Tension at the first free state election in MV

30 years ago, the citizens of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania elected their first free state parliament. The mood in the country is difficult to predict, the outcome is open until the end.

After the Volkskammer elections and the local elections, as a result of the reunification, only a few days after German reunification on October 14, 1990, citizens went to the polls for the third time this year. In addition to the two large popular parties, the CDU and SPD, another 14 parties are competing for the 66 seats in the state parliament, including the PDS, the FDP, Bündnis 90 and the Greens, as well as the Beer Drinker Party founded by Rostock students.

Kiel's Minister of Justice wants to advance the development of the East

The SPD sends Klaus Klingner into the race as the top candidate. A personal detail that is not necessarily obvious at first glance:Klingner was Minister of Justice in Kiel at the time. But he feels prompted by the turnaround to work on the construction of the East. The natural beauty of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania is also an incentive for hobby ornithologists to get involved in the state. He had also campaigned for the founding of the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park. Only:Hardly anyone knows him in the new eastern federal state.

Alfred Gomolka is the CDU's top candidate

Alfred Gomolka, the leading candidate for the Christian Democrats, is still an unknown face to many. In a runoff election, he surprisingly prevailed against Georg Diederich from Schwerin - and he is considered the foster son of CDU politician Günther Krause. He only signed the unification treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the "still GDR" in August 1990.

"Send Kohl and Krause home!"

In his role as negotiator for the de Maizière government and in the media often at the side of Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), Krause was probably one of the best-known politicians from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at this time. In the summer of 1990, Kohl took the state chairman of the CDU with him on a campaign tour for the federal elections in December. Together they travel all over the Northeast in the summer, filling halls. But there is not only approval for the slogans of the CDU. "Send Kohl and Krause back home!" political opponents are chanting, tomatoes are flying in Schwerin.

Situations that are likely to have had an impact on the state election campaign. "The mood in the country was unpredictable and the fears of the citizens about the changes were huge," Krause recalled years later of the election campaign. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the two top candidates, Gomolka and Klingner, are therefore refraining from a tough election campaign - many observers and advisors rate the probability of a grand coalition as quite high.

Election campaign machinery against "tactics of 1,000 calls"

But there is still fighting, albeit with different prerequisites:The CDU can fall back on the infrastructure of its sister parties CSU and Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany (DBD) in the east and thus has printing presses, telephones, helpers and money. The SPD, newly founded in the GDR, on the other hand, has only recruited a few members and has no history as a block party. In an interview with NDR a few years later, Klingner recalled that Kohl and Krause's election campaign convoy traveled "like a steamroller". He himself had followed the "tactic of 1,000 conversations" in order to win over the voters. At least Klingner had places to stay overnight through his many relatives in the northeast - and where he didn't know anyone, he was accommodated in seaman's hostels, fishermen's hermitages or even in the guest house of the nuclear power plant in Greifswald.

CDU promises Autobahn for the north

The Christian Democrats made a big promise:they wanted to build a Baltic Sea motorway from Lübeck to Stettin in order to better connect the north to Schleswig-Holstein. From 1992, the federal autobahn 20, which is considered a major transport project of German unity, is actually built.

Blooming landscapes in the Northeast?

Social Democrat Klingner, on the other hand, struggles with promises - at least with promises of a bright future for everyone in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In retrospect, he described the worries that the citizens reported to him in his campaign talks as "hardly bearable". In the combines, he can only spread little hope for a successful further work, tenants rarely take away the fear of rent increases and the old owners. Unlike Chancellor Kohl, he cannot promise "blossoming landscapes". Rather, this slogan makes him angry - it actually provokes the disappointments of the East Germans.

Stalemate:33 seats for both blocks

The polls before the state election see the Christian Democrats, who had already won the local elections in May, ahead. And on election day, too, it initially looks like a clear victory for the middle-class parliamentary group. But skeptics should be right:the extrapolations in the evening show a stalemate situation. The next day it was clear that the CDU, with 38.3 percent, had been elected the strongest party in the northeast and could form a coalition with the FDP (5.4 percent). However, the SPD (27 percent) and the PDS (15.6 percent) form an equally strong opposition:Both blocs have 33 seats each.

Small parties fail the five percent hurdle

The other new federal states also vote on October 14, 1990 - and the CDU is ahead everywhere. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, however, is the only eastern state without a representative of the New Forum in the government. Personal quarrels among the left-wing groups had prevented a joint appearance as a party - which is now proving to be a serious mistake:none of the small parties can clear the five percent hurdle, even if they together have won over almost ten percent of the voters.

A defector breaks the standoff

For the Social Democrat Klingner, it was already clear on the evening of the election that he should not become Prime Minister or Vice President in the stalemate situation. The connections of the CDU to the old cadres would also have made a minority government possible for Gomolka, according to his assessment.

However, it is more comfortable to govern with a clear majority. And so an independent, formerly in the Rostock district association of the SPD, finally brings the solution for the CDU's top candidate Gomolka:Wolfgang Schulz returned his SPD party membership card four weeks before the election. This was preceded by weeks of dissent over the question of whether Schulz had been a state security informant. At least that's what party members had spread. In fact, Schulz was able to prove the opposite. But he did not want to be reconciled with his party. Instead, he now makes a pact with the CDU and serves as Gomolka's majority procurer.

Short term of office of the first Prime Minister Gomolka

On October 27, 1990, Alfred Gomolka was elected the first Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in a united Germany - by 36 votes to 29 and one abstention. However, he resigned on March 16, 1992:His attitude during the shipyard crisis - he was the only German politician to oppose the complete sale of the East German shipbuilding combine to Bremer Vulkan AG - put him under increasing pressure. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Justice Minister Ulrich Born (CDU) is one of Gomolka's harshest critics - also in this matter - and was dismissed from office by him in March for "disloyalty". His own faction then moves away from him. Gomolka died in Loitz (LK Vorpommern-Greifswald) on March 24, 2020.

Klaus Klingner went back to Kiel after the election and was Minister of Justice there for another six years.