Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).Screengrab youtube
Almost three months after elections in the State of Thuringia, eastern Germany, a three-party coalition has been agreed between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party.
Party sources told the press on November 20 that a “pioneering consensus” had been reached. The leaders are expected to present the coalition agreement in the next few days.
The formal co-operation between the Conservative CDU and the BSW, formed in January 2024, is regarded as a novel feature for German politics.
BSW only came into existence when prominent far-left politician Sahra Wagenknecht broke off from the hard-left Die Linke party to form her own movement.
In 2018, the CDU had adopted a party resolution precluding any “coalition and other form of co-operation” both with [Die Linke] and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Die Linke is the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the state party of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), which ran from 1949 to 1990.
As the CDU wrote in a document explaining its 2018 resolutions: “The SED was responsible for the totalitarian dictatorship in the GDR … Political enemies and dissidents were not only spied upon and persecuted but also murdered in the GDR.…
“How can anybody ask the CDU to co-operate with the SED’s successor party which has never really distanced itself from this injustice?”
In Germany, Die Linke is sometimes sardonically referred to as the “wall-shooters’ party” as its predecessor was responsible for the more than 140 people killed by GDR border guards along the Berlin Wall.
Wagenknecht left the party together with several other party members in 2024 to form BSW with a strong focus on left-wing populism as well as a pro-Russian and anti-NATO stance.
CDU politicians have not been shy about denouncing the party, with representative Roderich Kiesewetter claiming without citation that the BSW is “the extended arm of the Kremlin”, warning that any co-operation with it would destroy his party.
Still, the Conservatives found themselves without any good option following the September 1 elections in Thuringia, after which AfD held 32 and BSW 15 of the 88 seats in the regional parliament.
The CDU holds 23 seats. For its local leader Mario Voigt to be in power, the party had to overcome its rejection of either AfD or the hard Left.
The decision to enter a coalition with BSW has reportedly strained CDU’s unity. Shortly after the Thuringia election, a group of 40 CDU representatives developed an initiative to expand the 2018 non-co-operation resolution to expressly include BSW – which has reportedly gathered more than 5,000 supporters since its inception.
Frank Sarfeld, one of the CDU initiators, said BSW and Sahra Wagenknecht stood against all the core values of his party – namely Western orientation, NATO membership, market economy and European unity.
While the CDU is opening itself up to the hard-left, the “cordon sanitaire” towards the Right remains as strong as ever.
In a speech in the German Bundestag on November 13, CDU leader Friedrich Merz repeated the standpoint that there should be no co-operation with the AfD in any shape or form.