ABSTRACT
On 21 June 1998 Germans celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of the D-Mark, the German Mark. According to a January 1998 poll published in Der Spiegel, 56 percent of Germans were against the Euro. Many East German voters associated the Christian Democratic Party-east with the Christian Democrats in West Germany, especially when they saw Helmut Kohl endorsing it at mass rallies in Leipzig and elsewhere. The East German Socialist Democratic Party (SPD) is more like an American party in its structure than like the old SPD. In July 1997 Chancellor Kohl’s government produced a report on the “State of German Unity.” German security authorities estimated the number of rightwing group members at 6,400 in 1996 as compared with 6,200 in 1995. Many East Germans are skeptical about the European Union (EU) and the Euro, they overlook the fact that their part of Germany has received massive help from the European Investment Bank and from other EU funds.
