78 FRANK BÖSCH AND JENS GIESEKE
to the church and mid to high incomes in the West, it enjoyed the most
success initially among workers without a confessional background in
the East, while the SPD tended to attract more salaried employees. Yet,
in comparison to other postsocialist countries, the party system in East
Germany proved to be quite stable, not least thanks to its close ties to the
West.
The lasting success of the SED successor party, the PDS, remained the
largest diff erence between East and West in terms of the history of the
political parties. Initially, many experts had predicted that the PDS would
gradually merge into the SPD. Initially, though, the PDS succeeded as the
party of the (subjective) losers in the reunifi cation process and the former
socialist civil service class. It later survived as an East German regional
party with manifold roots in local life.^131 When it came to organization,
personnel, and fi nancial matters, it was able to draw on the legacy of the
SED. In the political arena, by contrast, it increasingly distanced itself
from the SED, although it still cultivated the old ideological tenets and
traditions within its milieu. It also intervened on behalf of those respon-
sible for repression in the old East German state or adopted elements of
the SED’s anti-Americanism.
The rise of right-wing radicalism that did not shy away from violence
with a broader base of support among the population was also quite no-
ticeable in the early 1990s, especially in East Germany. This develop-
ment was very much the result of the socioeconomic and cultural crisis
that followed on the heels of reunifi cation, which was further infl amed
by media coverage on the “fl ood of asylum-seekers.” That said, however,
right-wing radical groups had already started to form in the 1980s. Unem-
ployment and the discourse on Islamic migration had not only strength-
ened the right-wing radical skinhead scene, but also contributed to the
success of populist right-wing republicans, who even gained seats in the
European Parliament and a few state legislatures in the West (fi rst Berlin,
then Baden-Württemberg) in 1989. In the 1990s, the even more radical
German People’s Union (DVU) also managed to gain seats in some of the
state legislatures in East and West Germany. The polarization of society,
unemployment, and sagging party loyalty propelled the ascent of the Far
Right.^132
Right-wing extremism had also put down roots in the GDR. Racist and
right-wing extremist stereotypes were alive and well under the surface
in certain sectors of the GDR population. Although these ideas were re-
pressed in public, they manifested themselves in exclusionary measures
and physical violence aimed at foreigners. A small skinhead movement
also germinated in the GDR in the 1980s that sprang onto the political
stage at the end of the decade; in collaboration with the West German