Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative
Which party was Gregor Gysi a member of from Dec 2005 to Jun 2007?
Gregor Gysi Gregor Florian Gysi ( ; born 16 January 1948 ) is a German attorney , president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left ( Die Linke ) political party . He belonged to the reformist wing of the governing Socialist Unity Party of Germany at the time of the pro-democracy transition inspired by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev . He has strongly denied allegations that he used to assist the Stasi , the East German secret police . He was the last leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and led the effort that transformed it into the post-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism ( PDS ) , forerunner of The Left . Family background . Gysi was born in Berlin-Lichtenberg in East Berlin , Soviet Zone of Germany . His father was Klaus Gysi , a high-ranking official in East Germany who served as the Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973 . His mother , Irene Olga Lydia Gysi ( née Lessing ) ( 1912–2007 ) , was the sister of political activist Gottfried Lessing , who was married to British writer and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing during his exile in Southern Rhodesia . The surname Gysi is of Swiss-German origin . He is of partial Jewish ancestry ; his paternal grandmother was Jewish , as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers . One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian . His sister , Gabriele , is an actress , who left East Germany in 1985 . Today , she is chief dramaturge at the Volksbühne in Berlin . Career . Pre-1989 . Gysis political career began in the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED ) of East Germany , to which he was admitted in 1967 . In 1971 he became a licensed attorney , and during the 1970s and 1980s defended several prominent dissidents , including Rudolf Bahro , Robert Havemann , Ulrike Poppe , and Bärbel Bohley . In addition to his legal work , Gysi emerged as one of East Germanys leading Gorbachev-inspired political reformists within the SED , especially towards the end of the 1980s . In 1989 , he and a group of lawyers presented a counter-draft to the governments Travel Bill , which authorised mass public demonstrations . This led to a mass rally on East-Berlins Alexanderplatz on 4 November in which he spoke and called for reforms , including free elections . In December 1989 , he became a member of a special SED party session investigating official corruption and abuse of power . Fall of Communism . In an interview conducted in 2011 , Gysi recalled that in late 1989 he had become the attorney for several of the people who were arrested in the first early public protests . As such he became known to leading figures in the Artistic and Cultural unions and was contacted by a group of actresses about the legality of a large demonstration . He recalls having examined the laws and advising them that they could apply for such a permit from the police and the worst outcome would be that their request could be denied , but they would not be breaking any law or doing anything illegal . He further recalls assisting the group in requesting and completing the appropriate forms and paperwork required for such a permit . In December 1989 , Egon Krenz , the last Communist leader of East Germany , resigned all of his posts . Gysi was elected as the partys chairman . He did not , however , become the leader of East Germany ; the SED had abandoned its monopoly of power on 1 December . In his first speech , Gysi admitted that the SED had brought the country to ruin , repudiating everything it had done since 1949 . He declared that the party needed to adopt a new form of socialism . To that end , he immediately set about transforming the SED into a democratic socialist party . Before the year was out , the last hardliners in the SED leadership had either resigned or been pushed out . On 16 December , the SED was renamed the Socialist Unity Party – Party of Democratic Socialism ( SED-PDS ) , it later became simply the Party of Democratic Socialism ( PDS ) . Gysi remained as party chairman , and in March 1990 was elected to the Volkskammer in the first free election of that body , serving there until it was dissolved upon German reunification on 3 October 1990 . Post-unification . In the first post-reunification all-German elections , he was elected to the Bundestag from Berlins Hellersdorf–Marzahn constituency , and served there until 2000 . He remained chairman of the PDS through 1998 , and then from 1998 to 2000 served as chairman of the partys parliamentary group . In 1992 , it was alleged Gysi was an unofficial collaborator ( Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter , IM ) or informant of East Germanys Ministry for State Security ( the Stasi ) . He denied these allegations , and the matter was largely dropped due to his parliamentary immunity . In 1995 , the Hamburg regional court ruled in Gysis favour in a complaint against Bärbel Bohley , Gysis former client , who had accused him of Stasi collaboration . However , the allegations were raised again in 1996 , and this time the Bundestag voted to revoke his immunity and proceed with an investigation . In 1998 , the Bundestags immunity committee concluded that Gysi had been a collaborator with the Stasi from 1978 to 1989 under the name IM Notar , and fined him 8,000 Deutsche Marks . However , both the Free Democratic Party and his own PDS disputed the verdict , and Gysi appealed against the finding . Despite the affair , he retained his seat in the Bundestag in the 1998 elections . In 2000 , he resigned as chairman of the PDSs parliamentary group , but continued as an active member of the party . Following the victory in Berlins 2001 municipal elections of a coalition of the PDS and the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( SPD ) , he was elected Senator for Economics , Labour , and Womens Issues and Deputy Mayor . He emphasised practical issues and advocated the reinstitution of some of what he sees as the better aspects of East Germanys system , such as extended child-care hours and a longer school day . After a scandal involving his use of airline bonus miles he had acquired on trips as a Bundestag member , he resigned on 31 July 2002 from the Berlin city government . The resignation was a blow to his public can-do image , but he has recovered from that to some extent in the wake of increasing public opposition to a number of new policies of the federal government , like the Hartz reforms lowering unemployment benefits to the levels of mere subsistence welfare , which he strongly opposes . In late-2004 , he survived brain surgery and a heart attack . Formerly a heavy smoker , Gysi quit smoking as a result of surviving the heart attack . Gysi remained the PDS undisputed front man in many peoples minds and continued to appear in public . In May 2005 , when Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced plans to call an early election in September , many prominent PDS leaders including chair Lothar Bisky called on Gysi to front their campaign . He was a lead candidate of the PDS , and returned to the Bundestag as the member for Berlin Treptow – Köpenick . The PDS fought the election in an alliance with the new western-based Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative ( WASG ) , under the new name The Left Party.PDS , with Gysi at times sharing a platform with WASG leader Oskar Lafontaine , former finance minister and formerly party leader of the SPD . In June 2007 , the PDS and WASG formally merged to form a united party called The Left . In 2014 , Gysi wrote his analysis on the contemporary Ukraine crisis in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs , where he described similarities between the United States and Russia in their transgressions of international law . Gysi calls for a new Ostpolitik to prevent war and promote democracy and freedom in Russia . In 2015 , Gysi was one of the leading supporters of Greece during the Greek government-debt crisis . He described the current German government as blackmailers . Gysi is an outspoken supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly , an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations . This is due to his belief in the need for functioning and democratically legitimate global politics . Controversies . Stasi informant IM Notar . Gysi continues to deny allegations , which first surfaced in 1992 , that he was a Stasi informant ( inoffizieller Mitarbeiter ) , though there are no doubts about their close cooperation . Invited in 2017 to spell out who , other than himself , IM Notar could possibly be , he replied that he had a strong suspicion , backed by a huge amount of information , adding pointedly that whenever the allegations that he himself was IM Notar have come before a court , he has always won . In the absence of certain proof , he is not prepared to disclose the identity of the true IM Notar . Toiletgate ( 2014 ) . In November 2014 , after being invited by Inge Höger and Annette Groth , also members of The Left ( Die Linke ) to talk with them in the Bundestag , journalists Max Blumenthal and David Sheen learned that Gysi , tried to cancel the meetings on the grounds that Blumenthal and Sheen held extremist views from which he wished to dissociate the party . Gysi fled , followed by the two men and other parliamentary members down a parliament corridor and into a bathroom in an incident referred to as toiletgate . After this event , Blumenthal and Sheen were banned from ever setting foot in the Bundestag again . Comments on Germans and Immigration ( 2015 ) . In a 2015 interview , Gysi stated that Every year more Germans die than are born . Fortunately , this is due to the fact that the Nazis do not reproduce particularly well and therefore , we depend on immigrants from other countries . The comparison of all Germans to Nazis and the statement that it was good that Germans had a declining birth rate generated significant criticism from the public . External links . - Will Germany Go Left of the Left ? by Markus Deggerich , Der Spiegel , 25 September 2009 - Portrait at the website of the parliamentary group of the Left Party - Biography at Deutsches Historisches Museum