Eastern party members who have experienced socialism are often shocked by the rhetoric of western comrades, writes DEREK SCALLY
THERE ARE many paths to power in Germany, but praising East Germany’s defunct secret police, the Stasi, is not among them.
It’s a lesson Die Linke (the Left Party) learned last week after one of its Bundestag MPs, Ulla Jelpke, complimented a gathering of former Stasi officers for their “courageous engagement for peace” in researching and documenting the East German secret service operations before 1989.
It was a far cry, she said, from Germany’s current secret service, the BND: “an aggressive imperial service built up by ex-Nazis”.
Jelpke’s remark was the straw that broke the back of the Left Party’s political ambitions last week in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Two weeks ago the party won 5.6 per cent in the state election there, entering the state parliament in Düsseldorf for the first time.
But after five hours of perfunctory coalition talks last week with the Social Democrats (SPD), its MPs are headed for the opposition benches.
The Left Party was formed in 2007 when union members and Social Democrat (SPD) voters disillusioned with Schröder-era reforms joined forces with the post-communist PDS, itself a successor to East Germany’s ruling SED party.
With an anti-war programme that is also critical of globalisation, the party has gone from being a regional force to Germany’s fourth-largest party.
As well as having 76 seats in the Bundestag, it is represented in all but three of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. In both Berlin and Brandenburg the party shares power in coalition governments with the SPD.
By general agreement, Germany’s western state of North Rhine-Westphalia is where the Left Party is at its most left.
The local branch is home to views that run the gamut from globalisation-critical to hardline Stalinist. In Darmstadt and other cities, the party shares office space with the German Communist Party (DKP) and Rote Hilfe, an organisation German authorities classify as “extreme left”.
Like many party colleagues, state MP Gunhild Böth was a member of the DKP for a decade until 1989, during a time when the group was funded by East Germany.
Asked by German television recently if she thought the East German state disobeyed the rule of law, she answered: “All in all, I don’t think one can say that. When you look at the ruins . . . from which the GDR was built – in a very democratic and anti-fascist way – then I have to say I find it very impressive.”
The North Rhine-Westphalia Left Party has complained about its portrayal in the German media as a group of East German apologists.
Of particular irritation is a much-quoted document in which the party describes East Germany as a “legitimate attempt to build up an alternative to capitalism in Germany”.
Left Party members complain that the quote is incomplete and used out of context.
The quote continues: “On the other hand stands the oppression of opposition and the lack of rule of law. In the end, the GDR failed as a result of a lack of democracy and inefficient economy.”
The North Rhine-Westphalia election was the political swansong of Left Party co-founder Oskar Lafontaine (pictured). After delivering a series of impressive election results, he has stood down to undergo cancer treatment.
Lafontaine, a former leader of the SPD and short-lived finance minister, is under doctor’s orders to take it easy and he has promised not to meddle in Left Party affairs – once it respects his legacy.
Whether that will happen is an open question.
Lafontaine’s departure has removed a stumbling block to closer co-operation with the SPD, the party he left under a cloud a decade ago after falling out with Gerhard Schröder.
At the moment, the Left Party has its pick of issues to boost its profile and support: the currency crisis, Germany’s unpopular military role in Afghanistan and lingering resentment over 2005 social welfare reforms.
But without the unifying force of Lafontaine’s personality, the potential for infighting has grown considerably in a party that is bitterly divided on geographical and ideological lines.
A gaping chasm exists in the party, with eastern ex-PDS politicians with first-hand experience of socialism saying they are left speechless on a regular basis by the hard-left rhetoric of their western comrades in North Rhine-Westphalia and elsewhere.
A week ago, party delegates elected two popular new leaders – East Berlin-born Bundestag MP Gesine Lötzsch and Bavarian union official Klaus Ernst.
Waiting in the wings, though, are several polarising party characters.
Last week’s Stasi debacle in North Rhine-Westphalia suggests that the Left Party still has some way to go if a closer co-operation with the SPD happens.
It is only then that Lafontaine will rest easy in retirement and devote himself, as he promised last week, to “picking mushrooms and playing canasta”.