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56-512: The Blaubuch ("Blue Book") is an inventory of "cultural lighthouses": culturally important sites in the eastern Länder of Germany. It was first published in 2001, as an evaluation study proposed by the then Secretary of Culture of the German Federal Republic, Michael Naumann , and written by the librarian Paul Raabe  [ de ] ; further editions have since been published. It lists sites of European standing in

112-460: A Left Party Bundestag deputy from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, had worked for several years for the Stasi. While the first accusation proved to be false, Heilmann's connection with the Stasi remained controversial. Though Heilmann had served as a bodyguard, not as an informant or secret police officer, he violated a Left Party regulation obliging candidates to reveal Stasi involvement. Nevertheless,

168-515: A Marxist-Leninist party. During the second session the party accepted a proposal from Gysi that the party adopt a new name, "Party of Democratic Socialism". Gysi felt a name change was necessary to distance the reformed party from its repressive past. The proposal came directly after a speech from Michael Schumann highlighting the injustices perpetrated under the SED, and distancing the conference from certain high-profile party leaders – notably Honecker and

224-536: A coalition with the Left Party, or even just form a minority coalition with the Greens tolerated by the Left Party. In the end Naumann's desired partners, the Greens sided with what they'd expressed as their second choice in advance, von Beust's conservative CDU , even though this prior announcement during their campaign had cost them 2.7%, dropping from 12.3% in the previous 2004 elections down to 9.6%. According to

280-566: A faction of hardline Marxists-Leninists opposing reforms had split away from the party and had re-established the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which included Erich and Margot Honecker in its ranks. This was not enough to save the party when it faced the voters for the first time in the 1990 East German elections —the first and only free elections held in East Germany. The party was roundly defeated, winning only 66 seats in

336-451: A liberal and honest, cosmopolitan intellectual throughout his campaign, Naumann personally invited bad luck when he proved not the best orator in public and in TV interviews; a TV clip of him stumbling and stuttering when asked to deliver a particularly short yet concise message about his campaign promises was uploaded to YouTube numerous times. In above-mentioned interview, von Beust also mentioned

392-504: A minority of WASG members opposed the merger of the two parties scheduled for June 2007, the new party – The Left – was on Germany's political stage before the federal elections. The PDS had experience as a junior coalition partner in two federal states — Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania —where it co-governed until 2006 with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Political responsibility has burnished

448-555: A number of academic essays on theories of revolution. Naumann worked for Der Spiegel and for Die Zeit , for the latter as a chief-editor and later as a publisher. In 1985, Naumann became publisher of the publishing house Rowohlt Verlag . In 1995, he went to New York, first leading Metropolitan Books, then Henry Holt . He hosted a highbrow political talk show in German television, Talk im Palais from 2004 until becoming SPD candidate for mayor of Hamburg in 2007. From 2010 to 2012, he

504-528: A party infamous for its rigid Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy and police-state methods. A special party congress convened in the Dynamo-Sporthalle in East Berlin on 8–9 December 1989 and elected Gregor Gysi as new party Chairman, along Hans Modrow and Wolfgang Berghofer as his deputies. By the time of a special party conference on 16 December 1989, it was obvious that the SED was no longer

560-748: A seat in the SPD fraction of the Hamburg parliament directly after the elections that had taken place on 24 February. On 22 May he announced that he would resign from his seat on 15 June to go back to his former occupation as publisher of Die Zeit . The Left Party.PDS In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS ( Die Linkspartei.PDS ) entered an electoral alliance with the Western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of

616-406: A secret meeting between Berlin chapters of the SPD and the Left Party. Shortly thereafter, one reporter approached Naumann asking him whether he personally had been present at the meeting, to which Naumann indignantly swore "by the lives of my children" that he had not been there, which the media in turn generally took as a tasteless, pretentious kind of oath not to co-operate with the Left Party after

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672-486: A threat in one speech early in the campaign, provided ammunition for charges that the Left was attempting to exploit German xenophobia. Although Germany's once-powerful trade unions distanced themselves from The Left in the 2005 federal election, some union leaders expressed interest in cooperating with the party after the election. A number of regional trade union leaders and mid-level functionaries were active supporters. At

728-471: A way even they will understand: Nyet !" ( "Ich sage es ihnen so, daß es sogar die zahlreichen alten Freunde [...] von der KPD unter ihnen verstehen: Nyet !" ) Naumann could credibly do so, as he emphasized having escaped the Communist regime of East Germany as a child with his family, and also because of his treatment of these issues as a journalist, such as when he had been the editor-in-chief of

784-670: Is married to Marie Warburg, daughter of Eric Warburg and granddaughter of Max Warburg . From 2012 to 2021, Naumann was director of the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. Naumann was born as the son of a lawyer in Köthen , Anhalt . His father was killed in 1942 in the Battle of Stalingrad . At the age of eleven, Naumann had to flee to Hamburg with his mother in 1953. Because of contacts with her Jewish relatives who had emigrated to

840-681: The German Democratic Republic and the party base itself. He was replaced by Egon Krenz , who was not, however, able to stop the collapse of the party and the government. On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell , borders between East and West Germany were reopened and on 1 December 1989 the Volkskammer abrogated the constitutional provisions that gave the SED a monopoly of power in the GDR. On 3 December 1989, Krenz and

896-515: The party list element of Germany's seat linkage system of mixed-member proportional representation . These include Lothar Bisky , Katja Kipping , Oskar Lafontaine , and Paul Schäfer . Besides Lafontaine, a number of other prominent SPD defectors won election to the Bundestag on the Left Party list, including a prominent leader of Germany's Turkish minority, Hakkı Keskin , German Federal Constitutional Court justice Wolfgang Neskovic , and

952-504: The 2002 debacle, the PDS adopted a new programme and re-installed a respected moderate, long-time Gysi ally Lothar Bisky , as chair. A renewed sense of self-confidence soon re-energised the party. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament , the PDS won 6.1% of the vote nationwide, its highest total at that time in a federal election. Its electoral base in the eastern German states continued to grow, where it ranked with

1008-556: The 2005 federal election, the Left Party became the fourth-largest party in the Bundestag, with 54 Members of Parliament (MPs) ( full list ), ahead of the Greens (51) but behind the Free Democratic Party (61). Three Left Party MPs were directly elected on a constituency basis: Gregor Gysi , Gesine Lötzsch and Petra Pau , all in Eastern Berlin constituencies. In addition, 51 Left Party MPs were elected through

1064-408: The 2006 elections for the city-state government of Berlin, losing nearly half of its vote and falling to 13%—slightly ahead of the Greens. Berlin's popular Social Democratic mayor, Klaus Wowereit, nevertheless decided to retain the weakened party as his coalition partner. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Left Party suffered no serious losses and remains the third-strongest party in the state. However, it

1120-552: The 400-seat Volkskammer , finishing a distant third behind the East German wings of the Christian Democratic Union and the recently refounded Social Democratic Party . In the first all-German elections in 1990 , the PDS won only 2.4% of the nationwide vote. However, a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law allowed eastern-based parties to qualify for representation if they won five percent of

1176-416: The Bundestag with an enlarged caucus of 30 deputies. In the 1998 federal election , the party reached the high-water mark in its fortunes by tallying 5.1% of the national vote and 36 seats, thus clearing the critical 5% threshold required for guaranteed proportional representation and full parliamentary status in the Bundestag. The party's future seemed bright, but it suffered from a number of weaknesses, not

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1232-579: The CDU and SPD one of the region's three strong parties. However, low membership and voter support in Germany's western states continued to plague the party on the federal level until it formed an electoral alliance in July 2005 with Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG), a leftist faction of dissident Social Democrats and trade unionists which had split away from the SPD some months prior, with

1288-563: The Christian Democrats and Greens together lost half a million votes to the resurgent party. Exit polls showed the Left had a unique appeal to non-voters: 390,000 Germans who refused to support any party in 2002 returned to the ballot box to vote for the Left Party. The Left's image as the last line of defense for Germany's traditional "social state" ( Sozialstaat ) proved to be a magnet for voters in western as well as eastern Germany. All other established parties had ruled out

1344-616: The Left Party membership in Schleswig-Holstein narrowly passed a vote of confidence in Heilmann, and he continued to serve in the Bundestag. Charges of a Stasi past were also a factor in the Bundestag's decision to reject Lothar Bisky as the Left Party's candidate for the post of parliamentary vice president. Though Bisky's candidacy was supported by the Greens and by some Christian Democratic and Social Democratic leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, after two failed votes

1400-485: The Left Party's predecessor PDS had been commonplace for years since German reunification in 1990 but always taboo in the West). The election in Hamburg was not far off when Beck made these ambiguous statements in favor of such minority coalitions tolerated by the Left Party, whereas before, he had utterly denied it. This caused a huge controversy in the media in the final crucial week of the Hamburg election, overshadowing

1456-751: The Left Party.PDS was a co-founder of the Party of the European Left and was the largest party in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European Parliament . On 18 October 1989, longtime East German leader Erich Honecker was forced to resign from his post of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), under pressure from both civil rights movements in

1512-608: The Left's reputation as a pragmatic, rather than ideological party. It remained strong in local government in eastern Germany, with more than 6,500 town councillors and 64 elected mayors. The party continued to win eastern voters by emphasizing political competence and refused to be labelled as merely a "protest party", although it certainly attracted millions of protest voters in the federal election, profiting from growing dissatisfaction with high unemployment and cutbacks in public health insurance , unemployment benefits, and labour rights . After German reunification, leading members of

1568-468: The Leftist, but strictly anti-Communist political journal Der Monat (founded by Melvin J. Lasky ) from 1978 until 1987. von Beust retorted Naumann's authenticity on the issue by saying that he believed Naumann's personal honest intention on not co-operating with the Left Party, but alleged that it wouldn't be up to Naumann in the end, rather to "more radical" figureheads in the SPD. Presenting himself as

1624-466: The PDS were frequently suspected of having connections to East Germany's secret police, the Stasi (State Security Service). Shortly after the 2005 federal election, Marianne Birthler, the official in charge of the Stasi archives, accused the Left Party of harboring at least seven former Stasi informants in its newly elected parliamentary group. At about the same time, the media revealed that Lutz Heilmann ,

1680-715: The Social Democrats in advance. After a recent election in Hesse just a few weeks before, which failed to bring a majority to the Social Democrats, party head Kurt Beck left it open to local Social Democrats in West Germany to form local Minority government coalitions with the Greens and/or the FDP that would be tolerated by the emerging, controversial Left Party (in eastern parts of Germany, full-blown coalitions with

1736-455: The Social Democrats. They gained 3% compared to 2004, and even about 10–15 percent compared to the polls made at the time when Naumann had been nominated as mayor candidate in late 2007. In fact, the only demographic that prevented Naumann from becoming mayor were senior citizens of 60 and older, which prompted Kurt Beck to say that the SPD would be "the coming force of the future" in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Naumann stuck to his promise not to form

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1792-514: The Statistical Office of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, almost all of the votes lost by the Greens went to the Left Party, in spite of Naumann's expressed appeal to the voters not to do so, repeatedly saying that "every single vote for the Left Party will be one more vote that will keep von Beust in office." ( "Jede Stimme für die Linkspartei ist eine Stimme für den von-Beust-Senat." ) As he'd previously said, Naumann nonetheless took

1848-560: The USA, she had been targeted by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR. Naumann graduated with a PhD in political science from Munich University in 1969 and continued his studies as a Florey scholar at Queen's College, Oxford . Naumann wrote his dissertation on Karl Kraus 's Der Abbau der verkehrten Welt ("On overcoming a wrong world"), his habilitation on Structural Change of Heroism, from Sacred to Profane in 1978; he has also written

1904-427: The city's public state hospitals and parts of the Hamburg harbor. Beck's ambiguous statements about local co-operations with the Left Party forced Naumann to repeatedly and adamantly deny any co-operation with the Left Party after the elections no matter what election results would follow, even going so far as stigmatizing them as Soviet Communists several times during his campaign, repeating the line, "I will say it in

1960-427: The country's last Communist leader, Egon Krenz . Above all Schumann's speech opened the way for the party to reinvent itself, using a phrase that was later much quoted: "We break irrevocably with Stalinism as a system!" A brief transitional period followed, during which the party was named "Socialist Unity Party of Germany - Party of Democratic Socialism" (SED - PDS). By the end of 1989, the last hardline members of

2016-429: The eastern Länder – museums of national cultural heritage, and sites associated with important German personalities – and it documents the particular efforts of the federal, state and local governments to restore the cultural infrastructure. Michael Naumann Michael Naumann (born 8 December 1941) is a German politician, publisher and journalist. He was the German secretary of culture from 1998 until 2001. He

2072-407: The elections, even though Naumann had only spoken on whether he had been at that particular meeting. According to pollsters, approximately 3% of the crucial swing votes in the final week deserted the Social Democrats, and either stayed at home or switched to the conservatives. This deprived Naumann of the chances to form a coalition with the Greens. Still, the election numbers in Hamburg were good for

2128-545: The entire SED politburo resigned and were all expelled from the party by the central committee , which in turn dissolved itself soon after that. This empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling socialist class, who looked to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev 's glasnost and perestroika as their model for political change. Reformers like authors Stefan Heym and Christa Wolf and attorney Gregor Gysi , lawyer of dissidents like Robert Havemann and Rudolf Bahro , soon began to re-invent

2184-468: The former SPD leader in Baden-Württemberg, Ulrich Maurer . When the votes were counted, the party doubled its federal vote from 1.9 million (PDS result in 2002) to more than 4 million—including an electoral breakthrough in industrial Saarland where, for the first time in a western state, it surpassed the Greens and FDP due, in large part to Lafontaine's popularity and Saarland roots. It is now

2240-409: The former SPD leader, Oskar Lafontaine —were nominated on the PDS electoral list. To symbolize the new relationship, the PDS changed its name to The Left Party/PDS or The Left/PDS, with the letters "PDS" optional in western states where many voters still regarded the PDS as an "eastern" party. The alliance provided a strong electoral base in the east and benefited from WASG's growing voter potential in

2296-500: The issues of Naumann's campaign themes – social welfare, better education, and improvement of Hamburg's infrastructure. A specially pronounced issue Naumann dwelled on during his campaign was acceptance of referendums and honesty on behalf of the city's government, as incumbent conservative mayor Ole von Beust was known for having had ignored a number of referendums and lying about the issues they were involved with, especially selling off of community property to private investors, such as

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2352-491: The least of which was its dependence on Gysi, considered by supporters and critics alike as a super-star in German politics who stood in stark contrast to a colourless general membership. Gysi's resignation in 2000 after losing a policy debate with party leftists soon spelled trouble for the PDS. In the 2002 federal election , the party's vote sank back to 4.0%, and was able to seat only two back-benchers elected directly from their districts, Petra Pau and Gesine Lötzsch . After

2408-554: The merged list being called the Left Party. In the 2005 federal election the Left Party received 8.7% of the nationwide vote and won 54 seats in the German Bundestag. After marathon negotiations, the PDS and WASG agreed on terms for a combined ticket to compete in the 2005 federal election and pledged to unify into a single left-wing party in 2006 or 2007. According to the pact, the parties did not compete against each another in any district. Instead, WASG candidates—including

2464-573: The party withdrew his nomination. Five months later, the Left Party's Petra Pau was elected vice president. In the Saxony , the chairman of the Left Party group, Peter Porsch, faced losing his mandate in the Saxon parliament because of his alleged Stasi past. In May 2006, all parties represented in the parliament, except the Left Party, voted to initiate proceedings against Porsch. However, in November,

2520-473: The party's Central Committee had either resigned or been pushed out; meanwhile, by 1990, 95% of the SED's 2.3 million members had left the party. On 4 February 1990, the party was formally renamed the PDS. However, neo-Marxist and communist minority factions continued to exist. By the time the party had formally renamed itself into the PDS, it had expelled most of the remaining prominent Communist-era leaders from its ranks—including Honecker and Krenz. Meanwhile,

2576-512: The possibility of a coalition with the Left Party prior to the election (in other words, a cordon sanitaire ), and refused to reconsider in the light of the closeness of the election result, which prevented either of the usual ideologically-coherent coalitions from attaining a majority. The possibility of a minority SPD–Green government tolerated by the Left Party was the closest the Left Party came to potential participation in government at this election. The Left Party suffered serious losses in

2632-483: The second proposed design by Peter Eisenman instead, including an underground "Ort der Information", a place of information, which provides the visitors with introductory information on the history of the Holocaust. In late 2007 Naumann became the official Social Democratic Party of Germany candidate for the mayor election in Hamburg 2008 on 24 February that year. The 2008 election in Hamburg caused setbacks for

2688-407: The second strongest party in three states, all of them in the former GDR, (Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia) and the third strongest in four others, all but Saarland in the former GDR, (Saarland, Berlin, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). It was the only party to win over protest voters broadly across Germany's political spectrum: nearly one million Social Democratic voters defected to the Left while

2744-528: The state's constitutional court dismissed the complaint against Porsch on technical grounds. The SED had sequestered money overseas in secret accounts, including some which turned up in Liechtenstein in 2008. This was returned to the German government, as the PDS had rejected claims to overseas SED assets in 1990. The vast majority of domestic SED assets were transferred to the GDR government before unification. Legal issues over back taxes possibly owed by

2800-419: The vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 federal election ). On 16 June 2007, the two groupings merged to form a new party called The Left ( Die Linke ). The party had many socially progressive policies, including support for legalisation of same-sex marriage and greater social welfare for immigrants. Internationally,

2856-501: The vote in the former East Germany. As a result, the PDS entered the Bundestag with 17 deputies led by Gysi. However, it was only reckoned as a "group" within the Bundestag, and not a full-fledged parliamentary faction. In the 1994 federal election , in spite of an anti-communist "Red Socks" campaign by the then-ruling Christian Democrats aimed at scaring off eastern voters, the PDS increased its vote to 4.4%. More importantly, Gysi

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2912-530: The vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the Alliance '90/The Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic Party and become the third-strongest force in the Bundestag. But, alarmed by the Left's unexpected rise in the polls, Germany's mainstream politicians hit back at Lafontaine and Gysi as "left populists" and "demagogues" and accused the party of flirting with neo-Nazi voters. A gaffe by Lafontaine, who described "foreign workers" as

2968-476: The west. Gregor Gysi, returning to public life only months after brain surgery and two heart attacks, shared the spotlight with Lafontaine as co-leader of the party's energetic and professional campaign. Both politicians co-chaired The Left's caucus in the German Bundestag after the election. Polls early in the summer showed the unified Left list on a "high-altitude flight", winning as much as 12% of

3024-549: Was chief-editor and publisher of Cicero . Between 1998 and 2001, Naumann served as the first Secretary of Culture (German title: Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien ) for the federal government before returning to the publishing world. His most remembered act is declining the first design for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on grounds of its monumental abstraction, and choosing

3080-549: Was dropped as a coalition partner by the Social Democratic premier, Harold Ringstorff, and now heads the opposition in the state assembly. Despite its losses in Berlin, support for the Left Party/PDS and its WASG ally remains stable at about eight to ten percent of the vote. Cooperation between the two parties on a national level and in their single Bundestag delegation has been largely free of tensions. Though

3136-464: Was reelected from his Berlin seat, and three other PDS members were elected from districts in the former East Berlin, the party's power base. Under a provision of the German constitution intended to benefit regional parties, a party that wins at least three directly-elected seats is eligible for proportional representation , even if it falls short of the five percent threshold. This allowed it to re-enter

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