Thomas Poguntke, "Alliance 90/The Greens in East Germany: From Vanguard to Insignificance?" Party Politics, 4 (January 1998), 33-55.

First Paragraph:
The East German ecology and civil rights movements and the West German Greens were not only agreed on concentrating on similar political issues, they also shared a distinct lack of enthusiasm for German unification. After the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, many East German activists still dreamt of a better GDR with a reformed version of socialism, which was to be created through dialogue at the Round Tables. Meanwhile, their West German counterparts were engaged in factional conflict about the question of whether or not Green Party congress decisions (which had acknowledged the existence of two German states) could be swept aside by historic developments (Kleinert, 1992: 351ff.). The result was equally disappointing on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. The established West German parties arranged their battle lines for the decisive first all-German election without excessive consideration for specific East German feelings, sensitivities or even political legacies. However, the East and West German Greens delayed their fusion until the day after the first all-German election of 1990 -- and therefore failed to win any seats in the West German electoral territory. Good election results in several West German Liinder shortly after this Bundestag election helped the Greens to regain their optimism. They began to move hesitantly towards the second step of the green-alternative unification project; that is, fusion with those parts of the former GDR opposition movement that had run a joint list for the Bundestag election under the label of Bundnis 90 (Alliance 90). Both prospective partners entered the negotiations with the declared intention of achieving organizational unity on the basis of equal partnership -- not least because they wanted to demonstrate that there was an alternative to a 'friendly takeover', which had been the dominant model when the established Bundestag parties united with their East German counterparts (cf. Niedermayer and Stoss, 1994).

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Election results (second vote)
Table 2: The membership Alliance 90/The Greens (end of year)
Table 3: Local mandates 1992-4

Last Paragraph:
Inevitably, this study has only provided a partial account of developments within the green-alternative political spectrum in East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, its systematic analysis of the organizational development of Alliance 90 and the Greens conclusively shows that the actual political significance of the citizens' movements since the fall of the Berlin Wall has frequently been overrated -- particularly by protagonists of the movements themselves. All the election results and all the organizational data unambiguously demonstrate that it has not been possible to integrate a significant part of the (seeming!) mass support from the times of the Monday demonstrations into this part of the political spectrum.'9 Rather, due to their organizational and political weaknesses, the East German Land parties of Alliance 90/The Greens are trailing behind political developments in East Germany. In view of the fast and almost complete evaporation of mass mobilization, it appears at the very least doubtful that the citizens' movement fraction of the party was indeed in the vanguard during the political turmoil of late 1989.