Germany is a democratic and federal parliamentary republic, where federal legislative power is vested in the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic centrist and liberal conservative political party in Germany. It is the major catch-all party of the centre-right in German politics.
Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German former politician and scientist who served as chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018. Merkel was the first female chancellor of Germany. During her chancellorship, Merkel was frequently referred to as the de facto leader of the European Union (EU) and the most powerful woman in the world. Beginning in 2016, she was often described as the leader of the free world.
The National-Democratic Party of Germany was an East German political party that served as a satellite party to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) from 1948 to 1989, representing former members of the Nazi Party, the Wehrmacht and middle classes. It should not be confused with the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, which was a party in West Germany and continues as a minor non-governmental party in the modern united Germany.
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany was an East German political party founded in 1945. It was part of the National Front with the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and a bloc party until 1989.
Lothar de Maizière is a German Christian Democratic politician. In 1990, he served as the head of the first and only democratically elected government of East Germany, holding this office during the final months before German reunification. Subsequently he briefly served as a minister in the new government of the unified Federal Republic of Germany.
The National Front of the German Democratic Republic was officially an alliance of parties and mass organisations (1950–1990). In fact, only one party held power in the GDR, namely the communist SED. The National Front was an instrument to exercise control over the other parties and organisations. The precursor of the National Front was the Democratic Bloc.
The Alliance for Germany was an opposition coalition in East Germany. It was formed on 5 February 1990 in Berlin to stand in the East-German Volkskammer elections.
Günter Nooke is a German CDU politician and a former civil rights activist.
Rainer Eppelmann, is a German politician. Known for his opposition in the German Democratic Republic, he became Minister for Disarmament and Defense in the last cabinet. He is now a member of the CDU.
The Social Democratic Party in the GDR was a reconstituted Social Democratic Party existing during the final phase of East Germany. Slightly less than a year after its creation it merged with its West German counterpart ahead of German reunification.
Stanislaw Tillich is a German politician of the CDU. He served as the 3rd Minister President of Saxony from 2008 to 2017. From 1 November 2015 until 31 October 2016, he was President of the Bundesrat and ex officio deputy to the President of Germany. Tillich is of Sorbian ethnicity and lives in Panschwitz-Kuckau (Pančicy-Kukow), which is 35 kilometres north-east of Dresden near Kamenz.
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990, and were the first and only free elections held in the state before German reunification. The Alliance for Germany, led by the new East German branch of the right-wing 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 dissolved 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 first free election in which it participated.
Vera Lengsfeld is a German politician. She was a prominent civil rights activist in East Germany and after the German reunification she first represented the Alliance 90/The Greens and then the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the Bundestag.
The history of Germany from 1990 to the present spans the period following the German reunification, when West Germany and East Germany were reunited after being divided during the Cold War. Germany after 1990 is referred to by historians as the Berlin Republic. This time period is also determined by the ongoing process of the "inner reunification" of the formerly divided country.
Friedrich Schorlemmer is a German Protestant theologian. He was a prominent member of the civil rights movement in the German Democratic Republic and has continued to take part in politics after German reunification in 1990.
Angelika Barbe is a German biologist who became a politician.
Bertram Wieczorek is a German physician and former politician (CDU).
Wolfgang Schnur was an East German civil rights lawyer and a longtime informer of the East German Stasi. He was closely involved with the Association of Evangelical Churches and worked on many of the cases in which the BEK's leading figures were involved. He also became well networked, on more than one level, with the country's political establishment.
Hildigund Neubert is the daughter of an East German Pastor-Theologian who became a professional musician. As the pressures for change in the one-party dictatorship intensified, thanks both to the bankruptcy of the state and to the winds of Glasnost blowing across from, of all places, Moscow, she found herself drawn by circumstances into politics. At the time of East Germany's "peaceful revolution" she was in East Berlin, a permanent presence at the control centre of Demokratischer Aufbruch . A feature of those months was the dispersed character of the uprisings that destroyed the dictatorship: it is misleading to think in terms of any sort of central "guiding hand" controlling developments. Nevertheless, DA was one of a number of movements and organisations that became key to focusing the energies of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy campaigners and demonstrators, in ways that led, in March 1990, to the only free and fair parliamentary election in the history of the "German Democratic Republic" and thereafter, more indirectly, to reunification in October 1990.
