A Party that Can No Longer Be Ignored: Will Germany Go Left of the Left?

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On a platform at the train station in her hometown of Hamm, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia governed by the conservative Christian Democrats, a man hobbles over to Jelpke and asks her to buy one of his newspapers, a street sheet for the homeless. Jelpke says that she already has one before turning away. Jelpke calls people like that "Hartzies" -- a term for those Germans on the long-term unemployment benefit known as the Hartz IV. Over five million people receive these unemployment benefits and they are a group of voters important to the Left Party, particularly in the west. The party and the "Hartzies" are co-dependent. That is even though radical elements of the party have called for the elimination of the Hartz program -- originally this was a program of reforms developed by former Volkswagen personnel director Peter Hartz and then undertaken by the government of former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder that effectively reduced welfare payments for the long-term jobless.

Sometimes the Hartzies can get on one's nerves. Recently a bunch came to Jelpke's office in Dortmund and made themselves comfortable there. After all there's a comfortable sofa there, plenty of seating and free coffee. "There is no drinking and no smoking in my office," Jelpke had to say. After which, the atmosphere was no longer quite so comfortable.

The Left Party attracts these types -- people with shattered lives or the long term unemployed as well as so-called "hobby communists," those with plenty of free time for workshops and sit-in protests. Gysi estimates that about 10 percent of the party consists of such "nutters" but it's highly likely that the nutter count is even higher in the west.

The Left Party's federal and state representatives grit their teeth and deal with this. For as long as possible, the Left Party wants to be a blank canvas upon which as many people as possible can project as many dissatisfactions as possible. Discussions about the party's real manifesto will take place after the elections. Because if these were firmed up, then that would give everyone else a handle on the Left Party -- but then nobody would want to touch them.

Their targets are unclear, as is their direction. Party one, in the east, is a mainstream party that wants to remain palatable --and therefore a reasonable choice -- to the German middle class voters. Party two, in the west, insists that it is a splinter party with very specific interests. This, its members argue, differentiates them from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, already well entrenched in the west. However this also limits how popular they can ever be. Polls currently show the Left Party garnering between 6 and 7 percent of the votes in North Rhine-Westphalia.

To prevent the Left Party from looking like a fractured group of bickering subgroups and lone wolves, Gysi has for months been encouraging his party to contain itself. It has been a tricky experiment but at first it had appeared to be bearing fruit.

At the Left Party party convention in June, the two sides diligently stuck to their cease-fire. Gysi took to the podium and held a speech about unity -- a speech for which he was rewarded with a standing ovation. But as the delegates stood and applauded, Diether Dehm, the head of the Left Party in Lower Saxony stood up and hissed, "sit down. you know that every second counts." Dehm is a supporter of Lafontaine and did not want the usurper from the east to get one moment more attention than his own man. At which stage, an annoyed member from out of Brandenburg yelled out, "Shut your mouth, you asshole!"

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• Part 1: Will Germany Go Left of the Left?
• Part 2: Fractured Group of Arguing Lone Wolves