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The election of the Republikaner Party to the Berlin State Parliament (Landtag) on January 29, 1989, with a first-time share of 7.5 percent of the vote was a clear signal that the dormant phase of extreme-Right aspirations, which followed the successes of the NPD in the 1960s, had come to an end. While the collapse of the eastern bloc and the unification of the two Germanies seemed for one brief moment to have stemmed the spread of Right-wing populism, in hind-sight it would appear that it was precisely the economic, social, and political turbulence in the wake of German unity that in fact created a favorable climate for the resurgence. This is documented not only by the continuing electoral success of Right-wing parties but also by the quantitative and qualitative changes in the number of criminal offenses motivated by Right-wing extremism in both eastern and western Germany since 1990 (Federal Interior Ministry, 1991 up to 1997).¹

DOI: 10.1057/9780230608825_10

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