Die Linke
Die Linke, also known as the Left Party, is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative. Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the Marxist–Leninist ruling party of former East Germany, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Since October 2024, Die Linke's co-chairpersons have been Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken. The party holds 64 seats out of 630 in the German federal parliament, having won 8.8% of votes cast in the 2025 German federal election. Its parliamentary group is the smallest of five in the Bundestag, and is headed by parliamentary co-leaders Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann.
Die Linke is represented in seven of Germany's sixteen state legislatures, including four of the five eastern states. As of 2025, the party participates in governments in the states of Bremen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as a junior partner. From 2014 to 2024 the party led a coalition in Thuringia with the Social Democratic Party and The Greens headed by Minister-President Bodo Ramelow. Die Linke is a founding member of the Party of the European Left, and is the fifth-largest party in The Left group in the European Parliament. In September 2025, Die Linke had more than 120,000 registered members. Die Linke promotes left-wing populism and antimilitarism.
History
Background
The main predecessor of Die Linke was the Party of Democratic Socialism, which emerged from the ruling Socialist Unity Party of East Germany. In October 1989, facing increasing unpopularity, the SED replaced long-time leader Erich Honecker with Egon Krenz, who began a program of limited reforms, including the legalisation of opposition groups. He also loosened restrictions on travel between East and West Berlin, which inadvertently led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The SED gave up its "leading role" in November, and Krenz resigned soon afterward. He was succeeded by Gregor Gysi, part of a group of reformers who supported the Peaceful Revolution. His ally Hans Modrow, the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers, became the de facto national leader.Seeking to change its image, the party expelled most of its former leadership, including Honecker and Krenz; the new government negotiated with opposition groups and arranged free elections. By the time of a special congress in mid-December, the SED was no longer a Marxist-Leninist party. It added Party of Democratic Socialism to its name, dropping the SED portion in February. The PDS oriented itself as pro-democratic, socialist, and supportive of East German sovereignty. The party chose Modrow as its lead candidate for the 1990 East German general election but was decisively defeated, finishing in third place with 16.4% of votes cast. The PDS was excluded from further political developments due to the aversion of the opposition, now in power, which considered it essentially tied to the Communist regime despite its change of name.
After debuting with a meagre 2.4% nationwide in the 1990 German federal election immediately after German reunification, the PDS gained popularity throughout the 1990s as a protest party in the eastern states. In the 1998 German federal election it won 5.1% of votes, enough to win seats outright without relying on direct constituencies as it had in 1994. By the 2000s, it was the second-largest party in every eastern state legislature except Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Despite electoral successes, the PDS faced internal strife due to ideological disputes, a chronic decline in membership, and a near-complete lack of support in the western states, which has been home to 85% of Germany's population. The 1994 German federal election also saw a "red socks" campaign used by the centre-right, including the CDU/CSU and the Free Democratic Party, to scare off a possible red–red–green coalition. Analysts have stated that such a strategy likely paid off, as it was seen as one of the decisive elements for the narrow victory of Helmut Kohl for the CDU/CSU–FDP. The campaign was criticized as an obvious attempt to discredit the whole political left; the PDS reinterpreted it for itself by printing red socks.
PDS–WASG alliance
In January 2005, a group of disaffected Social Democrats and trade unionists founded Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative, a left-wing party opposed to federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Agenda 2010 labour and welfare reforms. The party made a modest showing of 2.2% in the North Rhine-Westphalia state election in May and failed to win seats. The election saw the incumbent SPD government defeated in a landslide, which was widely interpreted as a sign of the federal SPD's unpopularity. Chancellor Schröder subsequently called an early federal election to be held in September.WASG continued to gain members, prompting the PDS leadership to propose an alliance between the two parties. With the established eastern base of the PDS and WASG's potential for growth in the west, the parties hoped to enter the Bundestag together. They agreed to form an electoral pact, in which they would not run against one another in direct constituencies and would create joint electoral lists featuring candidates from both parties. They also agreed to unify into a single party in 2007. To symbolise the new relationship, the PDS renamed itself the Left Party.PDS. The joint list ran under the name The Left.PDS, though in the western states, where the PDS was shunned for its association with the GDR, "PDS" was optional. The alliance's profile was greatly boosted when former federal Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, who had left the SPD after the North Rhine-Westphalia election, joined WASG in June. He was chosen as the party's lead candidate for the federal election and shared the spotlight with Gregor Gysi of the PDS.
Polls early in the summer showed the unified Left list winning as much as 12 percent of the vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the Greens and FDP and become the third-largest party in the Bundestag. During the campaign, the party was subject to frequent criticism. At one event, Oskar Lafontaine described Fremdarbeiter as a threat to German labour. He claimed to have misspoken, but in an article published in Die Welt, a group of prominent German writers accused him of deliberately appealing to xenophobic and far-right voters.
In the 2005 federal election, the Left.PDS passed the electoral threshold, winning 8.7% of the vote and 53 seats. It became the fourth largest party in the Bundestag. The result of the election was inconclusive; between the SPD, Greens, and Left.PDS, left-wing parties held a majority, but the SPD was unwilling to cooperate with the Left.PDS. The result was a grand coalition of the CDU and SPD.
Party foundation
Negotiations for a formal merger of the PDS and WASG continued through the next year until a final agreement was reached on 27 March 2007. The new party, called The Left, held its founding congress in Berlin on 16 June 2007. Lothar Bisky and Oskar Lafontaine were elected as co-leaders, while Gregor Gysi became leader of the party's Bundestag group.The unified party quickly became a serious force in western Germany for the first time. It surpassed the electoral threshold in Bremen in 2007, and throughout 2008 won seats in Lower Saxony, Hesse and Hamburg. The "five-party system" in Germany was now a reality in the west as well as the east.
In 2009, Die Linke achieved 7.5% in the European elections. Six state elections were held throughout the year. The party saw an upswing in Thuringia and Hesse and won seats for the first time in Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland. Oskar Lafontaine ran as the lead candidate in Saarland, leading the party to its best result in a western state with 21.3% of the vote. In Saxony and Brandenburg, Die Linke's vote declined slightly, but it remained the second largest party in both states.
2009 federal election
The electoral collapse of the Social Democratic Party in the federal election on 27 September 2009 saw Die Linke's vote rise to 11.9%, increasing its representation in the Bundestag from 54 to 76 seats, just under half as large as the SPD's parliamentary group. It became the second most popular party in the eastern states with 28.5%, while experiencing a breakthrough in the west with 8.3%. It was the most popular party in Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, and won sixteen direct constituencies, the largest tally by a minor party in history. Die Linke nonetheless remained in opposition.Die Linke won seats in the parliament of Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, in the May 2010 election. They now held seats in thirteen of Germany's sixteen states, only absent from three states in the traditionally conservative south.
In January 2010, Oskar Lafontaine announced that, due to his ongoing cancer treatment, he would not seek re-election to the party leadership at the upcoming party congress. At the congress in May, Lothar Bisky also chose not to nominate for re-election. Klaus Ernst and Gesine Lötzsch were elected as the party's new leaders.
A few weeks later, the SPD and Greens invited Die Linke to support their candidate for the 2010 presidential election, the independent Joachim Gauck, who had been an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany and, from 1991 to 2000, the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. They suggested that this was an opportunity for Die Linke to leave their communist past behind them and show unconditional support for democracy. However, the party refused to support him, highlighting his support of the War in Afghanistan and his attacks on their party. They also rejected the conservative Christian Wulff, favourite of Chancellor Angela Merkel, instead putting forward their own nominee, television journalist Luc Jochimsen. The red-green camp reacted with disappointment. SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel described Die Linke's position as "bizarre and embarrassing", stating that he was shocked that they would declare Joachim Gauck their enemy due to his investigation of GDR injustice. The SPD and Greens expected Die Linke to support Gauck in the decisive third round of the election; however, after Jochimsen withdrew, most of Die Linke's delegates abstained. Wulff was elected by an absolute majority.
The party was isolated ahead of the March 2012 presidential election. The federal CDU/CSU–FDP government invited the SPD and Greens to agree on an all-party consensus candidate; Die Linke was excluded. Those invited eventually agreed to support Joachim Gauck. Die Linke again refused to support him. SPD chair Sigmar Gabriel once again criticized the party, claiming that they harboured "sympathy for the German Democratic Republic" and were upset over Gauck's role in the investigations about the crimes of the Stasi. Die Linke put forward Beate Klarsfeld, a journalist and outspoken anti-fascist who had investigated numerous Nazi war criminals. She received 10.2% of the delegate votes. Gauck was elected in the first round with 80.4% of votes.
Die Linke's fortunes began to turn in 2011, and they suffered a string of setbacks and defeats through 2013, particularly in the western states. They failed to win seats in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, and suffered losses in Bremen, Berlin, and Saarland. Crucially, the party lost its seats in the Landtags of Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Lower Saxony.
On 11 April 2012, Gesine Lötzsch resigned as party co-leader, citing medical conditions her husband was suffering. Klaus Ernst subsequently announced he would not seek re-election as leader at the party congress in June. Katja Kipping, who had served as deputy leader since 2007, was elected as co-leader with 67.1% of votes. Bernd Riexinger was elected as the other co-leader with 53.5% of votes, winning a narrow contest against Dietmar Bartsch.