1. Sahra Wagenknecht was a member of the Bundestag from 2009 to 2025, where she represented The Left until 2023.
53 Facts About Sahra Wagenknecht
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Sahra Wagenknecht has been a controversial figure throughout her career due to her hardline and populist stances, statements about East Germany, immigration and refugees, her opposition to gender affirming care, and her political movement Aufstehen.
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From 2020 onward Sahra Wagenknecht was less active in parliament, but often interviewed by German media.
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Sahra Wagenknecht is not a member of any parliamentary committee.
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Sahra Wagenknecht ran as the Chancellor candidate of the BSW in the 2025 German federal election.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was born on 16 July 1969 in the East German city of Jena.
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Sahra Wagenknecht's father disappeared in Iran when she was a child.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was cared for primarily by her grandparents until 1976, when she and her mother moved to East Berlin.
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Sahra Wagenknecht completed her Abitur exams in 1988 and joined the Socialist Unity Party in early 1989.
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From 1990, Sahra Wagenknecht studied philosophy and modern German literature as an undergraduate in Jena and Berlin, completing the mandatory coursework, but did not write a thesis as she "could not find support for her research aims at the East Berlin Humboldt University".
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Sahra Wagenknecht then enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Groningen, completing her studies and earning an MA in 1996 for a thesis on the young Karl Marx's interpretation of Hegel, supervised by Hans Heinz Holz and published as a book in 1997.
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Sahra Wagenknecht joined the PDS's Communist Platform, a Marxist-Leninist faction.
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Sahra Wagenknecht successfully contested a seat in the 2009 federal election in North Rhine-Westphalia.
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Sahra Wagenknecht became the Left Party's spokesperson for economic politics in the Bundestag.
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Early in 2012, the German press reported that Sahra Wagenknecht was one of 27 Left Party Bundestag members whose writings and speeches were being collected and analyzed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
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Sahra Wagenknecht has been one of the main driving forces in the formation of Aufstehen, a left-wing political movement established in 2018, which exists outside of traditional political party structures and has been compared to the French movement La France Insoumise.
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In March 2019, Sahra Wagenknecht announced her withdrawal from her leadership role within Aufstehen, citing personal workload pressures and insisting that after a successful start-up phase, for which political experience was necessary, the time had come for the movement's own grass roots to assume control.
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Sahra Wagenknecht complained that the involvement of political parties at its heart had "walled in" the movement.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was elected co-leader of the Left's Bundestag group in 2015 alongside Dietmar Bartsch succeeding long-time leader Gregor Gysi.
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Bartsch and Sahra Wagenknecht were the Left's lead candidates for the 2017 federal election.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was again nominated as the lead candidate on the party's North Rhine-Westphalia list in the 2021 federal election.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was re-elected, but described the results as a "bitter defeat" for her party.
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The initiators said they wanted to prevent Sahra Wagenknecht from building a new party with the resources of Die Linke.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was her party's candidate for chancellor in the 2025 federal election, running as the first candidate on the state list of the North Rhine-Westphalian BSW.
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Sahra Wagenknecht herself described her idea of a new economic policy in her 2013 book Freedom instead of Capitalism as "creative socialism".
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Sahra Wagenknecht referred to the pioneers of ordoliberalism, whose ideas are otherwise more commonly represented in the Free Democratic Party.
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In 2013, during the financial and the European debt crisis, Sahra Wagenknecht proposed a debt cut and certain subsequent measures to end the euro crisis, while at the same time generating economic growth and regulating the financial markets.
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Sahra Wagenknecht previously rejected accusations that she sought to establish control bodies for various industries and cited as inspiration the ideas of economist Mariana Mazzucato, who is considered a source for economics minister Robert Habeck, whom Wagenknecht frequently criticises.
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Sahra Wagenknecht rejects a return to the socialism of East Germany.
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In 2000, Sahra Wagenknecht called for an overcoming of capitalist production relations.
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Sahra Wagenknecht showed understanding for the economic policies of the states of Cuba and Venezuela.
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In 2007 Sahra Wagenknecht has argued that the Left Party must pursue radical and anti-capitalist goals, thereby remaining distinct from the more moderate Social Democratic Party and Green Party.
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Sahra Wagenknecht has criticized the Left Party's participation in coalition governments, especially the Berlin state government, which has made cuts to social spending and privatized some services.
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In 2017, Sahra Wagenknecht called for the dissolution of NATO and for a new security agreement that links Germany and Russia.
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Sahra Wagenknecht has expressed strong support for the rise of left-wing leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chavez, and for SYRIZA's 2015 electoral victory in Greece.
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Sahra Wagenknecht serves as a spokesperson for the Venezuela Avanza solidarity network, and was an alternate on the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Mercosur.
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Sahra Wagenknecht opposed sanctions against Russia over the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and, in a speech in September 2022, accused the German government of "launching an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier".
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Sahra Wagenknecht's speech was applauded by The Left party leadership and by the far-right Alternative for Germany.
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Sahra Wagenknecht's speech prompted the resignation of two high-profile party members.
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Sahra Wagenknecht outlined what a peace agreement could look like, and did not rule out security guarantees or a military obligation to provide Ukraine with military assistance if Russia were to break a peace agreement.
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Sahra Wagenknecht could imagine China, Turkey or France as guarantor powers.
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Sahra Wagenknecht called for Gerhard Schroder's "line to the Russian president" to be used for negotiations.
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Amidst the Gaza war, Sahra Wagenknecht described the Gaza Strip as an "open-air prison".
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Sahra Wagenknecht has criticized Angela Merkel's refugee policies, arguing that her government has not provided the levels of financial and infrastructural support required to avoid increasing pressure on local authorities and the labor market, thereby exacerbating tensions in society.
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Sahra Wagenknecht has claimed that Merkel's policies were partly to blame for the 2016 Berlin truck attack.
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In 2024, Sahra Wagenknecht voted against a bill that would make it easier to change one's gender.
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When referencing said bill, Sahra Wagenknecht stated "your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby".
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Sahra Wagenknecht has opposed proposals for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, arguing they should be a personal choice.
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Sahra Wagenknecht's positions have been compared to those of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
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In November 2021, Left Party colleagues such as Maximilian Becker, Martina Renner, and Niema Movassat suggested that Sahra Wagenknecht leave the party.
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On 12 November 2011, politician Oskar Lafontaine stated publicly that he and Sahra Wagenknecht had become "close friends".
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Sahra Wagenknecht married Lafontaine, 26 years her senior, on 22 December 2014.
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Sahra Wagenknecht was one of the highest earning German politicians in the Bundestag in her last tenure.