ABSTRACT
Hans J. Willerding was a member of the Direction Committee and head of the Office for International Affairs for the East German PDS, the successor party of the SED. This interview was first published in Rinascita on 18 March 1990, under the title, Ma Gysi non dispera. The leaders of the ex-SED are not pessimistic about the election results. Our past is not to be totally thrown away, says Hans J. Willerding. The fear of annexation was rejected as false and instrumental, or evoked as a disturbing possibility. These positions, nonetheless, have characterized the electoral campaign in the first free elections in the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), scheduled for March 18. The new leaders of the PDS have focused their election initiatives on just this fear of Anschluss, in an attempt to regain the credibility and popular consensus dissipated after forty years of a monopoly of power.
