Sahra Wagenknecht’s defeat: Gera’s disgrace

And then, shortly after 3 p.m., it happened. Cheers sounded through the large hall of the Gera congress center on Saturday. Sahra Wagenknecht has lost. In absence, but very clearly. And in public.

61 members of the Thuringian BSW state association did what Wagenknecht wanted to prevent: You confirmed Katja Wolf as the state chair. The opposite candidate supported by the federal board – the member of the state parliament Anke Wirsing – received just 35 votes.

This means that Wolf can remain President of Vice Prime Minister and finance minister. An erosion of the coalition with the CDU and SPD has been averted for the time being. “I’m very happy,” she says star. “We continue to be our responsibility for Thuringia.”

And what does she say to the federal chairman? Wolf smiles relaxed. “I think Sahra has now understood that it is better to do it together and that she has to get along with me,” she replies. Then the next microphone is already waiting.

While Wolf gives interviews, the defeat of your opponents is completed. The martial candidate for the co-chair withdraws. The Weimar musician Gernot Süßmuth is therefore undisputed as the second state chairman. As desired by Wolf.

Wagenknecht’s general secretary, who had once again promoted Wolf’s replacement in Gera, tried to give the loser. “We would have found it smarter to separate party and government office,” he says star. “But that was a democratic choice, which of course we accept.”

The drama, which was presented in the real socialist ambience of Congress Center, has a long lead. He started with the Thuringian state election in September. At that time, the BSW achieved a record result of 15.8 percent. As in Saxony and Brandenburg, there was no majority beyond the AfD without his participation.

Wagenknecht feared that coalition compromises in the countries could endanger the radical populist front line for the federal election and tried to at least make government formations difficult with the CDU. She was successful in Saxony. But in Thuringia she ran at Wolf and her co-chair Steffen Schütz. The first major conflict came.

Then, however, the traffic light government and the new election, which is required to turn in, implodes to give in. The first and only CDU SPD-BSW coalition was formed in Erfurt.

But after the BSW missed the move into the Bundestag, the power struggle began again. The Thuringian government participation cost trust and voices, said Wagenknecht.

At the beginning of April, Secretary General Leye opened the direct attack. He publicly supported the martial candidates of Wirsing and several of their colleagues against the top of the country. It is not against Wolf, he said, but solely about relieving the cabinet members from party work and the stronger profiling of the BSW beyond the government.

In addition to animosities, competitive thinking and differences in content, there is a strategic conflict. The BSW wants to once again profile the majority in the federal board in the 2026 pending state elections as exclusively populist and fundamental-opposite power. Participation in a state government under the future Chancellor Party CDU looks more of a ballast.

For Wolf and her colleagues, however, Thuringia and their national association are at the center. You want to continue to rule.

It is precisely this fundamental dispute in Gera this Saturday, but this tries to blur the specially traveled general secretary Leye at the beginning of the party congress. Yes, there is “a different assessment of how we strategically position ourselves,” he says in his speech. But this is neither how the media claimed in their “legends” that “a power struggle” nor the attempt to burst the Thuringian government.

From a purely quantitative point of view, everything is very manageable. Only 90 of the almost 130 members of the state association came. They are observed by around 60 supporters and 30 journalists how they struggle through the long agenda.

There is a strange ambivalent mood in the hall. On the one hand, the combatants force themselves to diplomatic friendly. Wolf kept clapping at Leyes’ speech, which she even hugged for the television cameras. The Secretary General, in turn, commends Wolf for her commitment and wisdom.

On the other hand, the tension can be felt permanently. Leye confirms that trust has to be regained in Thuringia and says: “That is why the leadership has spoken in favor of separating the party and government.”

But he has to feel that the majority stand against it. Already in the morning he had secretly offered Wolf to support her re-election if she again accepted Wirsing as co-boss. But Wolf rejects. It is once again better prepared.

Two days earlier, her co-boss Schütz had dispensed with another candidacy. In parallel to the tactical withdrawal of the infrastructure minister, the simple base member Süßmuth was presented as a successor candidate in order to represent the separation of the party and government.

It is also Schütz who dares to escalate with Leye in Gera. The criticism of the coalition is “wrong and unfair”, he calls, in order to then criticize Berlin himself: “If only the federal executive board determines what is good and correct, and the state associations have to follow, then that is a deterrent.”

Now it will be loud. A supporter of Wirsing is indistinctly outraged by the microphone and attacks Schütz. It was wrong to “always” “Basen”, she calls. But it is booed. Then there is peace again.

How clear the majority is also shown in the statute debate. Four applications, which provide the separation of party, government offices and parliamentary mandates in different variants, are more or less clearly rejected.

And then Anke Wirsing keeps her application speech for the state chair. More precisely: she reads her text, praises “the political straightforwardness of Sahra Wagenknecht and the courage of her fellow campaigners” without whom the BSW does not sote in the state parliament. “They,” she says, “seems to have forgotten many.”

The longer savings read in Gera, the clearer it becomes clear that, in addition to quotes from the chairman Wagenknecht and general places, she has no own ideas. When asked by a member, what impulses she wanted to set, Wirsing replies that the new board has to decide.

Then Wolf appears. It requires “strength, assertiveness and experience” to lead a government and state party. “It just doesn’t work to send someone to the coalition committee,” she says. Incidentally, it is “humiliating” that no new members were still accepted. Then she looks at Leye directly and says: “It’s a shame that Christian didn’t say anything about it earlier.”

At the latest now it is clear that Wolf has won again. When the result is announced, it is at most surprising that it is so clear.

Wagenknecht’s general secretary stands in front of the hall and tries to demonstrate residue. “Now the new state board has to deliver,” he says. “In any case, we will be closely accompanied by Thuringia as the federal board.”

Leye is the only one to speak for the entire party. The founder, namesake and federal chairman, says about her shameful of Gera on Saturday: nothing.