AGI Profiles: Sahra Wagenknecht

Lucas Holloway

Halle Foundation/AGI Intern

Lucas Holloway is a Halle Foundation research intern at AGI in spring 2025. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, he a senior at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is pursuing a dual Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Economics. In addition, Mr. Holloway spent a semester abroad in Berlin, Germany, last spring, gaining firsthand experience on the importance of U.S. strategic and socioeconomic ties with our European allies.

Before joining AGI, Mr. Holloway was a legislative intern for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Capitol Hill, developing expertise in public policy work, constituent services, and the American legislative process. At Johns Hopkins, he was also president of the Hopkins Lecture Series, where he invited experts to speak to the Baltimore community about domestic and international issues.

Mr. Holloway’s research interests at AGI include German politics and elections, transatlantic diplomacy, and global economic trends.

Member of the Bundestag and Leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance

When Germany headed to the polls in February 2025, voters found themselves deciding between a familiar slate of options, ranging from the Green Party to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Yet, while these established parties sought to maintain their dominance in the Bundestag amidst growing public dissatisfaction, a new contender had entered the fold, threatening to disrupt Germany’s traditional balance of power: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW). Founded and led by its namesake, Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW aimed to shake up the existing political order by appealing to the so-called “disenchanted voices” of Germany—those who feel fed up with mainstream parties and believe their concerns are no longer represented in the halls of power.

At first, there appeared to be merit to such appeals, as Wagenknecht led the BSW to third place in three states averaging around 14 percent of the vote in last year’s state elections in eastern Germany. It claimed 6 percent in the European Parliament elections. However, the party suffered defeat in the 2025 federal elections, failing to pass the 5 percent electoral threshold by an agonizingly close margin of 13,435 votes (or 0.03 percent) that has prompted legal disputes and calls for a recount from the BSW. Nevertheless, while the federal future of the BSW and Wagenknecht are currently in doubt, they’re still poised to be a significant force in local east German politics for the foreseeable future—driven in large part by Wagenknecht’s dynamic and outsized role in the party (as its name suggests). Meteor or shooting star, her path to this moment was forged long before the BSW’s rise, driven by Germany’s changing political tides over the last three decades and a distinct yet multifaceted set of ideological convictions that has resonated with millions across the country.

Early Life and Career

Sahra Wagenknecht was born in Jena, East Germany, on July 16, 1969, to a German art dealer mother and an Iranian father who came to West Berlin as a student. When Wagenknecht was three, her father disappeared back to Iran, leaving her in the care of her grandparents in a small village in Thuringia before moving with her mother to East Berlin when she was seven. Always an outsider, Wagenknecht has described her upbringing as “tough,” sharing in interviews how she was regularly insulted for her mixed race and darker skin tone.

As a young adult in Berlin, Wagenknecht embraced the world of politics, joining the East German Communist Party just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in hopes of preventing her homeland’s collapse. Unsuccessful in her attempt, Wagenknecht went to university after the events of 1989, eventually earning a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Groningen, where she wrote her thesis on the young Karl Marx’s interpretation of Hegel. However, politics was never far from Wagenknecht’s mind, and following East Germany’s reunification with the West, she joined the Communist party’s successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). With her calm demeanor and youthful charm, Wagenknecht quickly established herself as a leading voice of the PDS’ “Communist wing,” railing against capitalism and eastern Germany’s submission to Western institutions as a representative to the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.

Media attention followed Wagenknecht to Die Linke (The Left)—formed in 2007 from the merger of the PDS with a west German left-wing group—where she became a prominent spokeswoman and “icon” for the party in the Bundestag after being elected in 2009. As she rose through the ranks in Die Linke, she became closely acquainted with Oskar Lafontaine, a former Social Democratic leader, prominent leftist, and one of Die Linke’s founders—eventually dating and marrying him in 2014. After Lafontaine stepped down from party leadership for health reasons, Wagenknecht assumed an even greater role in the party, moderating her tone and emerging as a key opposition leader in 2015 while serving as Die Linke’s head in the Bundestag until 2019.

However, Wagenknecht’s leading position was not without its controversies, as she repeatedly clashed with other high-ranking members of Die Linke over the 2015 migrant crisis and the coronavirus pandemic among other issues. In such cases, Wagenknecht stood decidedly to the right of the rest of the party, criticizing then-Chancellor Angela Merkel for letting too many refugees enter the country while also speaking out against the “endless lockdowns” sparked by COVID-19. These repeated intra-party conflicts came to a head in late 2023, as insufficient success in stemming the rise of the far-right AfD and disagreements over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led Wagenknecht to resign from Die Linke and establish her own party with like-minded Linke allies, including Lafontaine—the BSW.

Wagenknecht’s Linkskonservatismus Vision

Wagenknecht and the BSW, writ large, are unique to the German political landscape in that they do not fit neatly into established descriptions of left- or right-wing ideologies. Indeed, although Wagenknecht holds typical leftist positions on economic policy, she professes deeply right-wing stances on certain social issues that have caused her to be described as a “populist” and “left conservative” (or Linkskonservatismus) by German political experts. Combined with Wagenknecht’s large public persona, this flexible positioning may help explain why the BSW rose to prominence so quickly, as she provides an anti-establishment outlet that dissatisfied Germans can support without endorsing the AfD’s far-right authoritarianism.

Concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for instance, Wagenknecht has publicly spoken out against German sanctions on Russia, accusing the German government of “launching an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier” that has worsened its cost of living crisis. Wagenknecht also downplayed the likelihood of Russia invading Ukraine before the full-scale invasion, and—although she has since condemned Putin for his actions—she maintains it occurred due to legitimate security concerns over NATO expansion in the region. In recent months, Wagenknecht has pushed for a halt to arms shipments and for Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Russia, arguing Ukraine cannot win militarily and that their “uncompromising attitude” only causes more death and destruction—a stance critics contend echoes Kremlin propaganda.

Similarly, she has adopted a notably conservative stance on German refugee policy, which became one of the key issues in the 2025 federal elections following recent high-profile attacks perpetrated by migrants in Germany. Wagenknecht believes refugees have “overwhelmed” the country, demanding strict limits on migrants and those seeking asylum in Germany. She has called it “irresponsible” that during a time when the German healthcare and pension systems are understaffed and overburdened, the federal government continues to allow mass immigration into the country. Wagenknecht also claims that Germany’s “naive” attempts to welcome more immigrants have led to “a disproportionate increase in knife crime, sexual offenses, and religiously-motivated terrorism,” arguing that many of these migrants have not been properly vetted. In early 2025, Wagenknecht and the BSW underscored their anti-migrant position by supporting CDU leader and likely Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s contentious immigration law in the Bundestag, although it narrowly failed after heated debate.

Finally, Wagenknecht has taken aim at cultural issues prevalent within Germany’s left wing. Dubbing them “lifestyle leftists,” Wagenknecht contends that established progressive parties have directly contributed to the rise of the extremist AfD by alienating themselves from their traditional working-class base. Rather than prioritizing blue-collar concerns, she believes these political organizations exclusively cater to the (largely symbolic) preferences of “cosmopolitan” elites who do not reflect the wider German population—projecting a sense of moral superiority and intolerance that now makes them unpalatable. In particular, she decries their emphasis on identity politics that focus more one’s racial, sexual, and academic background over material issues that seek to improve the lives of the working class. According to Wagenknecht, if leftists wish to regain political prominence, they must once again advocate for strong redistributive and welfare policies while distancing themselves from social justice and other “woke” initiatives that currently dominate their messaging.

Looking Ahead

Before February 23rd, 2025, Wagenknecht and the BSW’s message appeared near-unstoppable, having risen out of the ashes of a decimated Die Linke to stand as kingmakers-in-waiting in the Bundestag just over a year after their founding. Indeed, they had already achieved notable electoral success, joining the governing coalitions in two German Landtage and gaining representation in the European Parliament in a sign of their growing influence in German politics. However, this all came crashing down after the 2025 federal elections, as it was the BSW and not their far-left rivals who surprisingly failed to pass the electoral threshold—with Die Linke netting 9 percent of the vote after surging in the final weeks of the campaign.

Preliminary electoral analysis attributes this sudden turn of events to the fact that the left wing reoriented themselves after Wagenknecht quit, emphasizing progressive issues and harnessing youth discontent over the economy and housing through social media to drive massive turnout. Conversely, the BSW may have been hurt by their repeated calls for an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine—particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial remarks on the issue—along with reports of ongoing infighting within the party. In addition, the BSW campaigned little and failed to attract anticipated party-switchers from the AfD, with many viewing Wagenknecht as merely the “least bad other option” rather than a compelling alternative for disenchanted voters.

All Wagenknecht could muster after her agonizingly close loss was allegations of electoral irregularities, threatening legal action after claiming that many overseas German voters were unable to receive their ballots due to tight deadlines and that some municipalities had undercounted their votes. While these complaints make their way through the legal system (unlikely to change the election’s ultimate results), Wagenknecht has stayed mum about her political future, with some suggesting she should withdraw from political life while others believe she’ll play a greater role within the BSW’s governing factions in the east before mounting a comeback in 2029. Indeed, despite her uncertain position now, it may be too early to count out Wagenknecht for good—after all, if history is any indication, Sahra Wagenknecht has a way of keeping herself in the political spotlight.