ABSTRACT

The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) is the youngest and the most controversial political party in Germany. This chapter focuses on the development of the PDS as a part of the integration of the former communist society and structures into the Federal Republic of Germany. It provides an overview of the development of the PDS and explores how it was influenced by the processes of unification. The chapter presents the different “faces” of the PDS and tries to explain why the party became able to attract quite different social strata of voters. It discusses the demands of the integration processes on the PDS in the middle of the 1990s. The chapter describes how these demands were discussed within the party and which strategies were proposed to keep pace with the changes in society and structures.