Oh boy, this just opens up a topic... German unification is more complicated than often suggested by the post-unification narrative that is told in Germany and elsewhere and the most important part about it is that in some ways re-unification as such was a surprising development for a lot of people in East and West. Today, we hear about the German's massive desire for re-unification but in a lot of ways, the opposition in East Germany as well as a variety of political currents in West Germany expected the GDR to be reformed and to become a democratic state or one that was socialist but different to the previous order.

For the Green party and certain political currents in the left milieu, these forces had previously agigtated for a two-state-solution, if you will. What this means, is that while the Hallstein Doctrine had already long been abandoned in the 80s – the policy that West-Germany would not acknowledge the existance of East Germany whatsoever, including not having a relation to any country that had diplomatic relations with East Germany –, many still felt that the German political priority of pretending really hard that there only was one Germany [East German citizens being treated like citizens of West Germany in West Germany and so forth] was antiquated and of a different time. They lived in a reality where there had been two German states since 1949 and thought that 40 years later, it was time to finally admit to this reality.

It needs to be stressed that by the time the first parliamentary elections in the GDR rolled around in 1990, unification was still not something that seemed realistic to most people in both Germanies – like a far away dream. But then there was both the currency union and the ok from the Allied powers, including the Soviet Union and re-unification suddenly became a realistic possibility.

As for the Green party, they belonged to the political current that advocated of finally acknowledging the reality of two German states and admitting to this. But when suddenly re-unification became real, they changed their stances, albeit not without criticism of how it was to be done. They criticized among other things, the way the currency union disadvantaged East Germany, the way that the West planned to sell of East German state property, the way how plans on purging civil servants, teachers, and uni professors were set up for the East, and that the chance that reunification present to build a more peaceful and ecological Germany was missed as well as the fact that the German Grundgesetz was effectively violated by the re-unification – the Grundgesetz was originally designed to serve in lieu of a constitution until reunification happened when a new, and re-united Germany was supposed to have a consitutional assembly and referendum to make a new and imporved constitution.

Now, with 30 years hindsight on these kinds of criticism of the re-unification process, there are a lot of people who will admit that they weren't wrong – a lot of things didn't go ideal for East Germany in the reunification process. Especially the way state property and companies were treated and how people were purged from their jobs are still major factors in the major difference between East and West in Germany until this very day.

Another sort of criticism that dispeeared in the 90s but is something that has become more sayable these days and that was prominent around unification from an East German perspective was that there were people – and not just hardcore SED supporters but also people from the opposition – who didn't want to lose their state and society, who didn't want to become part of the West. There was a slew of people who wanted to build somehting different from the GDR and not be part of "the West" immediately.

Lastly, the Anti-Deutschen... Understanding the Anti-Deutschen is a matter of understanding a couple of things about the German left [left of the social democrats] that grew out of 1968 and its relationship to ideological hegemony in Germany. The left that grew out of 1968, was one that was in massive opposition to what they called "post-Nazism" in West-Germany. This means the presence of former Nazis in German society as well as the continued presence of anti-Semitic thinking within German society.

Within the 80s this had further differentiated and what was to become the anti-Deutsche current within the German left consisted largely of people from the autonomous left in the larger cities like Belrin and Hamburg. Their aim was and still remains to differentiate themselves from the so-called K-Gruppen that were popular around the same time. These K-Gruppen are in large parts anti-imperialistic left wing groups that adhere to Maoist or other orthodox principles. The biggest dividing topic between them and the anti-Deutsche movement is this question of anti-Imperialism, specifically the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Essentially, a lot fo the Anti-Deutsche people felt that that the German K-Gruppen were anti-Semitic and that they used left wing ideology to perpetuate German anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-imperialism. And the thing is, they were not exactly wrong, at least in some cases.

But from this split grew the concern of what was to become the anti-German left with anti-Semitism and – as they saw it – it's central place wihtin German political culture. So when re-unification came around, their concern was that once the division of both Germanies eneded, there was little in the way of making sure Germany would not develop a new kind of anti-Semitism and would try to vindicate Nazi Germany. This is what their opposition to unification grew out of: German division in thier view was both a stark reminder as well as a way to control and surpress racist, anti-Semitic German majority culture that in their opnion had grown through a sort of special cultural formation of Germany. It's essenitally their own spin on the Sonderweg thesis.

Unlike the sort of criticism the Greens and others had on the specifics of the unification process, the anti-Germans were never a social or political majority position outside of far-left circles. Even within the larger left, they represented a potent but nonetheless a minority. Over the years tehy would devolve further until 2001 when they effectively started embracing neo-con positions after 9/11 but that would go beyond the scope of this question and sub...