Democracy Now (East Germany)

Democracy Now Demokratie Jetzt
The party logo prior to 1990
Founded	1990
Merged into	Alliance 90
Ideology	Democratic socialism
Politics of East Germany Elections

Democracy Now (German: Demokratie Jetzt) was a political movement which emerged in East Germany at the time of German reunification, which it helped significantly to shape.  It was officially founded on 12 September 1989 and merged with sections of the Neue Forum (“New Forum”) and the Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte (“Initiative for Peace and Human Rights”) to form Bündnis 90 (“Alliance 90”) in 1991.

Democracy Now had its roots in a working party of St. Bartholomew’s Evangelical Church (German: St.-Bartholomäus-Kirche) in Berlin called Initiative für Absage an Praxis und Prinzip der Abgrenzung (“Initiative for the Repudiation of the Practice and Principle of Separation”).  In April 1987, the Initiative made an application to the synod of Protestant Churches in Berlin-Brandenburg to pronounce a repudiation of the practice and principle of separation and, at the same time, to make the case for a series of political demands, such as freedom to travel.  In its wording, this recalled a 1983 pronouncement of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic calling for peace and the “repudiation of the spirit, logic and practice of deterrence”. After the synod had presented the application, initially at two of its committees and then for discussion among its congregations, the working party called for discussion of the issue among all East German Christians. Seminars on the issue were subsequently held.  Both synods of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic held in September 1987 and September 1988 addressed the issue of societal separation.  On 13 August 1989, the 28^th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall, an event was held in the Confessional Church (Bekenntniskirche) in the former Berlin borough of Treptow, in which a member of the working party, Hans-Jürgen Fischbeck, demanded the creation of an opposition, coalition movement in favour of democratic reform in East Germany.

On 12 September 1989, the founding proclamation of Democracy Now, Aufruf zur Einmischung in eigener Sache (“Appeal for Personal Intervention”), was signed by 12 members of the Berlin working party. Among them were the physicist and synod member, Hans-Jürgen Fischbeck; Ulrike Poppe, one of the founder members of the organisation, Frauen für den Frieden (“Women for Peace”); the church historian, Dr. Wolfgang Ullmann; and the film director, Konrad Weiß. The proclamation began with the sentence, “Our country is living in a state of internal strife”, and went on to describe the situation in East Germany in several paragraphs. The founding of the people’s movement “Democracy Now” was called for, listing its general objectives as: a “society build on solidarity”, “freedom and human rights for all”, a “living pluralism”, the rule of law, and harmony between the economy and ecology. At a meeting of representatives in early 1990, a manifesto was to be decided, and a list of candidates for the next Volkskammer (“People’s Chamber”) elections was to be sought.