Germans in the German Democratic Republic vote in the first democratic elections in the former communist dictatorship.
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990. It was the only free and fair parliamentary election in the history of the country, and the first free and fair election held in that part of Germany since November 1932.
The Alliance for Germany, led by the East German branch of the Christian Democratic Union, 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, which had been dissolved in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism, running in a free election for the first time, finished third with 66 seats.
The Alliance was just short of the 201 seats needed to govern alone. Lothar de Maizire 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 cool to de Maizire's offer, in part because of the presence of the right-wing DSU in de Maizire's grouping; the SPD had originally been willing to govern alongside all parties other than the PDS and DSU. However, they ultimately agreed. The government, which was able to amend the constitution thanks to its two-thirds majority, subsequently organised and ratified the reunification of Germany, resulting in the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic on 3 October 1990.
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] (listen), DDR, pronounced [ˌdeːdeːˈʔɛɐ̯] (listen)), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in eastern Germany as part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder-Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.
The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as West Germany, was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949, although Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its inner German border and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent long periods of time imprisoned for attempting to escape. In 1951, a referendum in East Germany regarding the remilitarization of Germany was held, with 95% of the population voting in favour.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable being peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, with the former East German states reunified with the Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.