1990 East German general election

General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990. These were the first free elections held in the region since the turbulent Weimar days of 1932 and would become the only truly democratic vote in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The election stood as a final verdict on four decades of one-party rule by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)–led National Front. It took place against the backdrop of the German reunification process, which had already begun to gather momentum.

The contest was swept by the Alliance for Germany, a coalition led by the newly reconstituted East German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which captured 192 of the 400 seats in the Volkskammer and had run on a promise of swift reunification with West Germany. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), re-established only months earlier after its forced 1946 merger with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), was widely tipped to win but instead came second with 88 seats. In third was the former ruling SED, now rebranded as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which secured 66 seats. The Alliance fell just short of an outright majority having needed 201 seats to govern alone.

Lothar de Maizière, the CDU's leader, invited the SPD to join a broad coalition alongside the German Social Union (DSU) and Democratic Awakening (DA). The SPD hesitated, wary of the DSU's right-wing populist tone, having earlier vowed to collaborate with all but the PDS and DSU. However, a grand coalition was ultimately formed. This government, commanding a two-thirds supermajority in the Volkskammer, set about the task of dismantling the East German state and laying the legal groundwork for reunification, although the coalition would collapse later that August. On 3 October 1990, the GDR ceased to exist and all its territories joined the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). 144 Volkskammer members were integrated into the West German Bundestag, serving until the all-German federal election on 2 December that year.