The outspoken former finance minister can still draw the crowds, reports Derek Scallyin Leipzig
IN THE autumn of 1989, the people of Leipzig were the first to take to the streets in protests that eventually toppled the Berlin Wall and East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED).
On a balmy evening 20 years on, Leipzig’s streets are full once more.
With a throaty roar, the crowd on Burgplatz cheers on to the stage the last man standing on the German left: Oskar Lafontaine.
The same Lafontaine who, in 1990, described calls for German unity as “historical nonsense”, teaming up with the very party which, two decades and two name changes ago, was the SED. How times change.
A gifted orator, Lafontaine explains why only the Left Party can rewire Germany’s new, unloved reality of disposable workers, outlandish bonuses and tax-free corporate profits.
“Whoever works has to be able to live from their salary,” declares Lafontaine to loud applause. His angry demand for minimum wages and a reversal of social reforms seems real, his solutions to the banking crisis pleasingly simple, as is his narrative of oppressed workers, greedy managers and their political marionettes.
The Left, he reminds the crowd, is the only German party calling for troops to be pulled out of their unpopular mission in Afghanistan.
Lafontaine, one of the political prodigies of Willy Brandt, invokes the memory of the former chancellor to ram his point home: “The Left are the only ones who stand by Brandt’s demand: ‘Let no war go out from German soil!’” Barely has he left the stage when a row breaks out between two listening Leipzigers: a twenty-something man and a woman 40 years his senior.
“I went on the streets 20 years ago calling for freedom, but what use is freedom if you can’t afford anything?” says Monika Bernau, a social welfare recipient wearing plastic shoes. Close to tears, she says the Left Party is the only valve for her anger at the broken promises of the established parties.
Hearing her out is politics student Jakub Müller, a Leipzig native from a family that opposed the SED regime.
“People are frustrated because they forget what’s been won in the last decades, freedom of speech and freedom of opinion above all,” says Müller. “The Left Party is an important opposition voice – it’s annoying how people believe their milk and honey promises.”
Everyone in Germany has an opinion on Oskar. For the political establishment, Lafontaine is a populist and a rabble rouser. For the Social Democrats, he is a traitor who threw in the towel as finance minister after just a year in office.
Leipzig photographer Rolf Seyboldt has spent 30 years photographing Lafontaine. Who does he see through the viewfinder?
“I see a man with a damaged psyche. His unyielding style is, I think, a result of the attack,” he says, referring to the 1990 knife attack on Lafontaine that almost killed him.
Whatever drives Lafontaine, he has used it to transform a greying regional party into a national political force comprising three generations: elderly SED true believers, middle-aged former SPD voters who defected in protest at Schröder-era reforms, and a younger globalisation critical crowd from Attac.
The camps disagree wildly on whether capitalism needs to be overhauled or overthrown, but they have fought a disciplined and unified campaign behind Lafontaine.
Student Sophie Dieckmann from eastern Berlin joined through Attac, much to the disgust of her father who was involved in the 1989 opposition.
“He sees the Left as the successor to the SED but I try to make it clear it’s not like that anymore,” she says. Her priority: to abolish the “competition society”.
At 66, this election is Oskar Lafontaine’s lap of honour. With support for the Left nearing that of the Greens, Lafontaine knows his eventual departure will remove one of the SPD’s last major reservations against joining forces in Berlin.
Oskar Lafontaine’s longed-for legacy: the man who unified the German left.
“I would describe myself as a follower of Oskar because I find him convincing, particularly on peace issues,” says bright-eyed student Simon Zeise. “The Sun called him ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’.
“That’s good enough for me!”