Associated Edition project

The reunification expanded the West German party system with two new formations, which brought their contrary validity claims from the GDR past into the new Federal Republic: the alliance of oppositional citizens’ movements and the SED successor party PDS.

The projected edition is dedicated to the citizens’ movement Alliance 90, which merged with the West German Greens in 1993 to form Alliance 90/The Greens. The intention is, to put together the relevant documents on the history of Alliance 90, which concern their self-image, their social localization and their political strategy.

The edition documents the strategy debates between the citizens’ movements at the Round Table and in the People’s Chamber group, in the run-up to the 1990 state elections as to the 1990 general election to the German Bundestag. Special attention is paid to the developments in the following year, when the particular rights for list associations ended, as they were granted by the Treaty of Unification. Attention is here also paid to the different developments on the state level. In Saxony the federations of the Greens and the citizens’ movements formed the party Alliance 90/The Green in Saxony.

The negotiations on the association with the West German Greens dragged on for a year. Even if the Greens no longer had a parliamentary group, they had become ruling party at state level. Since the split of the left wing they paid more attention to the balance of the divergent currents. The party debates revolved around the future women’s politics, the wave of xenophobic violence, the Bosnian war and the World Climate Conference in Rio.