National Front of the German Democratic Republic

The main task of the National Front was to draw up a common electoral list ("Einheitsliste") in elections to the East German parliament, the Volkskammer ("People's Chamber").

The SED, with the help of the Soviet occupation authorities, intimidated these parties, removed and sometimes deported their leaders and forced them to get on course.

[1] All parties and mass organisations in the National Front had to officially accept the SED's leading role as a condition of their existence.

The parties were afforded a large amount of infrastructure, including party buildings, newspapers and companies and were represented in the East German government by several ministers each, though as all ministers, they were de jure bound to directives issued by their responsible Central Committee Secretary.

Only in the last weeks prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), some politicians of non-SED parties started to moderately criticize SED dominance.

It operated through the issuing of a generally consistent proportion of seats (divided between the Front's parties and SED-controlled mass organisations) submitted in the form of a single list of candidates during each election to the People's Chamber.

[5] As voters only had the option of approving or rejecting the list in far-from-secret conditions, it "won" with virtually unanimous levels of support.

By ensuring that Communists dominated the lists, the SED essentially predetermined the composition of the People's Chamber.

For the next three decades, the minor parties in the Front had to accept the SED's "leading role" as a condition of their continued existence.

On 1 December 1989, the Front was effectively rendered impotent when the Volkskammer deleted the provision of the Constitution of East Germany that gave the SED a monopoly of power.