In 1989, those demanding human rights to reform the system versus those who fought to leave it combined to create an explosive crisis for the SED. Human rights served not just to rally a heterogeneous coalition of dissidents, but also provided an ideological justification for SED officials to dismantle their own power structure and abolish the party’s monopoly on power in the face of mass demonstrations and mass emigration. In planning for a new East Germany, former SED officials worked with dissidents to draft a constitution that would secure liberal democratic rights and freedoms alongside rights that would preserve the ideals of the socialist project. In 1990, however, the joint hopes of dissident activists and reform communists were dashed as the realities of East German economic collapse turned the population away from new utopian ideas towards realising human rights through reunification with the Federal Republic. The idealistic anti-capitalism of the dissident elite alienated a population that wanted both democracy and prosperity through human rights. While the dissidents were successful in ending state-socialist dictatorship through their campaign for human rights, they ultimately failed to expand upon the narrow and unsatisfactory human rights system of the capitalist West.