From the PDS to the Left to the “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” – the politician of the same name has come a long way, and not just from a political perspective. And she has ambitions. Even before the founding party conference of the BSW, Wagenknecht told the “Time“: “We have to be prepared to possibly take part in a government.” In addition to the European elections in June, the ex-left is likely to be particularly interested in the state elections in the east.
The surveys should be treated with caution. But new surveys have already predicted double-digit results for the BSW in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony. The party is not Wagenknecht’s first attempt at a new political movement.
In January, Sahra Wagenknecht officially founded her own party
Sahra Wagenknecht has been politically active since 1989 and has been a member of the Bundestag since 2007. She quickly rose through the ranks in the PDS and its successor party, Die Linke, and went from deputy to party leader.
At the same time, she pursued her own goals. She made headlines in 2018 with the left-wing rallying movement “Get Up,” as well as with her “Manifesto for Peace” in 2023, in which she called for an immediate stop to arms deliveries to Ukraine. It was widely criticized for both, and after a short time both were scrapped. But that doesn’t seem to stop her.
Little is known privately about the politician. In 1997 she married the filmmaker Ralph-Thomas Niemeyer on Karl Marx’s birthday. The marriage was officially divorced in 2013. Today Niemeyer is primarily associated with the Reich Citizens’ Movement.
She seems to have better luck with her current spouse. In 2014 she secretly married former Left Party leader Oscar Lafontaine. The two live together in a villa in Saarland.
Lafontaine has now joined the BSW, for him too it is the third party after the SPD and the Left. At the start, the 80-year-old is scheduled to speak at the founding party conference of the BSW. By the way, this takes place in the former GDR cinema Kosmos in Berlin, on – surprise – Karl-Marx-Allee.
Sources: Bundestag, Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, “Parliament”,