Another Gain by Germany’s LEFT party

 Watching the results for Hamburg’s election today, it appears that the LEFT party has gained some seats in the state assembly, duplicating the party’s successes in Hesse, Bremen, and Lower Saxony.  The CDU will most likely continue to govern Hamburg in a new coalition with the Green Party, due to the poor showing again by the Liberals (FDP).

The results show that the LEFT party was able to weather the firestorm caused by the "bring back the Stasi" comments by Christel Wenger.  Still, the LEFT party struggles – especially in the west – with the GDR heritage it is still associated with.  I asked Olaf Petersen, a friend of this blog and a district organizer for the LEFT party in Nordfriesland, to comment on the Wenger/DKP flap.  I had interviewed Petersen last summer about his party activism. Petersen confirms that there are indeed LEFT party members who are nostalgic for the good old days of the Wall and Stasi repression:

Es gibt sie tatsächlich bei uns,
DDR-Nostalgiker, die Schießbefehl, StaSi, Mauer und staatliche Repression
verharmlosen und bagatellisieren. Einer meinte mal in meiner Gegenwart, man
solle sich doch über die politischen Todesurteile in der DDR nicht aufregen –
in Deutschland kämen heute jährlich tausende von Menschen bei Verkehrsunfällen
um’s Leben und darüber regt sich ja auch keiner auf. Meine Frage, ob ich ihm
denn mal den Unterschied zwischen einem Todesurteil und einem Verkehrsunfall
erklären soll, blieb unbeantwortet.
Wir Linken sollten uns von diesen Leuten distanzieren – von der anderen Seite
des politischen Spektrums (CDU/CSU) erwarten wir doch auch, dass sie sich nicht
von Verfassungsfeinden unterwandern lassen. (Yes, there really are such people (in the LEFT party): those who are nostalgic for the GDR, who make light of th the shoot-to-kill order, Stasi, the Wall, or who minimize the state repression. Some one actually said in my presence that we shouldn’t get so upset about the political executions in the GDR, since every year thousands of Germans die in traffic-related accidents and no one gets too excited about that.  I asked him if I needed to explain the difference between a traffic accident and a political execution, but I didn’t get a response.  We in the LEFT party need to distance ourselves from these people; but we also insist that the parties on the other side of the political spectrum  – the CDU/CSU – not allow permit enemies of the constitution to infiltrate them.)

Also worth reading is this post by Der Spiegelfechter, who points out that the GDR is a really a taboo topic in Germany today.  It cannot be mentioned in any context other than total condemnation.  No doubt, this inability to deal with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung ) in a differentiated manner is fueling the GDR nostalgia.