Contact Admin. Die Linke , also commonly referred to as the Left Party German: It is considered to be left-wing populist [4] by some researchers. Since mid, its co-chairs have been Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger. In the Bundestag the party won 64 out of seats after polling 8. Its parliamentary group is the fifth largest among the six groups in the German Bundestag, ahead of the Greens.
The party is the most left-wing party of the six represented in the Bundestag , and has been called far-left by some news outlets, but according to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution Verfassungschutz , the party as such is not to be regarded as extremely left or a threat to democracy. According to official party figures, the Left Party had 63, registered members as of December , [22] making it the fifth-largest party in Germany.
They had mostly kept their own counsel during the Honecker era. However, the upheaval in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall gave them an opening. After protests, the party was forced to give up its monopoly of power on 1 December Honecker's successor, Egon Krenz , resigned two days later, and Gysi was named party chairman.
By the end of , the last hardline members of the party's Central Committee had either resigned or been pushed out. By the time of a special congress in December , the party was no longer a Marxist—Leninist party, though neo-Marxist and communist minority factions continued to be part of the party.
At the congress, the party adopted a program of democratic reform. To try to distance itself from its repressive past and repair its reputation with the public, the party renamed itself "Socialist Unity Party-Party of Democratic Socialism", but dropped the SED part altogether in February Gysi remained its leader, and soon became one of the most well-known faces within German politics. By the end of February, the PDS had expelled most of the remaining prominent Communist-era leaders from its ranks - including Honecker and Krenz.
