Germany’s Left comes back from the dead

BERLIN ― Germany’s far-left Die Linke party ― or The Left ― was struggling with declining support for years. So when its star politician, Sahra Wagenknecht, broke away at the end of 2023 to launch a new populist force, many wrote the party off for good.

But ahead of a national election this Sunday, The Left is showing surprising signs of life: In recent polls it has surged back above the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the Bundestag, while its membership has grown to an all-time high.

“It’s incredible how much energy is unleashed when we clarify our positions and focus clearly,” said Ines Schwerdtner, one of the party’s national leaders. “There’s a sense of momentum throughout the party.”

The Left, which traces some of its roots back to East Germany’s communist party, is doing particularly well at appealing to young voters across the country who are outraged by the rise of the far right.

Behind The Left’s revival is Heidi Reichinnek, the party’s parliamentary group leader and a rising social media star. Clips of her fiery speeches have often gone viral, including one in which she attacked conservative chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz for weakening Germany’s postwar “firewall” quarantine against the far right by trying to push immigration measures through the Bundestag with help from the extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

In her speech, Reichinnek attacked Merz for “deliberately” working with the AfD. “And that’s the damn problem,” she said. “All this happened only two days after we commemorated the liberation of Auschwitz, two days after commemorating the murdered and tormented. Now you’re collaborating with those who carry on this same ideology.”

“It’s incredible how much energy is unleashed when we clarify our positions and focus clearly,” said Ines Schwerdtner, one of the party’s national leaders. | Christian Mang/Getty Images

On TikTok and Instagram, her blunt messaging has struck a chord, particularly with young voters. A survey from earlier this month shows The Left polling at 19 percent among voters under 30, tied with the Greens for first among that age group. The party currently has about 81,200 members, some 17,470 of whom signed up after Merz’s firewall gambit.

The Left’s political resurrection

The Left has deep roots in German history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the East German communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party, morphed into the Party of Democratic Socialism and catered mainly to eastern Germans who felt left behind in a reunified Germany. In 2007, the PDS, in an effort to rebrand into a more national party and move away from its communist roots, merged with another leftist grouping to create The Left.

For a time it looked as if The Left might play a major role in German politics. In a 2009 national election the party won 11.9 percent of the vote with two well-known leftist politicians, Gregor Gysi und Oskar Lafontaine, heading the ticket. While remaining a constant force in the Bundestag, the party has fallen off in recent years.

Among the causes of the party’s troubles have been internal fissures, particularly over migration. Wagenknecht, an icon of Germany’s left and one of the country’s best-known politicians, took an increasingly anti-immigration turn, particularly following the refugee crisis of 2015, causing many in her party to turn against her. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Wagenknecht was often accused of parroting Kremlin propaganda.

In 2023 Wagenknecht announced she would split from The Left to form her own party, dubbed the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The populist-left party fuses elements of hard-right policies on migration with traditionally left-wing economic stances. BSW surged in the polls after its creation, particularly in the former East Germany, while The Left initially suffered.

But The Left has since recovered — and is currently polling at 7 percent, ahead of BSW on 5 percent. As it now stands, both parties have a chance of making it into the Bundestag, an outcome that would further splinter the German political landscape.

In the speech, Heidi Reichinnek attacked Merz for “deliberately” working with the AfD. | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Reichinnek, The Left’s social media star, credits the party’s grassroots efforts and the appeal of progressive politics among German youth for their recent success.

“We’ve knocked on over 300,000 doors. We’ve spoken with people, we’ve listened, and we’re already helping in their daily lives,” she said on a talk show in early February. “While others just talk, we act.”

The party also has a fallback plan in case it doesn’t meet the 5 percent threshold ordinarily needed to make it into the Bundestag. Under German election rules, if three candidates win their constituency seats directly, their party enters parliament even if it falls below the threshold.

In order to make this possible, The Left has wheeled out three prominent leftist veterans with decades of experience — Gysi, Bodo Ramelow and Dietmar Bartsch — to win their home districts, playfully dubbing the initiative “Mission Silver Locks.” It’s not clear they will all win, but the party has high hopes.

“You can never get rid of some people,” Gysi recently said in an interview.