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Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it wasn’t clear that even the Germans were interested in reunification. Soon, however, protests demanding reform in East Germany began calling for unification with the West. Here, a demonstration in the heart of Berlin in December 1989. PHOTO/DPA/Spiegel Online
On October 3, 1990 the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, known as the GDR), a state with 17 million inhabitants, was disbanded 41 years after its founding and incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany.
In both East and West Germany, only a few of those affected were aware of the consequences of this step. There was no public debate and no referendum. Instead, there was a propaganda campaign by every political party and the media, which proclaimed that the liquidation of the GDR, the privatization of nationalized property and the introduction of capitalism were synonymous with freedom, democracy, prosperity and peace. Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) spoke at mass rallies in the GDR and promised to transform the region into “flourishing landscapes where it pays to live and work.”
The GDR state party, the Stalinist Socialist Unity Party (SED), supported this campaign as well. “In my opinion, the path to unity was unavoidable and had to be followed with determination,” wrote the last SED prime minister, Hans Modrow, in his memoirs.
Gregor Gysi, who took over the chairmanship of the SED in late 1989 and is still playing a leading role in the Left Party, said this week in an interview that he had undertaken the task of leading “the eastern elites—including middle ranking functionaries—into the united Germany.”
Gysi has aptly summed up the role of the SED. Far from representing the interests of working people, the party spoke for the “Eastern elites,” the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, which regarded nationalized property primarily as the source of its own privileges. Facing mass protests, the bureaucracy concluded that its privileges could be defended better on the basis of capitalist property and under the protection of the West German state than by maintaining the GDR.
For the working class, the consequences of capitalist restoration were disastrous. Already prior to October 3, western corporations and banks swooped like vultures upon the GDR’s nationalized property. East German industry, which played a leading role in Eastern Europe, guaranteeing full employment and social security, was razed to the ground in a brief period of time.
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