 Schwanitz was very sharply critical of the in September 2011, when he was one of the 50 or so members who boycotted Pope Benedict's high-profile speech to the Bundestag.Following the East German national election on 18 March 1990, between March and October 1990, Rolf Schwanitz was a of the country's first (and last) freely elected People's Chamber ("Volkskammer"), by now a member of the SDP and representing the Karl-Marx-Stadt electoral district.He was one of the 144 deputies in the chamber who on 3 October 1990, as part of the German reunification process, became members of the Bundestag (National Assembly) of a reunited Germany.