Gregor Gysi

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Gregor Gysi

Gregor Gysi (IPA: [ˈgiːzi]; born January 16, 1948) is a German politician of the Left Party. He played an important role in the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1989, and is a key figure in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).

[edit] Family background

His father, Klaus Gysi, was a high-ranking official in East Germany, and had been Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973. His mother Irene was the sister of Gottfried Lessing, who was married to the British writer Doris Lessing during his exile in Southern Rhodesia.

His sister Gabriele is an actor, who left East Germany in 1985. Today, she is chief dramaturge at the Volksbühne.

[edit] Career

Gysi's political career started in the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party (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 notable dissidents, including Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann, Ulrike Poppe, and Bärbel Bohley.

In addition to his legal defence of dissidents, Gysi emerged as one of East Germany's leading Gorbachev-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 rally on November 4 in which he spoke and called for various reforms, including free elections. In December of 1989, he became a member of a special SED party session investigating official corruption and abuse of power.

Seeing himself as a reformist, he led the transformation of the SED into a more democratic socialist party which included the quick resignation of all hardliners from the party's leadership; initially renamed the Socialist Unity Party - Party of Democratic Socialism (SED-PDS), it later became simply the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Gysi served as its chairman starting in 1990, and in March 1990 was elected to the Volkskammer in the first free election of that body, serving there until it was dissolved upon German reunification on October 3, 1990. In the first post-reunification all-German elections, he was elected to the Bundestag, 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 allegations were brought against him of having been an "unofficial collaborator" (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, IM) or informant of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (the infamous Stasi). He denied these allegations, and the matter was largely dropped due to his parliamentary immunity. In 1995 the Hamburg regional 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 name IM Notar, and fined him 8,000 Deutsche Marks. However, both the FDP 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.

In 2000 he resigned as chairman of the PDS's parliamentary group, but continued as an active member of the party. Following the victory in Berlin's 2001 municipal elections of a coalition of the PDS and the more moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD), 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 July 31, 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 a lowering of unemployment benefits to the levels of mere welfare, which he strongly opposes.

Oskar Lafontaine (left) and Gregor Gysi, election poster, Alexanderplatz, Berlin, 2005

In late 2004 he survived brain surgery and a heart attack. Formerly a heavy smoker, Gysi quit smoking after the crisis on his doctors' advice.

Gysi remains the PDS's undisputed front man in many people's minds and continues to appear in public. In May 2005, when Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced plans to call an early election in September, many prominent PDS leaders including chair Lothar Bisky called on Gysi to front their campaign. He was a lead candidate of the PDS, winning direct election to the Bundestag from a Berlin constituency. The PDS fought the election in an alliance with the new western German Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice, under the new name "Linkspartei" Left Party/PDS, with Gysi at times somewhat uneasily sharing a platform with Labour and Social Justice Party leader Oskar Lafontaine.

[edit] External links

• Portrait at the website of the parliamentary group of the Left Party
• Biography at Deutsches Historisches Museum