The 1998 German Election: Gerhard Schröder and the Politics of the New Middle
in German Politics and Society
How prophetic! Could it be that the famous German pacifist and chief editor of Die Weltbühne was commenting seventy years ago not just on the Weimar SPD but also on the Bonn SPD of 1998? Gerhard Schröder, the party’s chancellor designate in April 1998, insisted that the SPD had to occupy the “New Middle” in the political spectrum if it ever was going to topple Helmut Kohl and his well-entrenched CDU/CSU-FDP government.
