Political Ash Wednesday: Waiting for Wagenknecht

AAs CSU boss you can't fail on political Ash Wednesday, as Markus Söder you have to deliver. The attacks on political opponents must be effective, and the messages to one's own people even more so. The chairwoman of the BSW, Sahra Wagenknecht, is not subject to these constraints – but she is subject to her own constraints.

Wagenknecht and her colleagues can set their own Ash Wednesday standards. The BSW was only founded at the beginning of the year, it met for its first federal party conference in Berlin at the end of January, and the Bundestag recently recognized the nine MPs around Wagenknecht as a group. All firsts, the magic of the beginning, also here on Wednesday in Lower Bavaria.

But these premieres are subject to high pressure of expectations. The party got off to a late start in the super election year of 2024. The BSW has its sights firmly set on the European elections; many questions still need to be clarified for the state elections in the three eastern German states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. Wagenknecht's party must now constantly prove that it has the talent to function, says political scientist and long-time Ash Wednesday observer Heinrich Oberreuter.

Wagenknecht comes too late

Wagenknecht also has to function in its own way this Ash Wednesday in the Gasthaus Öller in the Schalding district of Passau. She knows this traditional Bavarian event from before, from her time with the Left. She once appeared alongside Gregor Gysi in nearby Tiefenbach, where her former party friends also meet on this day. The Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow speaks, and the party leader Janine Wissler.

Wagenknecht appears in Passau with the former left-wing politician and member of the Bundestag Klaus Ernst, and with the Passau city councilor Josef Ilsanker. It was supposed to start at ten o'clock in the Öller. When Wagenknecht isn't there shortly after ten, nervousness sets in. Curiosity about them is great. Wagenknecht is a savior who can lead Germany out of the crisis, says a visitor. She got one of the approximately 180 places in the inn. But the crowd was bigger. That's why there are additional places in a heated winter garden, with a live stream. There are people from Passover in the audience, but also people from outside, self-employed people and pensioners, and there are also some younger people.

When Wagenknecht comes into the hall at a quarter past ten, there is a lot of applause and sometimes even a standing ovation. Many people want to take photos.

Shortly afterwards, City Councilor Ilsanker kicks things off. The election year ahead of the BSW is “a mammoth task,” but the large number of visitors that day makes him hopeful. “I think we’ll get off to a good start.” He already has his sights set on the next political Ash Wednesday. Then he would ask whether the BSW could get the Dreiländerhalle. “The CSU can’t always get them,” he adds, earning a laugh.

Ilsanker speaks out against the absurd bureaucracy in Brussels, which makes the work of the municipalities unnecessarily difficult. He criticizes Green Party leader Ricarda Lang for her lack of knowledge about the actual amount of the pension. In the talk show “Markus Lanz” she estimated the average amount at 2,000 euros. “That made me crazy,” says Ilsanker. This statement from Lang showed very clearly “where the traffic lights are” and how out of touch with reality their politicians are.

Can the BSW Ash Wednesday?

At the BSW federal party conference, this misjudgment was often used as evidence of the arrogance of the ruling parties. Now Klaus Ernst is taking it up again. As with Ilsanker, his idiom also fits the event well. The dialectal coloring is evidence of the two's roots in Bavaria – a trump card that Wagenknecht, who was born in Thuringia, does not have. Using Lang as an example, Ernst complains about “politicians' loss of reality,” also with regard to energy policy, where people would rather buy expensive fracking gas than cheaper gas from Russia. If Lang seriously claims that Russian gas was never cheap and that people paid the price for it in the Ukraine war, then she probably never looked at the bills, jokes Ernst.