History of Germany since 1990 Helmut Kohl was reelected as Chancellor for his fifth and last term. The ruling liberal-conservative coalition government, consisting of the CDU/CSU and the FDP, lost the German federal election, 1998, and Gerhard Schröder was elected as Chancellor, the head of a coalition government consisting of his own SPD party and The Greens. Joschka Fischer, a leading Green politician, became Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Shortly after the formation of the government, Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD chairman and rival of Schröder, resigned from the cabinet. He was succeeded as Minister of Finance by Hans Eichel. In 1998,
Germany and the United Nations in October. Both Germanies were admitted as full members of the United Nations (UN) on 18 September 1973. The two countries eventually merged on 3 October 1990, signifying an end of the Cold war era. Today, Germany is the third largest contributor to the UN budget, after the United States and Japan, with 190 million US dollars, or roughly 8% of the UN budget for the 2010-11 biennial budget. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was admitted to the UN as an observer in 1952. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was admitted as an observer in 1972. On