Die Linke wins Berlin with housing policies from the former GDR

“First we’ll take Manhattan, then Berlin”: that was the radical left’s plan. And it seems to have worked. The model for Die Linke in Berlin was New York’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose election campaign was successfully replicated. The gamble paid off: Die Linke has become by far the leading party in the German capital, with 25.7 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the CDU – which had been in government until now – which stood at 18.8 per cent. Among voters under 25, Die Linke reached 43 per cent; among women under 25, as much as 51 per cent.

Die Linke is the successor to the SED, the Communist Party that governed East Germany until reunification. The central theme of its campaign was the call to expropriate large property companies, offering them compensation amounting to around 40 per cent of market value. This is nothing new for the city: as early as 2021, in a non-binding referendum, nearly 58 per cent of Berliners voted in favour of a similar expropriation. It is a proposal that has gained traction, because housing is in short supply in Berlin. Yet it was the policies of the left that contributed to this shortage: the Social Democrats and Die Linke, who had previously governed the city together, drove away investors with their rent controls and, at the same time, supported open borders and virtually unrestricted immigration. The combination of these two policies has exacerbated the housing shortage. Now, like the thief who cries ‘Stop the thief!’, the party is pointing the finger at the big property developers and exploiting a problem that it itself had created. In fact, Die Linke is now proposing the very same housing policies implemented by the SED in East Germany: rent controls – that is, a ban on rent increases – and nationalisation. Both had disastrous consequences: rents were low, but much of the housing stock fell into disrepair, to the extent that one in four homes did not have its own bathroom.

The victory of Die Linke is causing particular alarm amongst many Jews in Berlin. Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said he was deeply concerned “that a party whose election campaign openly called for the death of certain people should emerge victorious from the elections” – he stated on Sunday, accusing Die Linke of repeatedly crossing the line into antisemitism during the campaign. At the end of August, at a party event, a rapper chanted slogans against Israel’s war in Gaza, using phrases such as “Intifada” and “Death to the IDF”, the Israeli army. As early as October 2024, five prominent party figures in Berlin had resigned, citing the growing wave of internal anti-Semitism as one of the main reasons.

Die Linke’s lead candidate was Elif Eralp, the daughter of parents of Turkish origin. In recent years, the party has enjoyed particularly strong support amongst immigrants of Arab origin, a community in which hostility towards Israel and Jews is widespread. Die Linke has repeatedly opposed police raids against Arab clans and has even criticised the term ‘clan crime’, deeming it discriminatory.

Issa Remmo, one of Berlin’s best-known ‘clan leaders’, turned up at Die Linke’s election party on the night of the vote. Many members of the Remmo clan have been involved in criminal activities, including the theft of the 100-kilo gold coin from the Bode Museum in Berlin and the spectacular jewellery heist at the Green Vault (Grünes Gewölbe) in Dresden. Remmo told the Berliner Morgenpost that, for the first time in Germany, he felt represented by a political party. Die Linke, however, distanced itself from him: candidate Eralp confirmed that Remmo had not been invited and that, once recognised, he was removed from the hall – “we want nothing to do with organised crime,” she stated.

So will Berlin have a left-wing government? The numbers would allow for it: a coalition of the three left-wing parties – the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke – would have a majority. However, an alliance between the CDU, SPD and the Greens would also achieve a majority. If Elif Eralp were to become mayor, it would be the first time since 1989 that the party formerly known as the SED – which later merged into Die Linke – has once again provided the capital’s mayor.