Gregor Gysi

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Gregor Gysi
President of the Party of the European Left
In office
17 December 2016 – 15 December 2019
Preceded byPierre Laurent
Succeeded byHeinz Bierbaum
Leader of the Opposition
In office
17 December 2013 – 12 October 2015
ChancellorAngela Merkel
Succeeded bySahra Wagenknecht
Dietmar Bartsch
Leader of The Left in the Bundestag
In office
18 October 2005 – 12 October 2015
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded bySahra Wagenknecht
Dietmar Bartsch
Member of the Bundestag
for Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick
Assumed office
18 October 2005
Preceded bySiegfried Scheffler
Berlin state politics
(2001–2002)
Mayor of Berlin
In office
17 January 2002 – 29 August 2002
Governing MayorKlaus Wowereit
Preceded byKlaus Böger
Succeeded byHarald Wolf
Senator for Labour, Economics and Women of Berlin
In office
17 January 2002 – 29 August 2002
Governing MayorKlaus Wowereit
Preceded byJuliane von Friesen
Succeeded byHarald Wolf
Member of the Berlin House of Representatives
for Marzahn-Hellersdorf 5
In office
29 November 2001 – 6 August 2002
Preceded byMario Czaja
Succeeded bySteffen Zillich
Early federal politics
(1989–2001)
Leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism in the Bundestag
In office
3 October 1990 – 2 October 2000
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byRoland Claus
Leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism
In office
18 December 1989 – 31 January 1993
Preceded byhimself (as Leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany)
Succeeded byLothar Bisky
Member of the Bundestag
for Berlin-Hellersdorf-Marzahn
(Volkskammer; 1990)
In office
3 October 1990 – 1 February 2002
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byBärbel Grygier
Member of the Volkskammer
for Berlin
In office
5 April 1990 – 2 October 1990
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byConstituency abolished
Leader of Socialist Unity Party of Germany
In office
9 December 1989 – 17 December 1989
Preceded byEgon Krenz
Succeeded byhimself (as Leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism)
Personal details
Born
Gregor Florian Gysi

(1948-01-16) 16 January 1948 (age 76)
Lichtenberg, East Berlin, Soviet occupation zone of Germany, (now Germany)
Political partyThe Left (2007–)
Other political
affiliations
WASG (2005–2007)
Party of Democratic Socialism (1989–2007)
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1967–1989)
Spouse
Andrea Gysi
(m. 1996; div. 2013)
Children3
ParentKlaus Gysi (father)
ResidenceBerlin-Pankow
Alma materHumboldt University of Berlin
Occupation
  • Politician
  • lawyer
Websitegregorgysi.de

Gregor Florian Gysi (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʁeːɡoːɐ̯ ˈɡiːzi]; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney, former president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left (Die Linke) political party.[1]

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[edit]

Gysi was born in Berlin-Lichtenberg in East Berlin, Soviet Zone of Germany. His father was Klaus Gysi,[2] 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.[3] He is of partial Jewish ancestry; his paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers.[3][4] One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian.[3] His sister, Gabriele, is an actress who left East Germany in 1985. Today, she is chief dramaturge at the Volksbühne in Berlin. [5]

Career[edit]

Pre-1989[edit]

Gysi's 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 Germany's 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 government's Travel Bill, which authorised mass public demonstrations. This led to a mass rally on East-Berlin's Alexanderplatz on 4 November[6] 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[edit]

Gregor Gysi at the Alexanderplatz demonstration in November 1989

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. [7]

In December 1989, Egon Krenz, the last Communist leader of East Germany, resigned all of his posts. Gysi was elected as the party's 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.[8]

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[edit]

In the first post-reunification all-German elections, he was elected to the Bundestag from Berlin's 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 party's parliamentary group.

In 1992, it was alleged Gysi was an informer (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) of East Germany's 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 state court ruled in Gysi's favour in a complaint against Bärbel Bohley, Gysi's 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 Bundestag's 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 Mark. 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.[citation needed]

In 2000, he resigned as chairman of the PDS's parliamentary group, but continued as an active member of the party. Following the victory of a "Red-red" (SPD-PDS) coalition in the 2001 Berlin state election, he was elected Senator for Economics, Labour, and Women's Issues and Deputy Mayor. He emphasised practical issues and advocated the reinstitution of some of what he sees as the better aspects of East Germany's 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's undisputed front man in many people's minds and continued to appear in public. In May 2005, when Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder planned 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 ElectoralAlternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), under the new name Left Party.PDS, with Gysi at times sharing a platform with WASG's Oskar Lafontaine, former finance minister (in the first months of the Schröder government) 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".[9] 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."[10]

In the 2021 German federal elections Gysi once more won his constituency of Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick. While the Left came up short of the five percent electoral threshold, his win, together with those of Gesine Lötzsch in Berlin-Lichtenberg and Sören Pellmann in Leipzig II, qualified the party for list seats proportional to its vote. Under longstanding German law, a party can bypass the electoral threshold by winning three constituency seats.

Media activities[edit]

Gysi is one of the most present politicians in German entertainment Media. He regularly appears on political entertainment talk shows and is host of conversation programs himself.[11]

In 2019, Gregor Gysi stated to the Bundestag administration that he had received fees for almost 90 lectures, discussions and conversations. On average he has one appearance per week. He also earns money from jobs as lawyer and book publishing.[12]

Controversies[edit]

Stasi informant "IM Notar"[edit]

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".[13]

"Toiletgate" (2014)[edit]

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[14][15] from which he wished to dissociate the party.[15]

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.[16][17][18]

Comments on Germans and Immigration (2015)[edit]

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."[19][20][21] 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.

References[edit]

  1. ^ bbc news, Profile, bbc.co.uk; accessed 16 September 2015.
  2. ^ Sandford, John (1999). Encyclopedia of contemporary German culture. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415245885. OCLC 48138199.
  3. ^ a b c Whitney, Craig R. (15 December 1989). "Upheaval In The East; East German Asks Help of U.S. In Keeping His Country Separate". New York Times. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  4. ^ Kamp, Konstantin. "Frage zum Thema Familie". Abgeordnetenwatch.de. Archived from the original on 21 June 2010. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
  5. ^ "Irene Olga Lydia Gysi". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  6. ^ "Alexanderplatz: Plenty of Space for Free Speech". Sites of Unity (in German). Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  7. ^ "Gregor Gysi: Größte Demo der DDR", zeitzeugen-portal, 20 September 2011, retrieved 2 July 2019[dead link]
  8. ^ Thompson, Wayne C. (2008). The World Today Series: Nordic, Central and Southeastern Europe 2008. Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: Stryker-Post Publications. ISBN 978-1-887985-95-6.
  9. ^ Gregor Gysi. (2014). Europe and the Crisis in Ukraine: Is the International Community facing a new East-West Conflict? Archived 17 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, VIII (3), 75–87.
  10. ^ Assembly, Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. "Statements". Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  11. ^ Bullion, Constanze von (14 January 2018). "Das knifflige Leben des Gregor Gysi". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2024.
  12. ^ Holscher, Max; Pauly, Marcel (16 August 2019). "Bundestag: Das sind die Top-Verdiener unter den Abgeordneten". Der Spiegel (in German). ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
  13. ^ Stefan Berg; Susanne Beyer; René Pfister (7 October 2017). "Feigheit, meinetwegen". Spiegel-Gespräch: Der Linkenpolitiker Gegor Gysi, 69, über sein Aufwachsen in der DDR-Elite, die Gründe für die Wut vieler Ostdeutsche und seine notorische Neigung zur Pointe. 41/2017. Der Spiegel: 48. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  14. ^ Delfs, Arne (12 November 2014), "Israel Critics Chase Left Leader in German Parliament", Bloomberg News
  15. ^ a b "Gysis ungebetene Gäste" Archived 23 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Die Zeit, 11 November 2014.(in German)
  16. ^ Mikcis, David (10 March 2015). "Wild Thing: Max Blumenthal's Creepy Anti-Zionist Odyssey". Tablet. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  17. ^ Weinthal, Benjamin (15 November 2014), "German politicians, media outraged over leftists' anti-Israel 'toiletgate'", The Jerusalem Post, retrieved 21 May 2015
  18. ^ "Israel critics chase Gysi into bathroom stall", The Local, 12 November 2014, retrieved 18 June 2023
  19. ^ Neurupinner Bilderbogen (11 May 2015), "Gregor Gysi zum Thema: Schöner leben ohne Nazis", YouTube, archived from the original on 12 December 2021
  20. ^ Hildebrandt, Tina (10 September 2015), "Gregor Gysi: "Man muss sich auch beherssen"", Die Zeit
  21. ^ Naber, Ibrahim (7 May 2016), "Zu viele Migranten wollen sich gar nicht integrieren", Die Welt

External links[edit]

Preceded by
Egon Krenz (as General Secretary)
Chairman of the SED
1989
Succeeded by
Himself as chairman of the PDS
Preceded by
Himself as chairman of the SED
Chairman of the PDS
1989–1993
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Post created
Chairman of the PDS Parliamentary Group
1990–2001
Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister for Economy, Labour and Women in Berlin
2001–2002
Succeeded by
Preceded by Chairman of the Left Party Parliamentary Group
2005–2015
Succeeded by