Party on the lookout for identity: How East German is the Left actually?

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Saxony-Anhalt's left-wing top candidate Eva von Angern

Photo: M. Popow / imago images / Metodi Popow

On a Monday evening in May, the left evokes its faded status as an Eastern party.

"We have neglected the subject," says the Saxony-Anhalt left-wing top candidate Eva von Angern.

She herself never took up the topic either.

Your party has invited to the Moritzhof in the state capital for the »Magdeburg Speech«.

Von Angern talks about the failure to recognize CVs, non-aligned wages and pensions - and why only the left can do something about it.

For a few weeks now, the party in Saxony-Anhalt has been massively focusing on East Germany in the state election campaign.

A poster with the slogan »Take command of the Wessis« sparked a heated discussion in the state.

The employers' association distanced itself, the Catholic Church disapproved of the left.

The left's eastern course is an attempt to polish up its old image: the left as an advocate for the East Germans.

Most recently, the party had lost voters in this region.

Although it usually still achieves better results than in the West, the party was able to convince fewer and fewer people, especially in Brandenburg and Saxony.

The government question for East Germans

There are also some changes in the party's membership composition, as SPIEGEL's internal evaluations show.

While older party members are increasingly dying in the east and the numbers are going down overall, membership is growing in the western federal states.

While the Eastern associations used to have significantly more members, East (including Berlin) and West are now roughly on par with around 30,000 members each.

The East German left also has various explanations for the reason.

The top candidate from Angern, for example, says that for many years it was not one of her main concerns to make politics specifically for East German.

"I realized self-critically that this topic was not a priority for me," she says.

You didn't want to have anything to do with it, counted on recognition.

"I wanted to bring my political issues forward and had the feeling that I would be more likely to be heard if I didn't talk about East Germany."

It was only when she was preparing for the election campaign that she looked closely at the numbers and really became aware of the injustice.

The wage differences, the pensions, the unequal opportunities even for those born after the fall of the Wall.

That's why she made this one of her main campaign points.

"The Left is the only party that repeatedly advocates the interests of East Germans outside of the anniversaries," says the Bundestag member Matthias Höhn from Saxony-Anhalt.

The discussion about the East has changed noticeably in recent years, which the party should also take into account.

But Höhn sees one problem above all: "Our long-time voters are rightly asking themselves what a vote brings to a party that has not been able to implement its demands in a federal government for decades."

Only in federal politics, for example, could something be done about the injustice in the pensions of East Germans.

“That is why the left must stand there with a clear will to govern.

Only then can we really implement something of our program for the East Germans, «said Höhn.

What do the comrades in the west say?

What Höhn describes is the course of the younger East Germans in the party.

The new chairwoman Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, who wants to make her party in the federal government fit for the government, also stands for this.

Hennig-Wellsow comes from Thuringia, where the Left has achieved the greatest success so far in Germany and where Bodo Ramelow is the Prime Minister.

Surveys also show that the electorate is very supportive of government participation.

In other words, those who vote for the left also want a government with the left.

This is especially true for East Germans.

Hennig-Wellsow also repeatedly emphasized the interests of the East Germans, which no other party would represent.

This is how the questions of the East and government are knitted together.

For some comrades in the old federal states, however, this is not so well received.

With the anti-Wessi poster, the left in Saxony-Anhalt caused at least some irritation among their party friends from North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.

Should the left now generally oppose Wessis in order to be successful in the East?

Von Angern denies this and also found very conciliatory words at Moritzhof.

The party had received feedback on the controversial poster from all over the republic.

Some were in the usual tenor, combined with the allegation of lackluster against the East Germans.

Others, on the other hand, had come forward, some from the deepest part of Baden-Württemberg, expressed their approval and recognized the injustice as a problem.

As a leftist, that makes her positive.