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Left Party (Germany)
Encyclopedia
The Party of Democratic Socialism was a democratic socialist
political party
active in Germany
from 1989 to 2007. It was the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party
(SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic
(East Germany) until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in eastern Germany, entering coalition governments (with the Social Democratic Party
) in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin
.
In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS), entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections
(more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 election). On June 16, 2007, the two groupings merged to form a unified new party called The Left
(Die Linke).
The party had many Social Progressive policies including legalisation of same-sex marriage
and greater social welfare for immigrants.
Internationally, the Left Party.PDS was a co-founder of the Party of the European Left
alliance of parties and was the largest party in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left
group in the European Parliament
.
movement that forced the dismissal of East German head of state Erich Honecker
in 1989 also empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party who looked to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
's glasnost
and perestroika
as their model for political change. Reformers like authors Stefan Heym
and Christa Wolf
and attorney Gregor Gysi
, lawyer of dissidents like Robert Havemann
and Rudolf Bahro
, soon began to re-invent a party infamous for its rigid Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and police-state methods.
By the end of 1989, the last hardline members of the party's Central Committee had either resigned or been pushed out, followed in 1990 by 95% of the SED's 2.3 million members. A new name, "Party of Democratic Socialism", was adopted to distance the reformed party from its communist past (after a brief transitional period as the SED/PDS). By early 1990, the PDS was no longer a Marxist-Leninist
party, though neo-marxist and communist minority factions continue to exist.
The PDS faced the voters for the first time in the 1990 East German elections
--the first (and as it turned out, only) free elections ever held in East Germany. The party was roundly defeated, winning only 88 seats in the 400-seat Volkskammer
, finishing a distant third behind the East German wings of the West German CDU
and SPD.
and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
— where it co-governed until 2006 with the Social Democratic Party
. Political responsibility has burnished the Left's reputation as a pragmatic, rather than ideological party. It remains strong in local government in eastern Germany, with more than 6,500 town councillors and 64 elected mayors. The party continues to win eastern voters by emphasizing political competence and refuses to be labelled as merely a "protest party", although it certainly attracted millions of protest voters in the federal election, profiting from growing dissatisfaction with high unemployment
and cutbacks in health insurance
, unemployment benefits, and labor rights
.
, the PDS won only 2.4% of the nationwide vote, but under a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law entered the Bundestag
with 17 deputies led by Gysi, one of Germany's most charismatic and articulate politicians. In the 1994 election
, in spite of an anti-communist "Red Socks" campaign by the then-ruling Christian Democrats aimed at scaring off eastern communist voters, the PDS increased its vote to 4.4 percent, won a plurality in four eastern districts, and re-entered the Bundestag with an enlarged caucus of 30 deputies. In 1998, the party reached the high-water mark in its fortunes by electing 37 deputies with 5.1% of the national vote, thus clearing the critical 5% threshold required for guaranteed proportional representation and full parliamentary status. The party's future seemed bright, but it suffered from a number of weaknesses, not the least of which was its dependence on Gysi, considered by supporters and critics alike as a super-star in German politics who stood in stark contrast to a colorless general membership. Gysi's resignation in 2000 after losing a policy debate with party leftists soon spelled trouble for the PDS. In the 2002 election
, the party's vote sank back to 4.0%, and was able to seat only two back-benchers elected directly from their districts, Petra Pau
and Gesine Lötzsch
.
After the 2002 debacle, the PDS adopted a new program and re-installed a respected moderate, long-time Gysi ally Lothar Bisky
, as chair. A renewed sense of self-confidence soon re-energized the party. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the PDS won 6.1% of the vote nationwide, its highest total at that time in a federal election. Its electoral base in the eastern German states continued to grow, where today it ranks with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats
as one of the region's three strong parties. However, low membership and voter support in Germany's western states continued to plague the party on the federal level until it formed an electoral alliance in July 2005 with the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG), a leftist faction of dissident Social Democrats
and trade unionists, with the merged list being called the Left Party. In the 2005 federal election the Left Party received 8.7% of the nationwide vote and won 54 seats in the German Bundestag
.
After marathon negotiations, the PDS and WASG agreed on terms for a combined ticket to compete in the 2005 federal elections
and pledged to unify into a single left party in 2006 or 2007. According to the pact, the parties did not compete against each another in any district. Instead, WASG candidates—including the former Social Democratic leader, Oskar Lafontaine
—were nominated on the PDS electoral list. To symbolize the new relationship, the PDS changed its name to The Left Party/PDS or The Left/PDS, with the letters "PDS" optional in western states where many voters still regarded the PDS as an "eastern" party.
The alliance provided a strong electoral base in the east and benefited from WASG's growing voter potential in the west. Gregor Gysi, returning to public life only months after brain surgery and two heart attacks, shared the spotlight with Lafontaine as co-leader of the party's energetic and professional campaign. Both politicians will co-chair the Left's caucus in the German Bundestag
after the election.
Polls early in the summer showed the unified Left list on a "high-altitude flight," winning as much as 12 percent of the vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the Alliance '90/The Greens
and the pro-business Free Democratic Party
and become the third-strongest force in the Bundestag. But, alarmed by the Left's unexpected rise in the polls, Germany's mainstream politicians hit back at Lafontaine and Gysi as "left populists" and "demagogues" and accused the party of flirting with neo-Nazi voters. A gaffe by Lafontaine, who described "foreign workers" as a threat in one speech early in the campaign, provided ammunition for charges that the Left was attempting to exploit German xenophobia.
Although Germany's once-powerful trade unions distanced themselves from the Left in the 2005 election, some union leaders expressed interest in cooperating with the party after the election. A number of regional trade union leaders and mid-level functionaries are active supporters.
At the 2005 federal election, the Left Party became the fourth-largest party in the Bundestag, with 54 Members of Parliament (MPs) (full list), ahead of the Greens (51) but behind the Free Democrats (61). Three Left Party MPs were directly elected on a constituency basis: Gregor Gysi
, Gesine Lötzsch
and Petra Pau
, all in Eastern Berlin
constituencies. In addition, 51 Left Party MPs were elected through the party list element of Germany's Additional Member System
of proportional representation
. These include Lothar Bisky
, Katja Kipping
, Oskar Lafontaine
, and Paul Schäfer
. Besides Lafontaine, a number of other prominent SPD defectors won election to the Bundestag on the Left Party list, including a prominent leader of Germany's Turkish
minority, Hakkı Keskin
, German Federal Constitutional Court
justice Wolfgang Neskovic
, and the former SPD leader in Baden-Württemberg, Ulrich Maurer.
When the votes were counted, the party doubled its federal vote from 1.9 million (PDS result in 2002) to more than 4 million—including an electoral breakthrough in industrial Saarland where, for the first time in a western state, it surpassed the Greens and FDP due, in large part to Lafontaine's popularity and Saarland roots. It is now the second strongest party in three states, all of them in the former GDR, (Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia) and the third strongest in four others, all but Saarland in the former GDR, (Saarland, Berlin, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). It was the only party to win over protest voters broadly across Germany's political spectrum: nearly one million Social Democratic voters defected to the Left while the Christian Democrats and Greens together lost half a million votes to the resurgent party.
Exit polls showed the Left had a unique appeal to non-voters: 390,000 Germans who refused to support any party in 2002 returned to the ballot box to vote for the Left Party. The Left's image as the last line of defense for Germany's traditional "social state" (Sozialstaat) proved to be a magnet for voters in western as well as eastern Germany.
All other established parties had ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the Left Party prior to the election (in other words, a cordon sanitaire
), and refused to reconsider in the light of the closeness of the election result, which prevented either of the usual ideologically-coherent coalitions from attaining a majority. The possibility of a minority SPD-Green government tolerated by the Left Party was the closest the Left Party came to potential participation in government at this election.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Left Party suffered no serious losses and remains the third-strongest party in the state. However, it was dropped as a coalition partner by the Social Democratic premier, Harold Ringstorff, and now heads the opposition in the state assembly.
Despite its losses in Berlin, support for the Left Party/PDS and its WASG ally remain stable at about eight to ten percent of the vote. Cooperation between the two parties on a national level and in their single Bundestag delegation has been largely free of tensions. Though a minority of WASG members opposed the merger of the two parties scheduled for June 2007, the new party – The Left
– was on Germany's political stage before the federal elections.
. Shortly after the 2005 federal election, Marianne Birthler, the official in charge of the Stasi archives, accused the Left Party of harboring at least seven former Stasi informants in its newly-elected parliamentary group. At about the same time, the media revealed that Lutz Heilmann
, a Left Party Bundestag deputy from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, had worked several years for the Stasi. While the first accusation proved to be false, Heilmann's connection with the Stasi remained controversial. Though Heilmann had served as a bodyguard, not as an informant or secret police officer, he violated a Left Party regulation obliging candidates to reveal past Stasi involvement. Nevertheless, the Left Party membership in Schleswig-Holstein narrowly passed a vote of confidence in favor of Heilmann, and he continues to serve in the Bundestag.
Charges of a Stasi past were also a factor in the Bundestag's decision to reject Lothar Bisky
as the Left Party's candidate for the post of parliamentary vice president. Though Bisky's candidacy was supported by the Greens and by some Christian Democratic and Social Democratic leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, after two failed votes the party decided to withdraw his nomination. Five months later, the Left Party's Petra Pau
was elected vice president.
In the Free State of Saxony, the chairman of the Left Party group, Peter Porsch, could lose his mandate in the Saxon parliament because of his alleged Stasi past. In May 2006, all parties represented in the parliament, except the Left Party, voted to initiate proceedings against Porsch. However, in November, the state's constitutional court dismissed the complaint against Porsch on technical grounds.
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
active in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
from 1989 to 2007. It was the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
(SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
(East Germany) until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in eastern Germany, entering coalition governments (with the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
) in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS), entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections
German federal election, 2005
German federal elections took place on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th German Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany. They became necessary after a motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed on 1 July...
(more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 election). On June 16, 2007, the two groupings merged to form a unified new party called The Left
The Left (Germany)
The Left , also commonly referred to as the Left Party , is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The Left is the most left-wing party of the five represented in the Bundestag....
(Die Linke).
The party had many Social Progressive policies including legalisation of same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
and greater social welfare for immigrants.
Internationally, the Left Party.PDS was a co-founder of the Party of the European Left
Party of the European Left
The Party of the European Left, commonly abbreviated to just the European Left, is a political party at European level and an association of democratic socialist and communist political parties in the European Union and other European countries. It was formed in January 2004 for the purposes of...
alliance of parties and was the largest party in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left
European United Left–Nordic Green Left
European United Left/Nordic Green Left is a left-wing political group with seats in the European Parliament since 1995.-Position:According to its 1994 constituent declaration, the group is opposed to the present European political structure, but committed to integration...
group in the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
.
Background
The grassroots democracyGrassroots democracy
Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision-making authority as practical is shifted to the organization's lowest geographic level of organization: principle of subsidiarity....
movement that forced the dismissal of East German head of state Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....
in 1989 also empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party who looked to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
and perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
as their model for political change. Reformers like authors Stefan Heym
Stefan Heym
Helmut Flieg was a German-Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his native Germany which was, from 1949–1990, German Democratic Republic...
and Christa Wolf
Christa Wolf
Christa Wolf was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist. She is one of the best-known writers to have emerged from the former East Germany.-Biography:...
and attorney Gregor Gysi
Gregor Gysi
Dr. Gregor Gysi is a German attorney and key politician of the socialist left-wing political party The Left . He played an important role in the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1989, and was a main figure in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism...
, lawyer of dissidents like Robert Havemann
Robert Havemann
Robert Havemann was a chemist, and an East German dissident.He studied chemistry in Berlin and Munich from 1929 to 1933, and then later received a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute....
and Rudolf Bahro
Rudolf Bahro
Rudolf Bahro was a philosopher, political figure and author who was a noted East German dissident and who became a leader of the West German party The Greens...
, soon began to re-invent a party infamous for its rigid Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and police-state methods.
By the end of 1989, the last hardline members of the party's Central Committee had either resigned or been pushed out, followed in 1990 by 95% of the SED's 2.3 million members. A new name, "Party of Democratic Socialism", was adopted to distance the reformed party from its communist past (after a brief transitional period as the SED/PDS). By early 1990, the PDS was no longer a Marxist-Leninist
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
party, though neo-marxist and communist minority factions continue to exist.
The PDS faced the voters for the first time in the 1990 East German elections
East German general election, 1990
Legislative elections were held in the German Democratic Republic on 18 March 1990. It was the first—and as it turned out, only—free parliamentary election in East Germany, and the first truly free election held in that part of Germany since 1933...
--the first (and as it turned out, only) free elections ever held in East Germany. The party was roundly defeated, winning only 88 seats in the 400-seat Volkskammer
Volkskammer
The People's Chamber was the unicameral legislature of the German Democratic Republic . From its founding in 1949 until the first free elections on 18 March 1990, all members of the Volkskammer were elected on a slate controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , called the National Front...
, finishing a distant third behind the East German wings of the West German CDU
Christian Democratic Union (East Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany ) was an East German political party founded in 1945. It was part of the National Front with the Socialist Unity Party of Germany until 1989....
and SPD.
In state and local government
The Left Party (then the Party of Democratic Socialism) has had several years of experience as a junior coalition partner in two federal states —BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a federal state in northern Germany. The capital city is Schwerin...
— where it co-governed until 2006 with the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
. Political responsibility has burnished the Left's reputation as a pragmatic, rather than ideological party. It remains strong in local government in eastern Germany, with more than 6,500 town councillors and 64 elected mayors. The party continues to win eastern voters by emphasizing political competence and refuses to be labelled as merely a "protest party", although it certainly attracted millions of protest voters in the federal election, profiting from growing dissatisfaction with high unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
and cutbacks in health insurance
Health insurance
Health insurance is insurance against the risk of incurring medical expenses among individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health care expenses among a targeted group, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to ensure that money is...
, unemployment benefits, and labor rights
Labor rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are a group of legal rights and claimed human rights having to do with labor relations between workers and their employers, usually obtained under labor and employment law. In general, these rights' debates have to do with negotiating workers' pay, benefits, and safe...
.
In federal elections
In the first all-German elections in 1990German federal election, 1990
The 12th German federal election, 1990 was conducted on December 2, 1990, to elect members to the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany...
, the PDS won only 2.4% of the nationwide vote, but under a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law entered the Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
with 17 deputies led by Gysi, one of Germany's most charismatic and articulate politicians. In the 1994 election
German federal election, 1994
The 13th German federal election, 1994 was conducted on October 16, 1994, to elect members to the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany.-Issues and Campaign:The SPD let its members elect a candidate for Chancellor against Helmut Kohl...
, in spite of an anti-communist "Red Socks" campaign by the then-ruling Christian Democrats aimed at scaring off eastern communist voters, the PDS increased its vote to 4.4 percent, won a plurality in four eastern districts, and re-entered the Bundestag with an enlarged caucus of 30 deputies. In 1998, the party reached the high-water mark in its fortunes by electing 37 deputies with 5.1% of the national vote, thus clearing the critical 5% threshold required for guaranteed proportional representation and full parliamentary status. The party's future seemed bright, but it suffered from a number of weaknesses, not the least of which was its dependence on Gysi, considered by supporters and critics alike as a super-star in German politics who stood in stark contrast to a colorless general membership. Gysi's resignation in 2000 after losing a policy debate with party leftists soon spelled trouble for the PDS. In the 2002 election
German federal election, 2002
The 15th German federal election, 2002 was conducted on 22 September 2002, to elect members to the Bundestag of Germany.-Issues and campaign:...
, the party's vote sank back to 4.0%, and was able to seat only two back-benchers elected directly from their districts, Petra Pau
Petra Pau
Petra Pau is a member of The Left in the German parliament, the Bundestag. First elected in 1998, from 2002 - 2005 she was one of just two party representatives, having been directly elected as the representative of Berlin Marzahn – Hellersdorf, a working-class area of east Berlin...
and Gesine Lötzsch
Gesine Lötzsch
Gesine Lötzsch [geˈsinə løːtʃ] is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. She was elected president of Die Linke in 2010 ....
.
After the 2002 debacle, the PDS adopted a new program and re-installed a respected moderate, long-time Gysi ally Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky is a German politician. He was the chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism , the successor of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party . In June 2007 he became co-chairman of the The Left party, formed by a merger of the PDS and the much smaller Labour and Social Justice – The...
, as chair. A renewed sense of self-confidence soon re-energized the party. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the PDS won 6.1% of the vote nationwide, its highest total at that time in a federal election. Its electoral base in the eastern German states continued to grow, where today it ranks with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
as one of the region's three strong parties. However, low membership and voter support in Germany's western states continued to plague the party on the federal level until it formed an electoral alliance in July 2005 with the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG), a leftist faction of dissident Social Democrats
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
and trade unionists, with the merged list being called the Left Party. In the 2005 federal election the Left Party received 8.7% of the nationwide vote and won 54 seats in the German Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
.
Alliance with the WASG
German federal election, 2005
German federal elections took place on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th German Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany. They became necessary after a motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed on 1 July...
and pledged to unify into a single left party in 2006 or 2007. According to the pact, the parties did not compete against each another in any district. Instead, WASG candidates—including the former Social Democratic leader, Oskar Lafontaine
Oskar Lafontaine
Oskar Lafontaine is a German politician, former German finance minister, former chairman of the Social Democratic Party and former Minister-President of the state of Saarland. Since 2007 he was co-chairman of The Left...
—were nominated on the PDS electoral list. To symbolize the new relationship, the PDS changed its name to The Left Party/PDS or The Left/PDS, with the letters "PDS" optional in western states where many voters still regarded the PDS as an "eastern" party.
The alliance provided a strong electoral base in the east and benefited from WASG's growing voter potential in the west. Gregor Gysi, returning to public life only months after brain surgery and two heart attacks, shared the spotlight with Lafontaine as co-leader of the party's energetic and professional campaign. Both politicians will co-chair the Left's caucus in the German Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
after the election.
Polls early in the summer showed the unified Left list on a "high-altitude flight," winning as much as 12 percent of the vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the Alliance '90/The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens is a green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir...
and the pro-business Free Democratic Party
Free Democratic Party (Germany)
The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government...
and become the third-strongest force in the Bundestag. But, alarmed by the Left's unexpected rise in the polls, Germany's mainstream politicians hit back at Lafontaine and Gysi as "left populists" and "demagogues" and accused the party of flirting with neo-Nazi voters. A gaffe by Lafontaine, who described "foreign workers" as a threat in one speech early in the campaign, provided ammunition for charges that the Left was attempting to exploit German xenophobia.
Although Germany's once-powerful trade unions distanced themselves from the Left in the 2005 election, some union leaders expressed interest in cooperating with the party after the election. A number of regional trade union leaders and mid-level functionaries are active supporters.
2005 federal election outcome
Gregor Gysi
Dr. Gregor Gysi is a German attorney and key politician of the socialist left-wing political party The Left . He played an important role in the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1989, and was a main figure in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism...
, Gesine Lötzsch
Gesine Lötzsch
Gesine Lötzsch [geˈsinə løːtʃ] is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. She was elected president of Die Linke in 2010 ....
and Petra Pau
Petra Pau
Petra Pau is a member of The Left in the German parliament, the Bundestag. First elected in 1998, from 2002 - 2005 she was one of just two party representatives, having been directly elected as the representative of Berlin Marzahn – Hellersdorf, a working-class area of east Berlin...
, all in Eastern Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
constituencies. In addition, 51 Left Party MPs were elected through the party list element of Germany's Additional Member System
Additional Member System
The Additional Member System is the term used in the United Kingdom for the mixed member proportional representation voting system used in Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly....
of proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...
. These include Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky is a German politician. He was the chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism , the successor of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party . In June 2007 he became co-chairman of the The Left party, formed by a merger of the PDS and the much smaller Labour and Social Justice – The...
, Katja Kipping
Katja Kipping
Katja Kipping is a German politician. The daughter of a teacher and an economist, she went to school from 1984 to 1996, then she made her Abitur at a gymnasium in Dresden until 1997...
, Oskar Lafontaine
Oskar Lafontaine
Oskar Lafontaine is a German politician, former German finance minister, former chairman of the Social Democratic Party and former Minister-President of the state of Saarland. Since 2007 he was co-chairman of The Left...
, and Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer (politician)
Paul Schäfer was born January 18, 1949 in Mainz.In 1978 he received a diploma in sociology.From 1983 to 1990 he was editor of the magazine Wissenschaft und Frieden .-Political life:...
. Besides Lafontaine, a number of other prominent SPD defectors won election to the Bundestag on the Left Party list, including a prominent leader of Germany's Turkish
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
minority, Hakkı Keskin
Hakki Keskin
Professor Dr. Hakkı Keskin is a Turkish-German politician with the Left Party , formerly of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and a professor of Political Science...
, German Federal Constitutional Court
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court is a special court established by the Grundgesetz, the German basic law...
justice Wolfgang Neskovic
Wolfgang Nešković
Wolfgang Nešković is a German politician, representative of the party The Left.-External links:...
, and the former SPD leader in Baden-Württemberg, Ulrich Maurer.
When the votes were counted, the party doubled its federal vote from 1.9 million (PDS result in 2002) to more than 4 million—including an electoral breakthrough in industrial Saarland where, for the first time in a western state, it surpassed the Greens and FDP due, in large part to Lafontaine's popularity and Saarland roots. It is now the second strongest party in three states, all of them in the former GDR, (Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia) and the third strongest in four others, all but Saarland in the former GDR, (Saarland, Berlin, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). It was the only party to win over protest voters broadly across Germany's political spectrum: nearly one million Social Democratic voters defected to the Left while the Christian Democrats and Greens together lost half a million votes to the resurgent party.
Exit polls showed the Left had a unique appeal to non-voters: 390,000 Germans who refused to support any party in 2002 returned to the ballot box to vote for the Left Party. The Left's image as the last line of defense for Germany's traditional "social state" (Sozialstaat) proved to be a magnet for voters in western as well as eastern Germany.
All other established parties had ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the Left Party prior to the election (in other words, a cordon sanitaire
Cordon sanitaire
Cordon sanitaire — or quarantine line — is a French phrase that, literally translated, means "sanitary cordon". Though in French it originally denoted a barrier implemented to stop the spread of disease, it has often been used in English in a metaphorical sense to refer to attempts to prevent the...
), and refused to reconsider in the light of the closeness of the election result, which prevented either of the usual ideologically-coherent coalitions from attaining a majority. The possibility of a minority SPD-Green government tolerated by the Left Party was the closest the Left Party came to potential participation in government at this election.
2006 state election results
The Left Party suffered serious losses in the 2006 elections for the city-state government of Berlin, losing nearly half of its vote and falling to 13 percent—slightly ahead of the Greens. Berlin's popular Social Democratic mayor, Klaus Wowereit, nevertheless decided to retain the weakened party as his coalition partner.In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Left Party suffered no serious losses and remains the third-strongest party in the state. However, it was dropped as a coalition partner by the Social Democratic premier, Harold Ringstorff, and now heads the opposition in the state assembly.
Despite its losses in Berlin, support for the Left Party/PDS and its WASG ally remain stable at about eight to ten percent of the vote. Cooperation between the two parties on a national level and in their single Bundestag delegation has been largely free of tensions. Though a minority of WASG members opposed the merger of the two parties scheduled for June 2007, the new party – The Left
The Left (Germany)
The Left , also commonly referred to as the Left Party , is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The Left is the most left-wing party of the five represented in the Bundestag....
– was on Germany's political stage before the federal elections.
Stasi connections
Since German reunification, the PDS has frequently been the target of suspicions that leading members were connected with East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or StasiStasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
. Shortly after the 2005 federal election, Marianne Birthler, the official in charge of the Stasi archives, accused the Left Party of harboring at least seven former Stasi informants in its newly-elected parliamentary group. At about the same time, the media revealed that Lutz Heilmann
Lutz Heilmann
Lutz Heilmann is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. He was elected to the Bundestag in the 2005 federal election as a member of the party list in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that he had worked for the Stasi...
, a Left Party Bundestag deputy from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, had worked several years for the Stasi. While the first accusation proved to be false, Heilmann's connection with the Stasi remained controversial. Though Heilmann had served as a bodyguard, not as an informant or secret police officer, he violated a Left Party regulation obliging candidates to reveal past Stasi involvement. Nevertheless, the Left Party membership in Schleswig-Holstein narrowly passed a vote of confidence in favor of Heilmann, and he continues to serve in the Bundestag.
Charges of a Stasi past were also a factor in the Bundestag's decision to reject Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky is a German politician. He was the chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism , the successor of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party . In June 2007 he became co-chairman of the The Left party, formed by a merger of the PDS and the much smaller Labour and Social Justice – The...
as the Left Party's candidate for the post of parliamentary vice president. Though Bisky's candidacy was supported by the Greens and by some Christian Democratic and Social Democratic leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, after two failed votes the party decided to withdraw his nomination. Five months later, the Left Party's Petra Pau
Petra Pau
Petra Pau is a member of The Left in the German parliament, the Bundestag. First elected in 1998, from 2002 - 2005 she was one of just two party representatives, having been directly elected as the representative of Berlin Marzahn – Hellersdorf, a working-class area of east Berlin...
was elected vice president.
In the Free State of Saxony, the chairman of the Left Party group, Peter Porsch, could lose his mandate in the Saxon parliament because of his alleged Stasi past. In May 2006, all parties represented in the parliament, except the Left Party, voted to initiate proceedings against Porsch. However, in November, the state's constitutional court dismissed the complaint against Porsch on technical grounds.
SED assets
The SED had sequestered money overseas in secret accounts, including some which turned up in Liechtenstein in 2008. This was returned to the German government, as the PDS had rejected claims to overseas SED assets in 1990. The vast majority of domestic SED assets were transferred to the GDR government before unification. Legal issues over back taxes possibly owed by the PDS on former SED assets were eventually settled in 1995, when an agreement between the PDS and the Independent Commission on Property of Political Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR was confirmed by the Berlin Administrative Court.Miscellaneous facts
- A Left Party Member of the European Parliament, Feleknas UcaFeleknas UcaFeleknas Uca is a German Die Linke politician of Kurdish ancestry. From 1999 to 2009 she was member of the European Parliament from Germany...
, was the world's only elected YezidiYazidiThe Yazidi are members of a Kurdish religion with ancient Indo-Iranian roots. They are primarily a Kurdish-speaking people living in the Mosul region of northern Iraq, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Turkey, and Syria in decline since the 1990s – their members emigrating to...
politician until three were elected to the Iraqi legislature in 2005.
See also
- The LeftThe Left (Germany)The Left , also commonly referred to as the Left Party , is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The Left is the most left-wing party of the five represented in the Bundestag....
- Politics of GermanyPolitics of GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic, based on representative democracy. The Chancellor is the head of government, while the President of Germany is the head of state, which is a ceremonial role but with substantial reserve powers.Executive power is vested in the...
- List of political parties in Germany
- BundestagBundestagThe Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
(Federal Assembly of Germany)
External links
- Left Party website in German
- Der Spiegel on the Founding of the Left Party (English)
- Left Party Bundestag site with profiles of deputies
- Ingo Schmidt, "The Left Opposition in Germany. Why Is the Left So Weak When So Many Are Looking for Political Alternatives?", in Monthly Review, May 2007
- Ingar Solty "The Historic Significance of the New German Left Party"
Further reading
- Thompson, Peter (2005) The Crisis of the German Left. The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford. ISBN 1-57181-543-0
- Oswald, Franz (2002). The Party That Came Out of the Cold War : The Party of Democratic Socialism in United Germany. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-97731-5
- Hough, Dan (2001). The Fall and Rise of the PDS in Eastern Germany (1st ed.). The University of Birmingham Press. ISBN 1-902459-14-8