The German Communist Party never gained electoral traction with West German voters, partly because of a widespread belief that across the "inner border" in East Germany the supposedly pro-communist ruling party was principally a tool of Soviet imperial expansionist ambitions. Sources are almost entirely silent about Heidi Knake-Werner's nine years as a member of the German Communist Party. In 1990 she changed her political allegiance again, joining the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), recently relaunched as a successor to the old East German Socialist Unity Party, as younger members of what had till recently been East Germany's ruling political establishment struggled to prepare for a democratic future, following &lt;a href="Die%20Wende"&gt;the changes of 1989/90&lt;/a&gt;. Reunification took place suddenly, formally, in October 1990, and during the rest of that year it was still unusual for a western politician to join the PDS: most of the relatively small number who did so came not from the West German Communist Party but from the SPD. Her own transition gave Knake-Werner a reputation as a political maverick which she has subsequently seemed to relish.