1990 East German general election

18 March 1990 (1990-03-18)
All 400 seats in the Volkskammer 201 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	93.4%
Party Leader % Seats CDU Lothar de Maizière 40.82 163 SPD Ibrahim Böhme 21.88 88 PDS Gregor Gysi 16.40 66 DSU Hans-Wilhelm Ebeling 6.31 25 BFD Rainer Ortleb Bruno Menzel Jürgen Schmieder 5.28 21 B90 Jens Reich 2.91 12 DBD Günther Maleuda 2.18 9 Green–UFV Carlo Jordan 1.97 8 DA Wolfgang Schnur 0.92 4 NDPD Wolfgang Rauls 0.38 2 DFD Eva Rohmann 0.33 1 United Left Thomas Klein 0.18 1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Results of the election by Kreis Government before Government after election Modrow cabinet National unity government de Maizière cabinet Alliance for Germany–SPD–BFD

Politics of East Germany
Constitution 1949 1968
Leadership Socialist Unity Party General Secretary President (1949–1960) State Council (1960–1990) Head of State Council of Ministers Head of Government
Legislature President Chamber of States
Elections Referendums Constitutional Assembly 1949 General elections 1950 1954 1958 1963 1967 1971 1976 1981 1986 1990 Referendums 1951 1954 1968
Political parties Christian Democratic Union Democratic Farmers' Party Liberal Democratic Party National Democratic Party
Administrative divisions East Berlin (independent) Cottbus Dresden Erfurt Frankfurt Gera Halle Karl-Marx-Stadt Leipzig Magdeburg Neubrandenburg Potsdam Rostock Schwerin Suhl Leaders
Other countries

General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990, and were the first and only free elections held in the state before German reunification. The Alliance for Germany, led by the new East German branch of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), won 192 seats and emerged as the largest bloc in the 400-seat Volkskammer, having run on a platform of speedy reunification with West Germany. The East German branch of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had been dissolved in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats despite being widely expected to win. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, restyled as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), finished third with 66 seats the first free election in which it participated.

The Alliance fell slightly short of the 201 seats needed to govern alone.^[1] Lothar de Maizière of the CDU invited the SPD to join his Alliance partners – the German Social Union (DSU) and Democratic Awakening (DA) – in a grand coalition. The SPD was initially cold to de Maizière's offer, in part because of the presence of the right-wing populist DSU in de Maizière's grouping; the SPD had originally been willing to govern alongside all parties other than the PDS and DSU.^[2] However, they ultimately agreed, and the four parties formed government. The government, which was able to amend the constitution thanks to its two-thirds supermajority of seats in the Volkskammer, subsequently organised and ratified the reunification of Germany, resulting in the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990.

Background

The Peaceful Revolution of 1989 resulted in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany giving up its monopoly on power, and permitting opposition parties to operate for the first time. They began to form in large numbers throughout November and December 1989. Opposition groups formed the East German Round Table, which was joined by representatives of the SED to negotiate reforms; at its first meeting on 7 December 1989, the Round Table agreed that elections to the Volkskammer would be held on 6 May 1990.^[3]

Electoral system

On 20 February 1990 the Volkskammer passed a new electoral law, reducing it in size to 400 members elected via party-list proportional representation, with no electoral threshold. Joint lists between parties were allowed, and a number of parties formed alliances for the election, including the Association of Free Democrats, Alliance 90, and an alliance between the Green Party and Independent Women's Association. Seats were calculated nationally using the largest remainder method, and distributed in multi-member constituencies corresponding to the fifteen Bezirke.^[4]

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Law on the Elections to the People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic (1990)

Campaign

The campaign was short and presented the parties with major organizational challenges. The election, originally scheduled for May, was brought forward to March 18 after negotiations between representatives of the Round Table and government of Hans Modrow on 28 January. This meant that the campaign was only seven weeks long.

Only the PDS had immediately operational party machinery, as well as the extensive financial resources required for an election campaign. The newly founded parties and groups, by contrast, were often still entangled in debates about their platform and only had minimal operational infrastructure. Civil rights activists had managed to secure offices in many places, meaning both the new groups and old parties were often lacking less in physical infrastructure and more in political and campaign experience. This gap was closed through a massive commitment by West German parties, which supported their partner parties in the GDR, and were able to compensate for the organizational advantage held by the PDS.^[5] The CDU formed "district partnerships": each Eastern CDU district association was supported by a Western CDU district association. Many Western party members visited the East to aid their corresponding party in the campaign.

Ahead of the election, the Bavarian Christian Social Union in West Germany allied itself with the Eastern German Social Union. The Free Democratic Party endorsed the hastily-assembled Association of Free Democrats, which included the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD) and the minor Free Democratic Party of the GDR. The Alliance for Germany, which included the CDU, DSU, and Democratic Awakening (DA), was also created as an emergency solution. These two alliances, forged six weeks before the election, had to organize their election campaigns in an extremely short time.^[6]

At the beginning of the campaign period, the SPD appeared to have a clear edge over the other parties. As a newly-founded party, it had no ties to the SED, but a high profile and ample resources thanks to its Western counterpart. Much of East Germany's territory had also been strongholds of the Weimar Republic-era SPD. Meanwhile, the CDU was deprived of a natural base by the lack of any significant Catholic population in the country, with the sole exception of Eichsfeld on the Thuringian border. Additionally, several older parties, including the CDU, LDPD, and NDPD, were former bloc parties which had been subordinate to the SED until 1989, engendering doubt about their ability to portray themselves as parties of change. Election forecasts predicted a clear victory for the Social Democrats; in a survey published at the beginning of February, the SPD was favoured by 54 percent of voters, followed by the PDS with 12 percent and the CDU with 11 percent.^[5]

Oskar Lafontaine, who had been elected as the West German SPD's Chancellor candidate for the next federal election, was sceptical of reunification and pessimistic about the SPD's chances of victory in either country. At the SPD's party conference in Berlin in December 1989, he warned of a "national drunkenness" that reunification could inspire, and described the potential membership of a united Germany in NATO as "historical nonsense". Meanwhile, West German CDU leader and incumbent Chancellor Helmut Kohl made unification the primary goal for his party in both the East and West. To promote this position, almost four hundred rallies were held during the Eastern election campaign featuring around eighty top politicians from the Western CDU and CSU; the Alliance for Germany held around 1,400 election events in total. At one such event on 20 February 1990 in Erfurt, 150,000 people gathered to see Kohl; 200,000 attended when he spoke in Chemnitz.^[7]

Three days before the election the lead candidate of Democratic Awakening, Wolfgang Schnur, was exposed as a Stasi informant by Der Spiegel.

Conduct

Ballot paper

Writer Michael Schneider criticised what he saw as massive interference by Western politicians in the GDR election campaign, which he characterised as dominated by Western personalities and party volunteers and funded partly by taxpayer money from the West.^[11]

Civil rights activist and founding member of the New Forum, Jens Reich, raised similar concerns. In 2009, 20 years after the Peaceful Revolution, he commented on the development of democracy in the GDR: "The Bonn hippopotamus came in such a mass that you were simply helpless. The entire apparatus of the West was simply brought to the East in the election campaign. We had nothing to oppose. These were western elections exported to the GDR."^[12]

Opinion polls

In 2005, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen researcher Matthias Jung, who was involved in organising opinion polling for the election, spoke of the difficulties of the task. He attributed this to the unpredictable behaviour of the electorate as well as the total lack of infrastructure and methods for gauging public opinion, which forced the institute to build an entirely new polling model. Despite beginning work at the end of 1989, FW only released one poll before the election, which Jung claimed accurately predicted the CDU victory.^[13] This may refer to a FW poll showing that 35% of voters believed an Alliance for Germany-led government would be most capable of solving the country's problems, while only 27% believed an SPD-led government would; 29% believed a grand coalition would be most capable.^[14] This was in stark contrast to other polls, conducted without reliable methods, which predicted a landslide SPD victory.

Results

Maps showing the distribution of party votes per circle.
The map in the bottom right shows the largest party in each district (several circles make a district).

Distribution of seats in the election

Party or alliance				Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	Alliance for Germany		Christian Democratic Union	4,710,598	40.82	163	+111
			German Social Union	727,730	6.31	25	New
			Democratic Beginning	106,146	0.92	4	New
		Total		5,544,474	48.04	192	+140
	Social Democratic Party			2,525,534	21.88	88	New
	Party of Democratic Socialism			1,892,381	16.40	66	–61
	Association of Free Democrats			608,935	5.28	21	–31
	Alliance 90			336,074	2.91	12	New
	Democratic Farmers' Party			251,226	2.18	9	–43
	Green Party–Independent Women's Association			226,932	1.97	8	New
	National Democratic Party			44,292	0.38	2	–50
	Democratic Women's League			38,192	0.33	1	–31
	United Left			20,342	0.18	1	New
	Alternative Youth List (DJP–GJ–MJV–FDJ)			14,616	0.13	0	–37
	Christian League			10,691	0.09	0	New
	Communist Party			8,819	0.08	0	New
	Independent Social Democratic Party			3,891	0.03	0	New
	European Federalist Party			3,636	0.03	0	New
	Independent People's Party			3,007	0.03	0	New
	German Beer Drinkers' Union			2,534	0.02	0	New
	Spartacist Workers Party			2,417	0.02	0	New
	Unity Now			2,396	0.02	0	New
	Federation of Socialist Workers			386	0.00	0	New
	Association of Working Groups for Work Policy and Democracy			380	0.00	0	New
Total				11,541,155	100.00	400	0
Valid votes				11,541,155	99.45
Invalid/blank votes				63,263	0.55
Total votes				11,604,418	100.00
Registered voters/turnout				12,426,443	93.38
Source: Nohlen & Stöver,[17] IPU, Wahlen in Deutschland

Votes by state

Co-optation of Volkskammer members into the Bundestag

3 October 1990 (1990-10-03)

All 641 seats in the Bundestag 321 seats needed for a majority

Party Leader Seats +/– CDU Helmut Kohl 248 +63 CSU Theodor Waigel 49 0 SPD Hans-Jochen Vogel 226 +40 FDP Otto Graf Lambsdorff 57 +11 Greens Petra Kelly 51 +9 PDS Gregor Gysi 23 New DSU Hansjoachim Walther 8 New United Left Thomas Klein 1 New This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Government before Government after election Third Kohl cabinet CDU/CSU–FDP Third Kohl cabinet CDU/CSU/DSU–FDP

In order to determine the composition of the East German representatives in the Bundestag between German reunification and the first post-reunification elections in December 1990, the results of the 1990 Volkskammer election were recounted, using the new states of Germany as constituencies. This was possible since the original election results were declared on the Kreis level, and the states were re-established by simply amalgamating Kreise together. The results in each Kreis forming a state were summed up to determine the statewide result. The recount fixed the number of Volkskammer members from each party who would be co-opted into the Bundestag.^[18]

State	CDU		SPD		PDS		DSU		BFD		B90		DBD		G–UFV		DA		NDPD		DFD		VL		Others
Brandenburg	615,975	33.6	548,912	29.9	335,822	18.3	61,001	3.3	86,188	4.7	59,945	3.3	51,678	2.8	39,359	2.1	13,869	0.8	8,392	0.5	2,763	0.2	3,637	0.2	7,763	0.4
East Berlin	161,960	18.3	308,833	34.8	267,834	30.2	19,733	2.2	26,591	3.0	56,078	6.3	4,065	0.5	23,565	2.7	9,032	1.0	1,558	0.2	–	–	2,863	0.3	4,070	0.4
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern	486,038	36.3	313,020	23.4	305,123	22.8	31,947	2.4	47,981	3.6	31,678	2.4	65,422	4.9	26,785	2.0	8,152	0.6	6,849	0.5	5,193	0.4	2,218	0.2	7,161	0.5
Saxony	1,506,832	43.4	522,580	15.1	472,037	13.6	454,298	13.1	197,644	5.7	102,987	3.0	65,274	1.9	60,667	1.7	32,282	0.9	13,711	0.4	13,955	0.4	5,348	0.2	23,739	0.7
Saxony-Anhalt	933,276	44.5	496,606	23.7	293,605	14.0	50,393	2.4	161,580	7.7	46,255	2.2	37,696	1.8	36,978	1.8	12,650	0.6	7,351	0.4	9,402	0.4	3,410	0.2	6,053	0.3
Thuringia	1,006,517	52.5	335,583	17.5	217,960	11.4	110,358	5.8	88,951	4.6	39,131	2.0	27,091	1.4	39,578	2.1	30,161	1.6	6,431	0.3	6,879	0.4	2,866	0.1	3,987	0.2

Aftermath

The newly elected Volkskammer was constituted on 5 April 1990, and elected Sabine Bergmann-Pohl of the CDU as its president. As the State Council of the GDR was dissolved at the same time, she became East Germany's interim head of state. Four days later, after protracted negotiations, Lothar de Maizière announced the formation of a grand coalition between the Alliance for Germany, SPD, and BFD. On 12 April 1990, he was elected Prime Minister of the GDR by the Volkskammer with 265 votes in favour, 108 against, and 9 abstentions. The new cabinet was also confirmed. The partners in the coalition commanded a two-thirds supermajority in the Volkskammer, enough to pass amendments to the constitution.^[19][20]

The new parliament quickly passed several pieces of major legislation, including a new law regarding local government on 17 May, a law ratifying the monetary, economic, and social union with the Federal Republic of Germany on 18 May (which became effective on 1 July), and constitutional amendments on 17 June. On 21 June, the Volkskammer formed a special committee, chaired by Joachim Gauck, to control the dissolution of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi).^[21]

On 20 September 1990, the Volkskammer voted 299–80 to accept the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which had earlier been approved in a 442–47 vote by the West German Bundestag. The treaty stipulated that East Germany would unify its territory with Federal Republic of Germany via Article 23 of the Basic Law, meaning that East Germany and the Volkskammer would cease to exist. The chamber's last legislative period therefore only lasted four and a half months. The treaty took effect on 3 October 1990; on the same day, 144 of the 400 Volkskammer deputies became members of the Bundestag (63 from the CDU, 33 from the SPD, 24 from the PDS, 9 from the BFD, 8 from the DSU, and 7 from Alliance 90 and the Green Party). The 8 DSU members joined the CDU/CSU Bundestag Group, briefly renamed CDU/CSU/DSU. The distribution of seats between these parties was determined by recalculating the results of the 1990 elections on a per-state basis. Their tenure came to an end two months later with the first all-German federal election on 2 December 1990.^[22]

Notes

References