Bodo Ramelow is a German politician who has served since 4 March 2020 as Minister-President of Thuringia,an office he previously held from 2014 to 5 February 2020. He is the first head of a German state government to serve non-consecutive terms in office since Eberhard Diepgen,who served twice as Governing Mayor of Berlin. A member of The Left,he previously chaired the party's group in the Landtag of Thuringia. On 8 October 2021,he was elected President of the Bundesrat. His one-year term started on 1 November 2021.
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.
Bärbel Beuermann is a German politician,and was a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia as a list MP since the state election held on 9 May 2010. She is the joint leader of the party in the Landtag,and is also a member of The Left's national party executive. After the election of 2012 in North Rhine-Westphalia she retired from the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Angelika Gramkow is a German politician.
Ursula Fischer is a German former national politician (PDS).
Helmut Holter is a German politician of the party The Left. From 1998 to 2006 he was Minister for Labor and Construction of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. From April 2009 to September 2016 he was chairman of The Left parliamentary group in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Since August 2017 he has been Minister for Education,Youth and Sport in the state of Thuringia.
Emma Sachse was a German activist for feminist and other political causes. She was a member of the Thuringia parliament ("Landtag") and later became chair of the Workers' Welfare Organisation in Thuringia.
Dagmar Enkelmann is a German politician.
Ina Leukefeld is a German politician for Die Linke and a member of the Regional Parliament of Thuringia.
Almuth Beck is a German former teacher and politician (SED/PDS).
Siegfried Rudolf Geißler was a German composer,conductor,hornist and politician. He founded the Thüringen Philharmonie Suhl in 1979. After the Wende,he was a member of the New Forum who was elected to the first Landtag of Thuringia in 1990. As its senior,he was its Father of the House and opened the inaugural session.
Özlem Demirel is a German politician who is currently a serving representative of the party The Left as a Member of the European Parliament.
Nicole Stephanie Gohlke is a German politician.
Thomas Karl Leonard Kemmerich is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who served as the Minister President of Thuringia from 5 February to 4 March 2020. With a tenure of only 28 days,he was both the shortest-serving Minister President of Thuringia and the shortest-serving head of a state government in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The next Thuringian state election will be held no later than between August and December 2024 to elect the 8th Landtag of Thuringia. The current government is a minority government consisting of The Left,the Social Democratic Party (SPD),and The Greens,led by Minister President Bodo Ramelow of The Left.
The 2020 Thuringian government crisis,also known as the Thuringia crisis,was triggered by the election of Thomas Kemmerich (FDP) as Thuringian Minister President with votes from the AfD,CDU and FDP on February 5,2020. The election attracted considerable national and international attention because,for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,a Minister President was elected with votes from a far-right populist party,in this case the AfD.
Susanne Hennig-Wellsow is a German politician. She was federal co-chairwoman of The Left from 2021 to 2022 and has served as a member of the Bundestag for Thuringia since 2021. Previously,she was a member of the Landtag of Thuringia from 2004 to 2021,leader of the Thuringia branch of The Left since November 2013,and leader of the state parliamentary group since December 2014.
Anja Siegesmund is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. Since 2014,she has served as Minister of the Environment in the state government of Thuringia. Since 2015,she has also been Second Deputy Minister-President of Thuringia. From 2009 to 2014 she was leader of the Greens parliamentary group in the Landtag of Thuringia. She was a member of the Landtag from 2009 to 2015,then again from 2019 to 2020.
Birgit Pommer is a German politician of The Left who has served as President of the Landtag of Thuringia since November 2019. She is the first member of her party to serve as speaker of any state parliament. Prior,she served as Minister for Infrastructure and Agriculture in the first Ramelow cabinet.
Gerd Schuchardt is an electrical engineer who built his career and reputation in East Germany before 1990 in microprocessor technology and related forward-looking branches of science. He was interested in politics,but had avoided involvement in the country's ruling SED (party) or any of the various the various so-called "bloc parties" which it controlled. In January 1990,with the winds of political change - somewhat implausibly,as many still thought at the time - blowing across from the Kremlin in Moscow,the party leaders in East Berlin no longer felt able to stand against domestic pressures for a return to democratic politics after more than half a century of one-party dictatorship. Gerd Schuchardt became an activist member of the re-awakening Social Democratic Party. After reunification in October 1990 state-level democratic politics returned to Thuringia:Schuchardt became a leading figure in Thuringian state politics,selected by party members as the Social Democratic Party's lead candidate in the 1994 Thuringian state election. He led his party to what turned out to be its best electoral result in Thuringia to date. In the resulting "Grand coalition" government that ensued he served as vice-minister-president until 1999 under the leadership of Bernhard Vogel (CDU) and as Minister for the Sciences,Research and the Arts.
