Rising In The East

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Lothar Bisky has a complaint. A retired professor in the former East German state of Brandenburg, he earned less than professors in West Germany did — and he'll get a smaller pension, too. But Bisky has a loud megaphone: today he's the chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the heir to the former East German Communist Party. "All this discrimination harms the dignity of the people," he says — and his message resonates among voters in eastern Germany. With two state elections in the east this Sunday, the PDS is expected to perform better than at any time since German reunification in 1990. That could position the PDS as a left alternative to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's struggling Social Democrats, with potentially disastrous consequences for the ruling party in the 2006 general election.

When Bisky took over the PDS last year, the party was in disarray. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, the PDS dropped from 36 seats in the Bundestag to just two. Bisky was partly to blame; he had served as PDS chairman from 1993 to 2000. But now Bisky has made the party a leading voice against Schröder's controversial reforms, especially a new law that will cut long-term unemployment benefits next year. "We have made clear that we want to change things in the interest of ordinary people," he says. The party's popularity has grown so much that in Bisky's Brandenburg, where the stylish Dagmar Enkelmann is the leading PDS candidate, it is expected to win more seats than any other party.

More than two-thirds of PDS members are over 60, filled with nostalgia for the old East German regime. In fact, a worrisome "ostalgia" infects both east and west. According to a new survey in Stern magazine, 24% of voters in western Germany would like to see the Berlin Wall put back up. Bisky says his party's appeal can move west: "I want a socialist party in the Federal Republic of Germany." If opposition to Schröder continues to grow, Bisky's wish just may come true.