Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany)

Party of Democratic Socialism Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus / Die Linkspartei.PDS
Former German Federal Party
Leader	Lothar Bisky
Founded	16 December 1989 (SED-PDS) 4 February 1990 (PDS) 17 July 2005 (Die Linkspartei/PDS)
Dissolved	16 January 2007
Preceded by	Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)
Merged into	The Left
Headquarters	Karl-Liebknecht-Haus Kleine Alexanderstraße 28 D-10178 Berlin
Newspaper	None
Ideology	Democratic socialism Marxism-Leninism Left-wing populism
Political position	Left-wing to Far-left
European affiliation	Party of the European Left
International affiliation	None
European Parliament group	European United Left–Nordic Green Left
Colours	red
Website
www.sozialisten.de
Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

The Party of Democratic Socialism (German: Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) was a democratic socialist political party in Germany active between 1989 and 2007. It was the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as a one-party state until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in the eastern new states of Germany, entering coalition governments (with the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.

In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS) entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 federal election). On 16 June 2007, the two groupings merged to form a new party called The Left (Die Linke).

The party had many socially progressive policies, including support for legalisation of same-sex marriage and greater social welfare for immigrants.