Sunday, 21. January 1990

The crisis in the SED-PDS, in which various factions have meanwhile formed, takes a dramatic turn. The deputy Party Chairman and popular Mayor of Dresden, Wolfgang Berghofer, and 39 other party members declare their resignation from party. In a statement by the forty distributed this evening, they say they support a more »social democratic« program. Like other reformers, Berghofer and the other ex-members call for dissolution of the SED-PDS.

The opposition group Democratic Awakening, which transformed itself into a party a few weeks ago, hopes to join with »anti-socialist, Christian, liberal, social and conservative forces« for the elections on May 6. At the founding of the Thuringian state section, Chairman Wolfgang Schnur calls for a »strong electoral alliance of the political center«. The party renews its support for German unity and the introduction of a social-ecological market economy.

The Democracy Now (DJ) movement is the only one to resist the general trend toward reunification. At the close of its first state congress, the delegates emphasize in a statement that they reject »reunification in the form of exclusion« as well as »all attempts to implement or force immediate unity«. They advocate that the two states come together gradually through a three-stage plan leading to a demilitarized Germany.