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German Unification

The New York Times of December 3, 1990, reports that Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition will lead a unified Germany. In an article from Bonn, Germany, dated December 2, 1990, Kohl claimed the reward for his stewardship of German unity "with a victory for his coalition for the first free allGerman election in 58 years" (New York Times, 1990, December 3, p. 1A).

As the article reports, the results of the parliamentary elections were generally interpreted as an endorsement of German unification and the role played in it by Mr. Kohl, leader of the Christian Democratic Party, and Foreign Minister HansDietrich Genscher of the Free Democratic Party.

The Free Democrats are entrenched as the center party in coalition with the CDUCSU. The CSU, or Christian Social Union, is the conservative sister party of the CDU. The leader of the Free Democrats, Foreign Minister HansDietrich Genscher, remains by far the most popular politician in West Germany and is well known and respected in East Germany.

As Stephen F. Szabo of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies points out in his "Reunited Germany" in Current History:

All this implies that the new German party system is likely to look a good deal like the old one. It will probably remain a fourparty system (CDUCSU, FDP, SPD and the Greens) although small groupings in East Germany may form alliances and survive briefly. The left faces the prospect of emerging even more divided than it was in West Germany, while the CDU will probably be the largest party in the system, marginally larger than it was in West Germany (1990, November, p. 360)

The parties that had wavered or opposed unitythe Social Democrats, the Greens and the East German Communist Party, now called the Party of Democratic Socialismall fared badly.

In essence, the parties urging unification won the most votes. In a quotation from the same source, which speaks only of "Germany," Al...

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German Unification. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 14:08, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691356.html