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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
IT HAS NOW BECOME COMMON FOR OBSERVERS TO NOTE that German reunification, an unthinkable prospect only a year ago, will be realised before anyone, either the East and West Germans themselves or any of their neighbours and allies, is fully prepared for this eventuality. As the conservative Alliance for Germany's stunning successes in the GDR's first free Volkskammer (parliamentary) elections on 18 March demonstrated, a near majority of the country's population was eager to cast its vote for those forces which promised to facilitate East Germany's absorption into the FRG on the fastest possible terms. By the same token, the vote was also a victory of sorts for all of the West German parties who rushed to lend material and financial aid to their GDR counterparts, for their involvement in the East German election campaigns clearly helped to accelerate the momentum behind national reunification.
1 A useful study of all of the parties involved in the East German election is provided by Hamilton, Dan, The East German Opposition: A Primer for the March Elections, Washington, DC, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 03 1990.Google Scholar
2 For the final election statistics, cf. Frankfurter Allgemne Zeitung, 24 March 1990.
3 In addition, a surmountable but still nagging source of irritation for Bonn will be the existence of a number of smaller parties in the East German parliament—the Greens, Democratic Awakening, the Democratic Farmers’ Party, and the various citizens’ groups in Alliance 90—which can be counted upon to voice continuing reservations about West German policy. The presence of so many small parties in the parliament is due to the fact that one only needed to win 0.25 per cent of the vote (unlike the 5 per cent hurdle in the FRG) in order to gain a seat in the legislature.
4 For Lafontaine’s calculations, cf. Der Spiegel, Vol. 44, No. 13, 26 March 1990, pp. 21–24.
5 I have addressed the international implications of German reunification in ‘An obituary for the Berlin Wall’, World Policy Journal, Spring 1990, pp. 357–75.
6 How strange indeed it seems to have a Minister of Disarmament and Defence in East Berlin, the dissident pastor Rainer Eppelmann.