The last comprehensive elite-population-survey in Germany, the „Mannheim Study“ of 1981, detected a strong consensus about the political order? Has this consensus diminished during the recent 15 years and which impact did the reunification have in this context? These questions will be clarified on the basis of the first comprehensive elite-population-survey since the reunification, the „Potsdam Study“ of 1995. The guiding theoretical argument of the analyses consists in the assumption that the political order requires an intra-elite consensus as well as an elite-population-consensus in order to remain effective and legitimate. From this theoretical perspective, the political order preferences of both Eastern and Western German elites and populations are compared with each other. One of the major results is that the German society is characterized by a diminished order consensus among the elites themselves as well as between the elites and the population, and that this diminished consensus promotes not only conflict about the political order but also its developmental perspectives.