Alliance 90/The Greens, often simply referred to as Greens, is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 by the merger of the Greens and Alliance 90. The Greens had itself merged with the East German Green Party after German reunification in 1990.
The Party of Democratic Socialism was a left-wing populist political party in Germany active between 1989 and 2007. It was the legal successor to the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic as the sole governing party until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in the eastern new states of Germany, entering coalition governments with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.
Petra Pau is a German politician of The Left. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 1998. Since 2006, she has also served as one of the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag, being the first member of her party to hold this office. Pau belongs to the reform-oriented wing of her party, actively supporting parliamentary representative democracy.
Alliance 90 was a political alliance of three non-communist political groups in East Germany. It was formed in February 1990 by the New Forum, Democracy Now and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights. It received 2.9% of the vote in the 1990 Volkskammer elections. For the first all-German federal election it formed a joint list with the East German Green Party. It was this coalition that merged with the West German Green Party in 1993 to form Alliance 90/The Greens.
Federal elections were held in recently united Germany on 2 December 1990 to elect the members of the 12th Bundestag, within the regular time of nearly four years after the January 1987 West German federal election. Due to the accession of the former East German states on 3 October, after which the Bundestag was expanded with East German Volkskammer delegates, the elections were first democratic all-German elections since the early 1930s.
Katrin Dagmar Göring-Eckardt is a German politician of the German Green Party. Starting her political activity in the now-former German Democratic Republic in the late 1980s, she has been a member of the German Bundestag since 1998. She became co-chair of her party caucus in the Bundestag (2002–2005) and the Greens' Vice President of the Bundestag on 18 October 2005, a position that she held until 2013 and would later reprise in 2021. In the November 2012 primary election, the Green Party chose her and Jürgen Trittin as the top two candidates for the Greens for the 2013 German federal election. She also stood as joint top candidate for the Greens in the 2017 German federal election, alongside Cem Özdemir..
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.
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.
Berlin-Pankow is an electoral constituency represented in the Bundestag. It elects one member via first-past-the-post voting. Under the current constituency numbering system, it is designated as constituency 75. It is located in northern Berlin, comprising the Pankow borough.
Marianne Birthler is a German human rights advocate and politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. From 2000 to 2011, she served as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, responsible for investigating the past crimes of the Stasi, the former communist secret police of East Germany. In 2016 she was offered the nomination of the CDU/CSU and her own party for President of Germany, but after some time decided not to run; the parties would have had a majority in the Federal Convention, securing her the election.
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.
A construction soldier was a non-combat role of the National People's Army, the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic, from 1964 to 1990. Bausoldaten were conscientious objectors who accepted conscription but refused armed service and instead served in unarmed construction units. Bausoldaten were the only legal form of conscientious objection in the Warsaw Pact.
Werner Gustav Schulz was a German politician of Alliance '90/The Greens. Trained in food technology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, he worked as a research assistant. He was an activist for peace ecology and human rights in several oppositional groups from the 1970s. He lost his university job in 1980 when he protested against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. In the Peaceful Revolution, he was in 1989 a founding member of the New Forum, representing the group at the Round Table. He was elected to the first freely elected Volkskammer. After German reunification, he was a member of the German Bundestag from 1990 to 2005, and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2009 to 2014.
Ehrhart Neubert was a German evangelical minister and theologian.
Evelyn Zupke is a specialist care and social worker who came to prominence in the German Democratic Republic during the 1980s as a democracy activist.
Katja Havemann is a German civil rights activist and author.
Angelika Barbe is a German biologist who became a politician.
Canan Bayram is a German lawyer and politician. She is a member of the 19th German Parliament (Bundestag). She was a member of the House of Representatives of Berlin from 2006 to 2017, when she was directly elected to the Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg – Prenzlauer Berg East electoral district in the 2017 federal election. From 2017 until 2021, she was the only Alliance 90/Green member of parliament to hold a direct mandate rather than being elected from the party list.
Jutta Braband is a former German politician. In the German Democratic Republic she was a civil rights activist who after 1990 became a PDS member of the Germany parliament (Bundestag). Her parliamentary career ended in May 1992 after it had become known that fifteen years earlier she had worked for the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as a registered informant .
Julia Schneider is a German administrative scientist and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who is serving as a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin since 2021.
