From 1967, GDR leaders began to abandon the prospect of a national reunification of Germany, believing that the confrontation between the two German states had entered a new phase and that there was no possibility of political change within West German society. The SED leadership argued that the unification of socialism and monopoly capitalism was like mixing water and oil. The East German leadership’s rejection of German reunification can be seen primarily as a result of disappointment with the stubborn attitude of the West German conservative government. However, it was also the result of a East German communist pessimistic perception of reality with regard to the “shift to the right” of the West German social democrats. The belief of the SED that reunification could be achieved through an alliance with the SPD, i.e. through the formation of a unified workers’ solidarity between West and East Germany, had completely disappeared. Only the strengthening of the East German socialist system was seen as a meaningful development for the German nation. The German Democratic Republic completely distanced itself from West Germany and insisted on the two-nation theory, so that both countries had to go beyond the unification discourse in order to achieve peace. East and West Germany avoided conflict over reunification and national politics and were able to