Two views of the Rotes Rathaus, or Red City Hall, the building where Berlin's city government is located. City government is a misnomer, as Berlin is really a City-State inside Germany. Germany is a federal system with sixteen states. Hamburg, Berlin, and Bremen are 'city states,' the other states Schleswig-Holstein, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Rheinland Pfalz (Rhineland Palantine), Hesse, Nordrhein Westfalen (North Rhine Westphalia), Saarland, Bayern (Bavaria), Baden Wuertemberg, Sachsen Anhalt (Saxony Anhalt), Sachsen (Saxony), Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Brandenburg, and Thueringen (Thuringia) -- the last five in former East Germany. Recently a Berlin election gave the city a divided result, with the PDS, the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the old Communist party (SED) gaining over 20% of the vote. In some East German states the PDS has either a coalition with the SPD or an agreement to tolerate a minority SPD government. That was a possibility in Berlin. West Germans can't understand the continued popularity of the PDS, as they see it only as a lingering communist party. In the East the PDS has developed an identity of standing up for East German interests and trying to overcome its past. Many in the East, including anti-communists, see the PDS as their party. Ultimately the SPD formed an "ampel" coalition (ampel = traffic light) with the FDP and Greens. Why "ampel"? Well, the SPD's color is red, the FDP's color is yellow, and you can guess what the Greens color is! I saw a PDS rally in 1991 with charismatic Gregor Gysi giving a speech (it was on unification day 1991, October 3rd, a year after unification -- I was probably not only the only American but likely the only westerner in attendance). He was very persuasive and his ability to try to shift the party to a moderate, democratic party is one reason it survived. Below is a poster with Gysi's picture. The caption reads: He will. He can. With each other in Berlin: PDS.
