1990 East German general election

1990 East German general election

← 1986 18 March 1990 (1990-03-18) 1990 (all-German) →
All 400 seats in the Volkskammer 201 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	93.38%
Party Leader Vote % Seats CDU Lothar de Maizière 40.82 163 SPD Ibrahim Böhme 21.88 88 PDS Gregor Gysi 16.40 66 DSU Hans-Wilhelm Ebeling 6.31 25 BFD Rainer Ortleb Bruno Menzel Jürgen Schmieder 5.28 21 B90 Jens Reich 2.91 12 DBD Günther Maleuda 2.18 9 Green–UFV Carlo Jordan 1.97 8 DA Wolfgang Schnur 0.92 4 NDPD Wolfgang Rauls 0.38 2 DFD Eva Rohmann 0.33 1 United Left Thomas Klein 0.18 1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Results of the election by Kreis Distribution of seats in the election Government before Government after election Modrow cabinet National unity government de Maizière cabinet Alliance for Germany–SPD–BFD

Politics of East Germany
Constitution 1949 1968
Leadership Socialist Unity Party General Secretary President (1949–1960) State Council (1960–1990) Head of State Council of Ministers Head of Government
Legislature President Chamber of States
Elections Referendums Constitutional Assembly 1949 General elections 1950 1954 1958 1963 1967 1971 1976 1981 1986 1990 Referendums 1951 1954 1968
Political parties Christian Democratic Union Democratic Farmers' Party Liberal Democratic Party National Democratic Party
Administrative divisions East Berlin (independent) Cottbus Dresden Erfurt Frankfurt Gera Halle Karl-Marx-Stadt Leipzig Magdeburg Neubrandenburg Potsdam Rostock Schwerin Suhl Leaders
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General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990. They were the first free elections in that part of Germany since 1932, and were the first and only free elections held in the state as the parliament worked towards German reunification with success.

The Alliance for Germany, led by the new East German branch of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 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 (SPD), which had been forced to merge with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats despite being widely expected to win. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, restyled as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), finished third with 66 seats.

The Alliance fell nine seats short of the 201 seats needed to govern alone.^[1] Lothar de Maizière 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 Maizière's offer, in part because of the presence of the right-wing populist DSU in de Maizière's grouping; the SPD had originally been willing to govern alongside all parties other than the PDS and DSU.^[2] However, they ultimately agreed, and the four parties formed government. The government, which was able to amend the constitution thanks to its two-thirds supermajority of seats in the Volkskammer, subsequently organised and ratified the reunification of Germany, resulting in the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic and accession of its states into the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990. 144 members of the Volkskammer expanded the German Bundestag for about two months before the (regular West) German federal election was held on December 2 as all-German election.