schwan belongs to the german tradition of social democratic opposition to karl marx's theories. in september 1974, she was one of the founding members of the "seeheimer kreis", a conservative think tank within the spd. she became a member of the spd "grundwertekommission" (commission for fundamental values) in 1977. in 1984, she was removed from this position after criticizing the party's "ostpolitik" as cooperating too closely with communist governments, while not engaging enough with dissidents. rather she sought for support and dialog with those eastern europeans who would dare to criticize their governments. schwan was reinstated in the "grundwertekommission" in 1996. since 2002, she has presided over the "german-polish forum" together with janusz reiter. in november 2004, the german government under gerhard schröder appointed her to the newly created office of the co-ordinator for cooperation with poland (her counterpart on the polish side was then irena lipowicz). she retained this position when the government changed and became headed by christian democrat angela merkel. in february 2009, she criticized schröder for being too uncritical towards vladimir putin and too insensitive about polish concerns about closer german-russian ties.