He had long since retired from politics. Now there are rumors about him as a puppet master in Eastern politics. Oskar Lafontaine, husband of Sahra Wagenknecht, is said to be involved in the coalition talks with the CDU and SPD.
It is a cold Saturday evening in January 2016 when a few hundred leftists in Berlin-Schöneberg are listening intently to a Russian separatist leader. Alexei Markov, commander of the notorious separatist brigade “Prisrak” (“Ghost”) in Donbass, is the guest of honor at the left-wing Rosa Luxemburg Foundation via video link. He tells how he and his comrades are fighting against the Ukrainians, how they want to end “fascism in eastern Ukraine”. The audience applauds – including two icons of their party, Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine. She is giving a speech that evening, and he is supporting her.
The dynamic between the two is still the same eight years later. Wagenknecht is in the spotlight of federal politics. After the elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, she is the kingmaker – without the Russia expert, a government can hardly be formed. And her husband, Oskar Lafontaine, is supporting her as always. The 81-year-old actually left the political stage two years ago. And with a big bang. Shortly before the election in Saarland, he turned his back on the Left Party, which he himself had created 17 years earlier. He is now a member of the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance”. And perhaps much more than that.
Role within the BSW: Woidke counts on Lafontaine, the “pensioner from Saarland”
In Dresden, the Picturethere is a “persistent rumor” circulating: According to this, Lafontaine is personally involved in the coalition talks in Saxony. Not officially, but in the background. This is what is said by those close to the Saxon BSW-Top candidate Sabine Zimmermann announced. In all three federal states, a so-called blackberry coalition with the CDU and SPD is on the table. However, the conditions are extremely difficult, because the BSW insists on a no to US medium-range missiles in Germany and a halt to arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Is Oskar Lafontaine now the secret puppet master who is supposed to enforce his wife’s demands? The man from Saarland denies it. “The hot rumor in the Bild newspaper is a hoax,” says the former Prime Minister to the “Saarbrücker Zeitung”. The Saxon BSW leader Sabine Zimmermann also says: “Nonsense.”
But the election winner in Brandenburg, SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke, also expects that “a pensioner from Saarland” will lead the negotiations with him. That is what he told the taz According to the story, Lafontaine recently spoke in the Willy Brandt House. Lafontaine has a very special reputation there, because before leaving the Left Party, he had already broken with the Social Democrats. That was 25 years ago, when he gave up all his SPD posts in a dispute with former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. A short time later, he returned to the Bundestag with his new rival party, The Left.
This is where the Wagenknecht millions come from
Although the BSW was only founded at the beginning of this year, it achieved remarkable success in the eastern elections. The new party has not lacked financial support. A donation of more than five million euros to the BSW has attracted nationwide attention: the major donors are Lotte Salingré and Thomas Stanger, a married couple from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Rumors quickly circulated that the money could have come from Russia or from missing SED assets. “What nonsense,” says donor Lotte Salingré to the portal “t-online”. “We earned the money.” According to the report, the income comes from a stake in the company MA Lighting Technology GmbH, which specializes in stage lighting for large concerts – for artists such as Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Coldplay.
Wagenknecht in the name, Lafontaine’s content? Ramelow calls the BSW Lafontaine’s dream
Sahra Wagenknecht has probably learned a lot from her husband, who is 26 years older than her. When she left the Left at the end of last year to found the BSW, he always claimed that he only wanted to stay in the background – but the argumentative politician was never seen as a man in the background. The (still) Prime Minister of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, even described the founding of the BSW as the work of Oskar Lafontaine. “Now Oskar has created what he always dreamed of: a populist, nationally oriented party that presents itself as left-wing but is not very left-wing,” the Left politician told the Daily MirrorWhen Wagenknecht speaks, he hears Lafontaine.
CDU politician Philipp Amthor also shares in the ARD-Talk “Hart aber fair” against Lafontaine. When Wagenknecht explains that according to the constitution, state governments can take a position on the war in Ukraine, the 31-year-old intervenes: He would like to give her an example of “why it is good that state governments do not somehow pursue secondary foreign policy,” says Amthor. “When Helmut Kohl negotiated reunification in 1989/90, I am glad that your husband Oskar Lafontaine from Saarland was not asked to be Prime Minister.” Because he rejected unification. “Then we would still have a wall between East and West today,” says Amthor.
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