Alliance 90/The Greens, often simply referred to as the Greens, is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 by the merger of The Greens and Alliance 90. The Greens had itself merged with the East German Green Party after German reunification in 1990.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
The Old Left is an informal umbrella term used to describe the various left-wing political movements in the Western world prior to the 1960s. Many of these movements were Marxist movements that often took a more vanguardist approach to social justice; focused primarily on labor unionization and social class in the West. Generally, the Old Left, unlike the New, focused more on economic issues than cultural ones.
Oskar Lafontaine is a German politician. He served as Minister-President of the state of Saarland from 1985 to 1998, and was federal leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1995 to 1999. He was the lead candidate for the SPD in the 1990 German federal election, but lost by a wide margin. He served as Minister of Finance under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder after the SPD's victory in the 1998 federal election, but resigned from both the ministry and Bundestag less than six months later, positioning himself as a popular opponent of Schröder's policies in the tabloid press.
Sahra Wagenknecht is a German politician, economist, author, and publicist. Since 2009 she has been a member of the Bundestag, where until 2023 she represented The Left. From 2015 to 2019, she served as that party's parliamentary co-chair. With a small team of allies, she left the party on 23 October 2023 to found her own party, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, to contest elections from 2024 onwards.
Tobias Pflüger is a German politician of The Left serving as one of six deputy leaders of the party since 2014. From 2017 to 2021 he was a member of the Bundestag, and from 2004 to 2009 a member of the European Parliament.
Katja Kipping is a German politician of The Left party. She was a member of the Bundestag representing Saxony from 2005 to 2021, a federal co-leader of The Left from 2012 to 2021 alongside Bernd Riexinger, and the Senator for Integration, Labour and Social Affairs in the Berlin state government from December 2021 to April 2023.
Dietmar Gerhard Bartsch is a German politician who has served as co-chair of The Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2015. Prior, he served as federal treasurer of The Left from 2006 to 2009 and federal managing officer from 2005 to 2010. He was a prominent member of The Left's predecessor party, the PDS, of which he served as treasurer from 1991 to 1997 and federal managing officer from 1997 to 2002.
Sevim Dağdelen is a German politician and a member of Bundestag. She was elected for Left Party and switched in October 2023 to Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.
Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right-wing nationalism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking to or for the "common people". Recurring themes of right-wing populists include neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism and fiscal conservatism. Frequently, they aim to defend a national culture, identity, and economy against perceived attacks by outsiders. Right-wing populism has remained the dominant political force in the Republican Party in the United States since the 2010s.
The Left, commonly referred to 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 (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative. Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the Marxist–Leninist ruling party of the former East Germany, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Since 2022, The Left's co-chairpersons have been Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan. The party holds 39 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag, the federal legislature of Germany, having won 4.9% of votes cast in the 2021 German federal election. Its parliamentary group is the smallest of six in the Bundestag, and is headed by parliamentary co-leaders Amira Mohamed Ali and Dietmar Bartsch.
Bernd Riexinger is a German politician of the left party Die Linke and member of the Bundestag representing Baden-Württemberg. From 2012 to 2021 he was co-chairperson of The Left alongside Katja Kipping.
Alternative for Germany is a right-wing populist political party in Germany. AfD is known for its Euroscepticism, as well as for opposing immigration to Germany. As a right-wing party, AfD is commonly positioned on the radical right, a subset of the far-right, within the family of European political parties that does not oppose democracy.
Erklärung 2018 was an open letter in Germany calling for intellectuals to provide support for protests against what the document describes as mass immigration into Germany. Initially published on the internet with 34 signatories from prominent German figures, the document was later turned into a formal petition to the Bundestag. The letter was notable to uniting formerly disparate political tendencies to legitimize right-wing and anti-immigrant sentiment in mainstream German politics.
Nicole Stephanie Gohlke is a German politician.
Amira Mohamed Ali is a German politician and member of the Bundestag since 2017. From 12 November 2019 till October 2023, she was the parliamentary co-chairperson of The Left alongside Dietmar Bartsch. In October 2023, she left The Left alongside others like Sahra Wagenknecht to found a new party. Amira is the chairwoman of the board of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht-Association which was founded to prepare a new party in January 2024.
Caren Nicole Lay is a German politician. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009 and has been deputy chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2017. From 2012 to 2018, she was one of the deputy chairpersons of her party. In November 2019, Lay unsuccessfully applied to succeed Sahra Wagenknecht as co-chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag. She was defeated by Amira Mohamed Ali in a competitive vote.
Social democracy originated as an ideology within the labour whose goals have been a social revolution to move away from purely laissez-faire capitalism to a social capitalism model sometimes called a social market economy. In a nonviolent revolution as in the case of evolutionary socialism, or the establishment and support of a welfare state. Its origins lie in the 1860s as a revolutionary socialism associated with orthodox Marxism. Starting in the 1890s, there was a dispute between committed revolutionary social democrats such as Rosa Luxemburg and reformist social democrats. The latter sided with Marxist revisionists such as Eduard Bernstein, who supported a more gradual approach grounded in liberal democracy and cross-class cooperation. Karl Kautsky represented a centrist position. By the 1920s, social democracy became the dominant political tendency, along with communism, within the international socialist movement, representing a form of democratic socialism with the aim of achieving socialism peacefully. By the 1910s, social democracy had spread worldwide and transitioned towards advocating an evolutionary change from capitalism to socialism using established political processes such as the parliament. In the late 1910s, socialist parties committed to revolutionary socialism renamed themselves as communist parties, causing a split in the socialist movement between these supporting the October Revolution and those opposing it. Social democrats who were opposed to the Bolsheviks later renamed themselves as democratic socialists in order to highlight their differences from communists and later in the 1920s from Marxist–Leninists, disagreeing with the latter on topics such as their opposition to liberal democracy whilst sharing common ideological roots.
Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, officially known as BSW—For Reason and Justice, is a registered association created on 26 September 2023 by members of the German political party The Left for the purposes of founding a new political party. The plans for the new party were presented at a federal press conference on 23 October 2023 by Bundestag members Sahra Wagenknecht, Amira Mohamed Ali, and Christian Leye, The Left in North Rhine-Westphalia former managing director Lukas Schön, and the public administration specialist Ralph Suikat.
Sandra Kaudelka is a German documentary film director.
