ABSTRACT
For most of the 1980s the East German regime appeared to be relatively stable. Closer relations with West Germany enabled the SED leadership to score significant media-political successes, the pinnacle being a state visit by Honecker to Bonn in 1987, where he was given a red-carpet welcome. Western academics and commentators for the most part accepted that the regime was growing in stability and popularity. Some went further. Theo Sommer, editor of Die Zeit, reported in 1986 that ‘movement is replacing stagnation’ in the GDR, ‘the greyness is everywhere yielding to friendly colours, the oppressive gloom has lifted…above all the country appears more colourful, its people have become happier’.1
