Germany's Left Rises Anew

Abstract

top financial institutions. Today, the 67year-old firebrand is still battling the forces of global capital, but not as leader of Germany's storied Social Democrats. Lafontaine incensed his colleagues of decades by suddenly jumping ship abandoning the party of Willy Brandt in favor of the Left Party, a hodgepodge of western radicals and former East German communists. He may no longer be, by any account, Europe's most dangerous man, but in this election year he is the flagging Social Democrats' worst nightmare come true. Oskar Lafontaine wouldn't be dangerous at all if it weren't for his counterpart, the East German-born and bred lawyer Gregor Gysi. This unlikely tandem is the one-two punch of the republic's newest party, the Left Party, which has fundamentally altered Germany's political landscape, and by extension that of Europe. Both are short, compact men with famously oversized egos. Yet they come from utterly different worlds: Gysi stems from one of East Germany's most prominent Jewish families. Although a card-carrying communist, the young attorney made his reputation defending anticommunist dissidents put on trial by the state. Today, the always dapper, silvertongued, talk-show star has the status of a folk hero in eastern Germany, where he draws crowds of thousands in cities like Schwerin, Cottbus, and Frankfurt am Oder. In places like these, former East German market towns, the Left Party rules the roost. The two men's adversaries and they are many label them demagogues, spoilers, and rabble-rousers. And they insist that Gysi worked for the East German secret police, the Stasi, something he emphatically denies.