The reader may well ask: if life in the GDR had so many positive aspects as described here, why did so many, particularly young people, wish to leave for the West and why did a majority vote for unification in the 1990 elections? There is no simple answer to that, but there are a number of influential factors.

We have described the increasing frustration with the ossified and intransigent leadership over the over-centralisation of decision-making, the increasing chasm between the government and the people. During the autumn of 1989, there was an explosion of democratic grassroot initiatives that were openly demanding a proper say in decision-making. Several civil rights organisations were established (e.g. Neues Forum, Demokratie Jetzt, Demokratischer Aufbruch) and weekly demonstrations began in Leipzig in October 1989 all demanding change. The dominant slogans were ‘We are the People’ and ‘We are staying here’ (as a reaction to those that were leaving the GDR via the Hungarian border which had been opened in the summer of 1989). The pressure from the people, forced the resignation of Erich Honecker in October 1989. But when the new head of state was again selected from the existing nomenclatura, the demonstrations continued unabated. Moreover, public discussions started taking place in many big cities about what an improved socialism should or could look like, what needed to be changed to make it more open and democratic and give citizens a strong voice in the decision-making process. At that time, the media started to change as well and journalists demonstrated courage and imagination in tackling difficult subject matter. Programmes on radio and television were introduced that reflected the sudden explosion of debate and many of the topics being voiced by the people were discussed in the media.

There is still some controversy about how and why the Wall was opened in the way it was, i.e. not through a formal and prepared announcement, but as the result if a question asked at a press conference given by a spokesperson of the ruling SED party. What the GDR government had been planning was the introduction of a new law easing travel restrictions on GDR citizens wishing to visit the West. And when a question was asked at that press conference on 9 November 1989, as to when this new law would come into force the answer, after some hesitation, was ‘with immediate effect’. It will remain one of the mysteries of history whether this was incompetence or a deliberate act of sabotage. The fact remains that the West German media immediately broadcast this announcement and GDR citizens, with some disbelief, rushed to the border to see for themselves whether it was true. The West reacted very quickly and offered every GDR citizen crossing the border 100 Deutsch Marks that were promptly spent in the consumer temples of West Berlin.

Shortly after the opening of the borders, the GDR government resigned and was replaced by an interim government under the popular former Dresden Regional Secretary of the SED, Hans Modrow. He formed a government including all five GDR parties and worked closely together with the ‘Central Round Table’, that had formed in early December 1989, bringing together the established parties, mass organisations and the new civil rights movements.

Only 13 days after the Wall was opened, the governing board of the West German central bank proposed the rapid introduction of the West German currency in the GDR. It was a plan to buy the revolution. [sw - emphasis mine] The battle for the future of the GDR began with Helmut Kohl’s speech in the Bundestag on 28 November 1989, in which he proposed a path to unification. On the same day, leading GDR intellectuals and writers issued an appeal ‘For our country’, calling for a stand-alone GDR. At that time, 86 percent of the GDR population wanted a reformed socialism. [sw – emphasis mine]

People’s confidence in being able to create a separate reformed socialist state was systematically undermined by a mixture of lurid exposure stories and disinformation about the GDR’s former rulers. In addition, the (West German) media began a propaganda war claiming that the GDR economy was near collapse and that the GDR government was within days of becoming insolvent and unable to pay its bills. All of a sudden Federal German flags appeared at the weekly demonstrations and gatherings, and the dominant slogan was changed to ‘We are ONE people’. Modrow’s government was increasingly sidelined by Helmut Kohl who now started direct negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev on the feasibility of German unification.

The planned general election date was brought forward from May to March 1990. These elections have been characterised as the GDR’s “first free elections” – and indeed elections in GDR times were not genuinely democratic. However, although the GDR was still a sovereign state and the Modrow ‘government of national responsibility’ had agreed that no West German politicians should interfere, there was heavy involvement by the West German parties in the election campaign, particularly the CDU.

Clearly, a lot was at stake for the West German CDU under Helmut Kohl. He had been in office already for two terms and his party’s popularity was sinking. Elections in the Federal Republic were due in December 1990. He saw his chance of fulfilling an old dream, namely re-uniting Germany and finally banishing the spectre of a socialist alternative in the shape of a separate state. The CDU, therefore, threw everything into the election battle in the GDR in order to convince the people that joining West Germany would give our ‘poor brothers and sisters in the GDR’ a panacea. That is why he promised ‘blooming landscapes’ and similar living standards to those in the West. Consumerism was the big draw under the slogan of freedom.

The powerful West German political parties, particularly the CDU, donated large sums of money, printed election propaganda and provided a free service of ‘advisers’ to their designated partners in the East. According to a report now lodged in the archive of Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA), West German parties and prominent politicians gained increasing influence over the GDR’s election process. In total 7.5 million Deutsch Marks were spent on these campaigns in the GDR. Over half of that amount came from the CDU/CSU, which spent 4.5 million on the election campaign of its sister party in the GDR. The West German CDU was quite open about its attempts to influence the electoral process. Chancellor Kohl himself spoke at six big rallies, addressing an estimated one million citizens or 10 per cent of the GDR electorate. Alongside him, other leading CDU politicians also spoke at over a thousand electoral events. Everything, including television and radio, newspapers, posters, and leaflets were mobilised to ensure a victory for the ‘Allianz fur Deutschland’ – an alliance of the East German CDU and two minor right-wing parties that had been set up only six weeks before the election by Chancellor Kohl himself. The West German CDU even produced a 16-page newspaper specifically for the election, in an edition of five million copies. The tenor of the campaign was twofold: to underline the ‘We are One People’ concept (‘Wir sind ein Volk’) and its anti-socialist stance, ‘Never again Socialism’ (‘Nie wieder Sozialismus’).

Egon Bahr, then a member of the Executive Committee of the West German Social Democratic Party, immediately after election booths had closed on 18 March 1990, said ‘What I have seen during this period in the GDR made me extremely angry… the whole election campaign became an event that was controlled by the West German CDU. It was an undignified operation… loudspeaker vans with Munich-registered number plates swamped Leipzig’s streets and called for people not to the attend the SPD’s election hustings… in small towns in Thuringia and Saxony many known members of the SPD and PDS received threatening letters and were even physically assaulted… children were given money to hand out leaflets on behalf of the CSU (the CDU’s sister party in the West). That was pure psychological terror in a Goebbels’ mould. I wish to reiterate that this political dirt was imported from the Federal Republic.’

The result of the election was a shock for all those who had wanted a reformed GDR or, at best, a confederation with the Federal Republic. The ‘Allianz fur Deutschland’ was the clear winner with 48 per cent of the votes, although most pundits had expected the SPD to come out on top. Its proposal for the GDR to become part of the Federal Republic by simply joining rather than negotiating a reunification agreement, was the one that was pursued in the following months by the newly elected GDR parliament which handed over its sovereignty even before an all-German parliament had been set up. All the GDR parties (apart from the Party of Democratic Socialism and the civil rights movement) had advisers from the West and acted as they were told. Thus they refused to even discuss the proposal of a new constitution for Germany, which had been put forward by the ‘Central Round Table’; they did not examine in detail the 1000-page treaty that was to be the basis for unification; and they agreed the dogma of privitisation and the early introduction of the West German currency.

So why did so many GDR citizens vote for the CDU and a hasty unification? Many undoubtedly thought that unification would allow them to keep all the positive aspects that pertained in the GDR (women’s rights, educational opportunity, job security, cheap housing, good welfare support and a subsidised culture), but at the same time allow them to enjoy the much more extensive material wealth the West Germans had and to take advantage of the world travel opportunities that the German Mark would also bring with it.