist milieu, 7–8, 69–75, 88, 108–12 internal caucuses in, 39, 109, 111, 184n35 and internal crisis of 2002–03, 5, 89, 116–18 leaders of, 31–35, 133–34 Left Party as compared with, 133–48, 158 as local insider and national outsider, 20, 29, 35, 88, 157 and local politics, 35, 44–45, 63, 69, 74–76, 82–83, 85, 95, 136, 144 membership of, 33–38, 135–36 origins of, 29–31 overview of, 1–5, 89, 149–51 and political protest, 84–88, 103–105, 105–108 and program of, 39–41, 43–44, 86, 109–10, 118, 136–37 regional parties as compared with, 157–58 and relations with CDU/CSU, 1, 59, 61–66, 68, 73, 85, 98–102, 115 and relations with DKP, 44 and relations with FDP, 59, 61–62, 64–65, 68, 75, 85, 87, 100, 102 and relations with Greens, 5, 9–10, 34, 44, 46, 59, 61–67, 94, 97–98, 100, 102, 106, 114–15, 146–47 and relations with SPD, 5, 9, 10, 34, 37–38, 44, 46, 59, 61–62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 84, 93, 97–100, 102, 106, 110–11, 114–15, 142–43, 145–47 and relations with WASG, 5, 10, 32, 120–21, 124–26, 134, 147–48, 159n2

225

theoretical perspectives on the electoral success of, 5–14 views on GDR history of, 2, 8, 19, 33, 37–41, 44, 61, 73–74, 86, 105, 109–11, 114, 118, 125, 130–31, 137, 142, 145, 150 as Volkspartei, 8, 75, 94, 136, 138 voters of, 6–7, 8, 10–11, 44–46, 85, 93–95, 113–16, 138, 140–41 Pensions Transition Act (Rentenüberleitungsgesetz—RÜG), 41–43, 70, 72 People’s Solidarity (Volkssolidarität), 70 Pitkin, Hanna, 13 PKK, 67, 99 Platform Democratic Socialism, 39 Platform 3rd Way, 39 Platzeck, Matthias, 183n21 Poland, 6, 12, 21, 23, 90, 182n5 Polish Peasant Party, 6 political protest, and eastern Germany, 1, 3–5, 7, 12–14, 29, 43–46, 49–50, 64, 68–70, 82–85, 87–90, 93–94, 96, 102–105, 108, 111, 118–20, 122–23, 129, 131, 147–50, 158, 180n80 and expellees, 15, 20, 26–27 and regional parties, 151–54, 156, and western Germany, 93, 120, 123, 129, 145, 147, 159n2 Pollack, Detlef, 84 Pomeranians, 16–17 Portugal, 8 Potsdam Elite Study, 54 Progressive Conservative Party (of Canada, PC), 154–55 Prokop, Siegfried, 71, 176–77n8 PSI, 153–54 Putnik scandal, 31 Quebec, 153–55, 157 ready-made state, 12, 51 Red Army Faction, 54

226

INDEX

Red-Red governing coalitions (SPDPDS), 93, 97–99, 101, 105, 112, 130–31, 140, 142, 146 red socks campaign, 64, 100–101, 115 Reform Party (of Canada, RP), 152, 155–57 Rehberg, Eckhart, 106 Reißig, Rolf, 77 regional parties, 3, 80–81, 151–58 Reuter, Ernst, 135 Rhineland Palatinate, 129–30, 183n21 Rhodesian Communist Party, 32 Richter, Wolfgang, 71–72 Riege, Gerd, 65–66 Ringstorff, Harald, 97–98, 106, 112, 148 Rohrschneider, Robert, 79 Rohwedder, Detlef-Karsten, 54 Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 33, 74 Rostock, 99 Rostock Manifesto, 81 Rühe, Volker, 102 Rupp, Rainer, 107 Russia, 7, 51 Saarbrücken, 146 Saarland (Saar), 26, 123–24, 129, 136, 138–39, 140, 145–46, 159n3 Sartori, Giovanni, 10 Saxony, 38, 51–52, 54, 64, 68, 75, 79, 86, 92, 94, 122–23, 130 Saxony-Anhalt, 34, 37, 52–54, 63, 64, 78, 90, 94, 96–98, 112–14, 128, 130, 132, 135, 140, 145–46, 182n5 Schäfer, Paul, 114 Scharping, Rudolf, 63 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 11, 63, 101 Schily, Otto, 64, 99 Schleswig-Holstein, 15, 18–20, 24–25, 139–40, 159n3 Schluchter, Wolfgang, 55 Schmidt, Wilhelm, 89 Schmitt, Ingo, 187n89 Schnur, Wolfgang, 53 Scholl, Sophie and Hans, 90 Schönbohm, Jörg, 50, 128

Schreiner, Ottmar, 43 Schröder, Esther, 91 Schröder, Gerhard, 10, 91, 93, 98–100, 103, 114–17, 119–21, 123–24, 127–28, 137, 146 Schultze, Rainer-Olaf, 7 Schulz, Werner, 91 Schulze, Rainer, 15 Schumacher, Kurt, 63, 134–35 Scotland, 152, 155–57, 196n8 Scottish National Party, see SNP Schwabians from Hungary, 24 Schwanitz, Rolf, 91 Schwarz, Hans-Peter, 21 Schwerin, 45, 97, 99, 103–108, 112, 131 Schwerin model, 98 Schwerin party congress, 97 Scientific Communism, 51, 55 second class citizenship, perceptions of, 12–14, 19, 47, 83, 86, 92, 149, 170n94 SED, 1–4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 21, 24–25, 29–43, 45–47, 49–53, 56, 58–62, 64–69, 73–73, 82, 87–88, 96, 101–102, 107–11, 114, 117, 121, 125, 128, 132–33, 142, 144–45, 149–50, 158 SED-PDS, 30, 33–35, 38–39, 62, 64, 142 Shas, 9 Silesians, 16–17, 24 Slovakia, 12, 90 Slovenia, 90 SNP, 90, 152, 156–57 Social Credit, 156 Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SDRP), 6 Social Democratic Party (of Germany), see SPD Socialist Left Party (of Norway), 10 Socialist Party (of the Netherlands), 10 Socialist Party (of France), 100 Socialist Party of Italy (PSI), 153–54 Socialist Unity Party, see SED Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support (GRH), 72

INDEX Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity, see GBM Solidarity Committee of the GDR, 176n1 Solidarity Service International (SODI), 176n1 Soviet Union (USSR), 1, 31, 35, 59–60 Spain, 8 SPD, 34–35, 37–38, 43–46, 50, 52–53, 61, 62–63, 66, 74–76, 79, 80, 82–83, 85–86, 88, 91–92, 96–97, 108–109, 115–16, 122, 127, 129, 133, 141, 159n7, 187n89 and attempted isolation of PDS, 59, 62–63, 65, 142 and cooperation with PDS or Left Party at state level, ix, 33, 34, 35, 63, 64, 89, 93, 94, 97–98, 100, 103, 104–107, 110–11, 112–13, 131, 138, 142–43, 145–46, 148, 150, 184n46 and expellees, 16, 20, 24 and former SED members, 37–38, 73, 108 and KPD, 29, 59, 110, 142 and Left Party, 8, 10–11, 126, 131–32, 134–35, 137–38, 142, 143–44, 145–46 and limited cooperation with PDS at national level, 98–100, 102, 114–15 rightward shift of, 5, 9–10, 120–21, 123–24, 126, 134, 140, 146–47, 151 Spiegel, der, 30, 65, 79, 132, 144 Sputnik, 32 Sputnik, 33 Stalinism, 1, 21, 30, 139, 47, 111, 184n35 Stasi, 29, 32–34, 38, 42, 51–54, 58, 64, 66, 72, 81, 107–8, 127, 144, 170n3, 171n26, 187n95 Stern, der, 1 Stoiber, Edmund, 115, 128

227

Stolpe, Manfred, 33, 53, 79, 83 Struck, Peter, 99 Süddeutsche Zeitung, die, 102 Sudeten Germans, 16–17, 24 Suhl, 34 Süssmuth, Rita, 88 Sweden, 10 Swedish Communist Party, 20 Tagesspiegel, der, 91 tageszeitung, die (Berlin), 31, 104 television agency of the GDR (DFF), 54 Third Reich, 21, 57 Thuringia, 34, 46, 54–55, 64–65, 92, 94, 97, 116, 122, 128, 130, 140 transitional justice, 2, 4, 14, 24, 49, 58–59, 61, 95, 149 Transylvanian Germans, 24 Treuhand, 54, 77–78, 81–82, 87, 90 Trudeau, Pierre, 154 Uganda, 32, 144 Ulbricht, Walter, 32 unemployment and eastern Germany, 6, 36, 49, 69–70, 75, 77, 81–82, 84–86, 89–90, 96, 107, 122, 127, 147, 150 and expellees, 15, 20 Unification Treaty, 11, 42, 44, 52, 54–55, 81 Union of the Democratic Left (of Poland, UDL), 6 United Kingdom, 5, 152–53, 155–56 United States 57, 66, 115, 118, 153, 162n48 upper service class (of the GDR, Dienstklasse), 8, 41, 45, 73, 114, 149, 170n1 Vaclav Havel generation, 59 vacuum thesis, 3, 9–11, 120, 140, 151 Vilmar, Fritz, 11 Vogel, Bernhard, 53, 92 Volkskammer elections, 30, 40, 45–46, 62, 75, 81, 87, 176n2

228

INDEX

Volkspartei, 8, 75, 94, 136, 138 Volmert, Johannes, 64 Wagenknecht, Sahra, 188n103 Waigel, Theo, 63–64 Walesa, Lech, 6 Walter, Franz, 108 Walz, Dieter, 83 Wandel durch Annährung, 100 Warteschleife, 52 Warsaw Pact, 12 WASG, 5, 10, 32, 120–21, 123–26, 129–38, 142–45, 147–48, 150–51, 159n2 Wegener, Christel, 144 Wegrad, Joachim, 107, 187n95 Wegrad-Paul, Veronika, 107 Weimar Republic, 7, 37, 59 Weiß, Konrad, 174n80 Weiszäcker, Richard von, 61 West Berlin, 60–61, 95 western allies, 16–18, 24, 60 West Germany, 4, 11, 14–15, 18, 21–24, 26, 41, 50–51, 56, 59, 62,

70, 113, 123, 133, 135, 140–41, 149, 160n13, 164n104, 170n3 Westminster, 155, 157 Wilke, Manfred, 60–61 winding down of GDR administrative units (Abwicklung), 52, 55 Winkler, Heinrich, 57–58 Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung (WAV), 17 Wolf, Harald, 106, 111, 131, 186n87 World War II, 4, 15, 19, 26, 33, 50, 66 Wowereit, Klaus, 98, 104 Yoder, Jennifer, 84 Yugoslavia, 10, 16, 126 Zeit, die, 127 Zeller, Joachim, 187n89 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 7 Zimmer, Gabriele (Gabi), 31, 34, 85, 106, 110, 112, 115–17, 133 Zimmer-Pau Statement, 110–11

POLITICAL SCIENCE / HISTORY

What happened to the ruling communist party of East Germany after the collapse of the Berlin Wall? Out of the East describes the party’s metamorphosis after its fall from power. Over the last twenty years it has transformed many times, from the Socialist Unity Party to the Party of Democratic Socialism to, finally, the successful Left Party. David F. Patton makes sense of these transitions, and reveals how a pariah party managed to survive and thrive in democracy. DAVID F. PATTON is Professor of Government at Connecticut College. He is the author of Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany.

SUNY P R E S S

State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu