The left-wing anti-immigration, pro-Russian, and Europhobic party Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW, its German acronym), founded in 2024 by the charismatic and controversial Sahra Wagenknecht, has become key for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to govern the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
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Despite the victory in the regional elections on Sunday, the far-right party lacks an absolute majority and, subjected to the cordon sanitaire (firewall as it is called in Germany) by the other parties, would have no chance of gaining power, but the BSW – which garnered 5.3% of the votes, giving it 5 seats in the Magdeburg Parliament – will come to its aid.
The founder Wagenknecht, who was not the candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, has said several times that she sees no sense in the firewall because it is “anti-democratic” and that, in the event of the election process of Ulrich Siegmund – the far-right candidate in Saxony-Anhalt – in the regional Parliament, the BSW would abstain in the third vote. In that third round, a simple majority is required, so Siegmund could be elected president with only the votes of his party.
No representation in the Bundestag
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), founded in 2025 as a split from the leftist party Die Linke, has great appeal in eastern Germany
The BSW, which was languishing amid internal struggles after failing to enter the Bundestag (lower house of the federal Parliament) in the 2025 elections, thus revives and projects its influence over the whole of German politics.
Sahra Wagenknecht, 57 years old, a media figure with great appeal in eastern Germany, has a very revealing biography. She was born in 1969 in Jena, a city in the state of Thuringia, then in the pro-Soviet German Democratic Republic (GDR). Her mother worked for the state managing works of art; she never met her Iranian father. She was raised by her grandparents until 1976 while her mother studied in East Berlin, and that year she moved there as well.
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In 1989, the twenty-year-old Sahra joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED, its German acronym), the single communist party of East Germany. In 1996 she graduated in Philosophy and Literature, and in 2012 she earned a doctorate in Economics.
In the meantime, she witnessed the evolution of her initial party. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the heirs of the old SED founded the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), whose leadership she was part of. In 2004 she was elected MEP. Shortly after, in 2007, the party Die Linke emerged from the merger of the PDS with a group of social-democratic dissidents led by Oskar Lafontaine. Politics touched Wagenknecht’s private life: in 2014 she married Lafontaine, who is now 83 years old; it is his fourth marriage, and her second.
In 2009, Wagenknecht was elected deputy in the Bundestag for Die Linke, and she held her seat legislature after legislature until the 2025 elections. It was at the end of 2023 when she made headlines by leaving Die Linke taking part of its leadership to found the BSW, which has representation in the Thuringia Parliament.
However, in Thuringia internal disputes have torn the BSW apart, one of whose factions announced on Sunday that they are founding a new regional party called Fair Thuringia. They are now doing to Wagenknecht what she did.
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