Sahra Wagenknecht

Sahra Wagenknecht MdB
Wagenknecht in 2019
Leader of The Left in the Bundestag
In office 12 October 2015 – 12 November 2019 Serving with Dietmar Bartsch
Preceded by	Gregor Gysi
Succeeded by	Amira Mohamed Ali
Leader of the Opposition
In office 12 October 2015 – 24 October 2017 Serving with Dietmar Bartsch
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Gregor Gysi
Succeeded by	Alice Weidel Alexander Gauland
Member of the Bundestag for North Rhine-Westphalia
Incumbent
Assumed office 27 September 2009
Constituency	The Left Party List
Personal details
Born	Sarah Wagenknecht (1969-07-16) 16 July 1969 (age 52) Jena, East Germany
Political party	The Left (2007–present)
Other political affiliations	PDS (1989–2007) SED (1989)
Spouse(s)	Ralph-Thomas Niemeyer ​ ​ (m. 1997; div. 2013)​ Oskar Lafontaine ​ ​ (m. 2014)​
Education	University of Groningen (MA) TU Chemnitz (PhD)

Sahra Wagenknecht (born Sarah Wagenknecht; German pronunciation: [ˌzaːʁaː ˈvaːɡn̩ˌknɛçt]; born 16 July 1969) is a German left-wing politician, economist, author and publicist. Along with Dietmar Bartsch, she was the parliamentary chairperson of The Left from 2010 to 2019. Since 2009, she has been a member of the Bundestag.

Wagenknecht has been widely criticized in Germany for adopting political positions of the far right on the entry of refugees into Germany. She is a strong critic of Israeli foreign policy towards Palestinians, which has been conflated with anti-semitism by some.^[1][2] She rejects the anti-Semitism accusations, and accepts Israel's right to exist but argues that it is not a reason to accept Israeli government policy without question.^{[3][not verified in body]}

Early life[]

Wagenknecht was born on 16 July 1969 in the East German city of Jena.^[4] Her father is Iranian and her mother, who worked for a state-run art distributor, is German. She was cared for primarily by her grandparents until 1976, when she and her mother moved to East Berlin. While in Berlin, she became a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ). She completed her Abitur exams in 1988 and joined the (then ruling) Socialist Unity Party (SED) in early 1989.^[5][6]

From 1990, she studied Philosophy and New German Literature as an undergraduate in Jena and Berlin but dropped out. She then enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Groningen where she earned an MA in 1996 for a thesis on the young Karl Marx's interpretation of Hegel, published as a book in 1997.^[5][6] From 2005 until 2012 she studied economics at the TU Chemnitz, where she earned a PhD with a dissertation on "The Limits of Choice: Saving Decisions and Basic Needs in Developed Countries",^[7] subsequently published by the Campus Verlag.^[8]

Political career[]

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transformation of the SED into the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), Wagenknecht was elected to the new party's National Committee in 1991. She also joined the PDS's Communist Platform, a Marxist-Leninist faction.^[6]

In the 1998 German federal election, Wagenknecht ran as the PDS candidate in a district of Dortmund, garnering 3.25% of the vote. Following the 1999 European elections, she was elected as a PDS representative to the European Parliament. Among her duties in the parliament is serving on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Delegation, as well as the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly.^[6][9]

Following the merger of the PDS and the WASG that formed the Left Party (Die Linke), Wagenknecht considered campaigning for the position of party vice-chair. However, party leaders such as Lothar Bisky and Gregor Gysi objected to the idea primarily because of her perceived sympathies for the former German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany). Following the controversy, she announced that she would not run for the post. Wagenknecht successfully contested a seat in the 2009 federal election in North Rhine-Westphalia.^[10] She became the Left Party's spokesperson for economic politics in the Bundestag. On 15 May 2010, she was at last elected vice-president of the Left Party with 75.3% of the vote.

Early in 2012, the German press reported that Wagenknecht was one of 27 Left Party Bundestag members kept under surveillance by the security services.^[11]

She has been one of the main driving forces in the formation of Aufstehen, a left-wing policital movement established in 2018, which exists outside of traditional political party structures and has been compared to the French movement La France Insoumise.^[12] In March 2019, Wagenknecht announced her withdrawal from her leadership role within Aufstehen, citing personal workload pressures and insisting that after a successful start-up phase, for which political experience was necessary, the time had come for the movement's own grass roots to resume control. She complained that the involvement of political parties at its heart had "walled in" ("sich eingemauert") the movement. She would nonetheless continue to make public appearances on its behalf.^[13][14]

Political views[]

Economic policy[]

Wagenknecht has argued that the Left Party must pursue radical and anti-capitalist goals, thereby remaining distinct from the more moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Green Party. She has criticized the Left Party's participation in coalition governments, especially the Berlin state government, which has made cuts to social spending and privatized some services.^[15]

On 14-February-2014, German business and economics newspaper Handelsblatt put her on the cover of its weekend-edition, wondering whether the left is better in understanding economics ("Sind die Linken die besseren Wirtschaftsversteher?", note: it is grammatically not clear whether the question is referring to left-wingers in general or Wagenknecht's party The Left in particular) and discussing her views on liberalism and socialism, as well as interviewing her.^[16]

Foreign policy[]

She has expressed strong support for the rise of left-wing leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chávez,^[17] and for SYRIZA's 2015 electoral victory in Greece.^[18] She serves as a spokesperson for the Venezuela Avanza solidarity network, and as an alternate on the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Mercosur.^[9]

Refugee policy[]

In response to the 2015 Cologne Sexual Attacks, Wagenknecht stated "Whoever abuses his right to hospitality has forfeited his right to hospitality". This statement was almost unanimously criticized in her party and parliamentary group colleagues, but did receive praise from some in the AfD.^[19]

On 28 May 2016, an activist from the anti-fascist group Torten für Menschenfeinde ("Cakes for Enemies of Humanity") pushed a chocolate cake in Wagenknecht's face at a Left Party meeting in Magdeburg in response to Wagenknecht's calls for limits on the number of refugees. Wagenknecht has criticised Angela Merkel's refugee policies, arguing that her government has not provided the levels of financial and infrastructural support required to avoid increasing pressure on local authorities and the labour market, thereby exacerbating tensions in society.^[12] She has also claimed that Merkel's policies were partly to blame for the 2016 Berlin truck attack.^[20]

Partly in response to these experiences, in 2021, she published the book "Die Selbstgerechten" ("The Self-Righteous") in which she criticises so-called "left-liberals" ("Linksliberale") for being neither left nor liberal but rather supporting the ruling classes' and, to some extent, their own interests. The book features, among several other topics, a discussion on immigration's negative impacts on the domestic working class. It reached number one in the German non-fiction bestseller-list as published by Der Spiegel.^[21]

Personal life[]

Wagenknecht married businessman Ralph-Thomas Niemeyer in May 1997.^[22] However, on 12 November 2011, politician Oskar Lafontaine stated publicly that he and Wagenknecht had become "close friends" (German: eng befreundet).^[23] At the time, Wagenknecht and Lafontaine had already separated from their respective spouses.^[24][25] Wagenknecht married Lafontaine, 26 years her senior, on 22 December 2014.^[26] She is an atheist.^[27]

Books[]

• Kapitalismus im Koma: Eine sozialistische Diagnose. ("Capitalism in a coma: A socialist diagnosis.") Edition Ost, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-360-01050-7.
• Die Mythen der Modernisierer. ("The myths of the modernizers.") Dingsda, Querfurt 2001, ISBN 3-928498-84-3.
• Kapital, Crash, Krise… Kein Ausweg in Sicht? Fragen an Sahra Wagenknecht. ("Capital, crash, crisis… No way out in sight? Questions to Sahra Wagenknecht.") Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-89144-250-5.
• The Limits of Choice. Saving Decisions and Basic Needs in Developed Countries. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39916-4. (Also doctoral dissertation at the Technische Universität Chemnitz in 2012.)
• Kapitalismus, was tun? Schriften zur Krise. ("Capitalism, what to do? Writings about the crisis.") Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-360-02159-5.
• Freiheit statt Kapitalismus: Über vergessene Ideale, die Eurokrise und unsere Zukunft. ("Freedom instead of capitalism: About forgotten ideals, the Euro crisis, and our future.") 2., erweiterte Auflage, Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-593-39731-3; ungekürzte Taschenbuchausgabe: dtv, München 2013, ISBN 978-3-423-34783-9.
• Freiheit statt Kapitalismus: Wie wir zu mehr Arbeit, Innovation und Gerechtigkeit kommen. ("Freedom instead of capitalism: How we will achieve more work, innovation, and justice.") Eichborn, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6546-1.
• Wahnsinn mit Methode: Finanzkrise und Weltwirtschaft. ("Methodical madness: Financial crisis and global economy.") Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-360-01956-1.
• Reichtum ohne Gier: Wie wir uns vor dem Kapitalismus retten. ("Wealth without Greed: how we save ourselves from capitalism.") Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-5935-0516-9.
• Die Selbstgerechten: Mein Gegenprogramm – für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt. ("The self-righteous: my counter-scheme – for public spirit and social cohesion.") Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-593-51390-4.

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sahra Wagenknecht.

• (in English) Official website
• (in English) European Parliament profile
• (in German and English) Wagenknecht criticizes Merkel for serving US interests to detriment of EU population/economy 26.11 with English subtitles, 26 November 2014
• (in English) Video of Wagenknecht interview on The Real News Network, 26 September 2012
• (in German) Left Party profile
• (in German) Video of Wagenknecht at 2008 Left Party Congress at YouTube