58 FRANK BÖSCH AND JENS GIESEKE
pragmatic “Realos.” In the liberal FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei), left-
ists, national liberals, and economic liberals vied for control of the party,
which ultimately led to the formation of splinter groups in 1969 and 1982.
The FDP’s youth organization, the Young Democrats, supported the left-
ist liberals in the 1970s, and it even detached itself from the main party
in 1982; it was replaced by the newly established Young Liberals (JuLi).
Even among the usually harmonious Christian Democrats, there were
loud disagreements between the conservative and Christian-social wings
of the party. The majority of West Germans disapproved of this political
infi ghting as they favored political objectivity.^49 Most GDR citizens, who
followed these political struggles via television coverage, were likewise
unimpressed.
Party membership fi gures are well as the circulation of the party press
outlets also increased in the GDR. But, this phenomenon primarily re-
fl ected an orchestrated identity between the party and the people as op-
posed to political mobilization from below. Given its role as the state party,
the SED was fed by a constant infl ux of new members coming from the
socialist service class. Rough estimates suggest that as of the early 1970s,
these civil servants constituted about half of the party membership.^50 At
the same time, the party apparatus made a concerted membership ef-
fort that included statistic manipulation as well as targeted recruitment
with two main goals. On the one hand, it sought to achieve slight, but
steady growth in waves corresponding with the party congresses in or-
der to express the SED’s “bonds with the masses” during the Honecker
era. On the other hand, it carefully ensured the representation of social
groups, and especially the “working class.” Even in confi dential internal
statistics, around 38 percent of the party was supposed to be culled from
this class.^51 In its offi cially published statistics, however, the SED lumped
workers, functionaries, and salaried employees together, coming up with
a fi gure of 80 percent for this group. Similar practices were applied for
farmers, as well as university and vocational school graduates.
These kinds of machinations were also at work in the so-called trans-
mission parties for Christians (CDU), farmers (DBD), tradesmen and free-
lancers (LDPD) as well as the somewhat diff use National-Democratic Party
of Germany (NDPD). Originally, the NDPD was supposed to be the party
for converted National Socialists, but a considerable number of them ac-
tually belonged to the SED itself. Yet, many GDR residents somewhat
obstinately joined such parties in order to avoid playing into the hands
of the SED. Ultimately, the SED also orchestrated its supposed identifi ca-
tion with the interests of the youth and the “working people,” as well as
others, through the more or less mandatory membership in organizations
such as the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) youth league, the FDGB (Freie