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Gregor Gysi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Gysi in 2025 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President by right of age of the Bundestag | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assumed office 25 March 2025 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Peter Ramsauer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President of theParty of the European Left | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 17 December 2016 – 15 December 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Pierre Laurent | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Heinz Bierbaum | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader of the Opposition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 17 December 2013 – 12 October 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Sahra Wagenknecht Dietmar Bartsch | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader ofThe Left in theBundestag | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 18 October 2005 – 12 October 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Sahra Wagenknecht Dietmar Bartsch | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Member of theBundestag forBerlin-Treptow-Köpenick | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assumed office 18 October 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Siegfried Scheffler | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Gregor Florian Gysi (1948-01-16)16 January 1948 (age 77) Lichtenberg, East Berlin,Soviet occupation zone of Germany (now Germany) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Political party | The Left (2007–present) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | SED (1967–1989) PDS (1989–2007) WASG (2005–2007) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parent | Klaus Gysi (father) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Residence | Berlin-Pankow | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Humboldt University of Berlin (Dipl.-Jur.,PhD) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation |
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| Website | gregorgysi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gregor Florian Gysi (German pronunciation:[ˈɡʁeːɡoːɐ̯ˈɡiːzi]; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney, former president of theParty of the European Left and a prominent politician ofThe Left (Die Linke) political party.[1]
He belonged to the reformist wing of the governingSocialist Unity Party of Germany at the time of the pro-democracy transition inspired by then Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev. He has strongly denied allegations that he used to assist theStasi, the East German secret police. He was the last leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and led the effort that transformed it into the post-CommunistParty of Democratic Socialism (PDS), forerunner of The Left.
Gysi was born inBerlin-Lichtenberg in East Berlin,Soviet Zone of Germany. His father wasKlaus Gysi,[2] a high-ranking official in East Germany who served as the Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973. His mother, Irene Olga Lydia Gysi (née Lessing; 1912–2007), was the sister of political activistGottfried Lessing, who was married to British writer andNobel laureateDoris Lessing during his exile inSouthern Rhodesia. The surname "Gysi" is of Swiss-German origin.[3] He is of partialJewish ancestry; his paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers.[3][4] One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian.[3]
Gysi's political career began in the then-rulingSocialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) of East Germany, to which he was admitted in 1967. In 1971 he became a licensed attorney, and during the 1970s and 1980s defended several prominent dissidents, includingRudolf Bahro,Robert Havemann,Ulrike Poppe, andBärbel Bohley.
In addition to his legal work, Gysi emerged as one of East Germany's leadingGorbachev-inspired political reformists within the SED, especially towards the end of the 1980s. In 1989, he and a group of lawyers presented a counter-draft to the government's Travel Bill, which authorised mass public demonstrations. This led to a mass rally on East-Berlin'sAlexanderplatz on 4 November[5] in which he spoke and called for reforms, including free elections. In December 1989, he became a member of a special SED party session investigating official corruption and abuse of power.
In an interview conducted in 2011, Gysi recalled that in late 1989 he had become the attorney for several of the people who were arrested in the first early public protests. As such he became known to leading figures in the Artistic and Cultural unions and was contacted by a group of actresses about the legality of a large demonstration. He recalls having examined the laws and advising them that they could apply for such a permit from the police and the worst outcome would be that their request could be denied, but they would not be breaking any law or doing anything illegal. He further recalls assisting the group in requesting and completing the appropriate forms and paperwork required for such a permit.[6]
In December 1989,Egon Krenz, the last Communist leader of East Germany, resigned all of his posts. Gysi was elected as the party's chairman. He did not, however, become the leader of East Germany; the SED had abandoned its monopoly of power on 1 December. In his first speech, Gysi declared that the SED had brought the country to ruin, repudiating everything it had done since 1949. He declared that the party needed to adopt a new form of socialism.[7]
To that end, he immediately set about transforming the SED into ademocratic socialist party. Before the year was out, the last hardliners in the SED leadership had either resigned or been pushed out. On 16 December, the SED was renamed the Socialist Unity Party – Party of Democratic Socialism (SED-PDS), it later became simply theParty of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Gysi remained as party chairman, and in March 1990 was elected to theVolkskammer inthe first free election of that body. The Volkskammer dissolved itself uponGerman reunification on 3 October 1990, but 144 members, Gysi among them, were chosen to join the11th Bundestag which had been elected in January 1987. About 10 weeks later, on December 1990, the upcoming regular Bundestag election would be held as all-German election.
In the first post-reunification all-German elections, he was elected to theBundestag fromBerlin's Hellersdorf–Marzahn constituency, and served there until 2000. He remained chairman of the PDS through 1998, and then from 1998 to 2000 served as chairman of the party's parliamentary group.
In 1992, it was alleged Gysi was an informer (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (theStasi). He denied these allegations, and the matter was largely dropped due to his parliamentary immunity. In 1995, the Hamburg state court ruled in Gysi's favour in a complaint against Bärbel Bohley, Gysi's former client, who had accused him of Stasi collaboration. However, the allegations were raised again in 1996, and this time the Bundestag voted to revoke his immunity and proceed with an investigation.
In 1998, the Bundestag's immunity committee concluded that Gysi had been a collaborator with the Stasi from 1978 to 1989 under the nameIM Notar, and fined him 8,000Deutsche Mark. However, both theFree Democratic Party and his own PDS disputed the verdict, and Gysi appealed against the finding. Despite the affair, he retained his seat in the Bundestag in the 1998 elections.[citation needed]
In 2000, he resigned as chairman of the PDS's parliamentary group, but continued as an active member of the party. Following the victory of a "Red-red" (SPD-PDS) coalition in the2001 Berlin state election, he was elected Senator for Economics, Labour, and Women's Issues and Deputy Mayor. He emphasised practical issues and advocated the reinstitution of some of what he sees as the better aspects of East Germany's system, such as extended child-care hours and a longer school day. After a scandal involving his use of airline "bonus miles" he had acquired on trips as a Bundestag member, he resigned on 31 July 2002 from the Berlin city government. The resignation was a blow to his public "can-do" image, but he has recovered from that to some extent in the wake of increasing public opposition to a number of new policies of the federal government, like theHartz reforms lowering unemployment benefits to the levels of mere subsistence welfare, which he strongly opposes.
In late-2004, he survived brain surgery and a heart attack. Formerly a heavy smoker, Gysi quit smoking as a result of surviving the heart attack.
Gysi remained the PDS's undisputed front man in many people's minds and continued to appear in public. In May 2005, when Federal ChancellorGerhard Schröder planned to call an early election in September, many prominent PDS leaders including chairLothar Bisky called on Gysi to front their campaign. He was a lead candidate of the PDS, and returned to the Bundestag as the member forBerlin-Treptow-Köpenick. The PDS fought the election in an alliance with the new western-basedElectoralAlternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), under the new nameLeft Party.PDS, with Gysi at times sharing a platform with WASG'sOskar Lafontaine, former finance minister (in the first months of theSchröder government) and formerly party leader of the SPD. In June 2007, the PDS and WASG formally merged to form a united party calledThe Left.
In 2014, Gysi wrote his analysis on the contemporary Ukraine crisis in theIsrael Journal of Foreign Affairs, where he described similarities between the United States and Russia in their transgressions of international law. Gysi calls for "a newOstpolitik" to prevent war and promote "democracy and freedom in Russia".[8] In 2015, Gysi was one of the leading supporters of Greece during theGreek government-debt crisis. He described the then German government as "blackmailers".
Gysi is an outspoken supporter of theCampaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations. This is due to his belief in the need for "functioning and democratically legitimate global politics."[9]
In the2021 German federal elections Gysi once more won his constituency ofBerlin-Treptow-Köpenick. While the Left came up short of the five percentelectoral threshold, his win, together with those ofGesine Lötzsch inBerlin-Lichtenberg andSören Pellmann inLeipzig II, qualified the party for list seats proportional to its vote. Under longstanding German law, a party can bypass the electoral threshold by winning three constituency seats.
Gysi is one of the most present politicians in German entertainment media. He regularly appears on political entertainment talk shows and is host of conversation programs himself.[10]
In 2019, Gregor Gysi stated to the Bundestag administration that he had received fees for almost 90 lectures, discussions and conversations. On average he has one appearance per week. He also earns money from jobs as lawyer and book publishing.[11]
Gysi continues to deny allegations, which first surfaced in 1992, that he was aStasiinformant ("inoffizieller Mitarbeiter"). Invited in 2017 to spell out who, other than himself, "IM Notar" could possibly be, he replied that he had a strong suspicion, backed by a huge amount of information, adding pointedly that whenever the allegations that he himself was "IM Notar" have come before a court, he has "always won". In the absence of certain proof, he is not prepared to disclose the identity of the true "IM Notar".[12]
In November 2014, after being invited byInge Höger andAnnette Groth, also members of The Left (Die Linke) to talk with them in theBundestag, journalistsMax Blumenthal and David Sheen learned that Gysi tried to cancel the meetings on the grounds that Blumenthal and Sheen held radical views[13][14] from which he wished to dissociate the party.[14]
Gysi fled, followed by the two men and other parliamentary members down a parliament corridor and into a bathroom in an incident referred to as "toiletgate". After this event, Blumenthal and Sheen were banned from ever setting foot in the Bundestag again.[15][16][17]
In a 2015 interview, Gysi stated that "Every year more Germans die than are born. Fortunately, this is due to the fact that the Nazis do not reproduce particularly well and therefore, we depend on immigrants from other countries."[18][19][20] The comparison of all Germans to Nazis and the statement that it was good that Germans had a declining birth rate generated significant criticism from the public.
| Preceded by Egon Krenz (as General Secretary) | Chairman of theSED 1989 | Succeeded by Himself as chairman of the PDS |
| Preceded by Himself as chairman of the SED | Chairman of thePDS 1989–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by Post created | Chairman of thePDS Parliamentary Group 1990–2001 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Economy, Labour and Women inBerlin 2001–2002 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chairman of theLeft Party Parliamentary Group 2005–2015 | Succeeded by |
