In characteristically polemical manner, Christian von Ditfurth thus presents the recent stance adopted by the Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus on the national question and the social coherence of the five new states as the worst of all worlds. By using the term Marxism-Leninism he reinforces the impression that the PDS is an unreconstructed Stalinist party, and by describing Heimat as a “letzte Bindemittel” he also gives the impression that the party is using this term as a desperate and cynical ploy. The PDS's use of Heimat, therefore, is presented by von Ditfurth as a bad thing — because the concept is limited only to the ex-GDR and because it might appear to flirt with sinister, hard-right nationalist policies. In one sentence the PDS is thus described as both neo-Stalinist and proto-fascist. It is the modern equivalent of the Cold War description of the SED and other left wingers as “rot-lackierte Faschisten.”

The aim of this essay is to go beyond the polemical and to investigate to what extent the PDS's attitudes toward regional and, indeed, modern German identity are rooted in the different social structures of east and west Germany. I will also ask whether the PDS can make any worthwhile contribution to the debate on the national question and challenge Ditfurth's assumption that Heimat — in its east German form at least — is inherently reactionary. These questions derive from the three-fold political reality of post-1990 Germany.