Oskar Lafontaine

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Oskar Lafontaine [] (* 16. September 1943 in Saarlautern) is a German publicist, politician and author (non-party, previously SPD, WASG, PDS, Die Linke).

From 1985 to 9. In November 1998 he was Prime Minister of Saarland. He was the SPD’s chancellor candidate for the parliamentary election on 2 November. December 1990 (shortly after reunification) and from 1995 to 1999 SPD chairman. After the federal election in September 1998 – Gerhard Schröder became Chancellor – he took over the Federal Ministry of Finance in the Schröder I Cabinet. In March 1999, he surprisingly resigned all political offices, including his Bundestag mandate. From then on, he appeared as a critic of the red-green government course, while Schröder as Chancellor also took over the SPD chairmanship.

In 2005, Lafontaine moved from the SPD to the newly founded Wahlalternative Arbeit & Sozial Gerechtigkeit (WASG). Through his initiative in June of this year, he entered into an electoral alliance with the PDS, which renamed itself Die Linke.PDS. From 2005 to 2009, Lafontaine was Chairman of the Left Party in the German Bundestag with Gregor Gysi. From 16 June 2007 to 15 May 2010, he was, alongside Lothar Bisky, party chairman of the newly formed party Die Linke, the merger of the electoral alliance. He retired from both political offices for health reasons, but became politically active again after recovery at the state level.

After the state election in Saarland in 2009, in which Die Linke received more than 20% of the votes and thus entered the state parliament for the first time, Lafontaine became group chairman of his party in the Saarland state parliament. He held this office until 2022. From May 2012 to 2022, he was also the opposition leader. He tried several times unsuccessfully to get the SPD to an alliance at the state level. In the state election in Saarland 2022, he no longer ran for the state parliament. On March 17, 2022, he announced his departure from the Left Party. His departure from the party is considered one of the reasons for the left's departure from the Landtag in the elections on 27. March 2022.

Origin, study, first job and private life

Family
Lafontaine's parents were the secretary Katharina Lafontaine, b. Furthermore (1915–2006), and the trained baker Hans Lafontaine (1916–1945). In Overlord, where the father came from, the name Lafontaine was common. When Oskar was born, his father, who had been drafted into the military in 1938, was at his troop base in occupied northern France. He was baptized on the 26th. September special leave, but had to return after a few days. Oskar Lafontaine has a twin brother who was born a quarter of an hour before him and was named after his father as the firstborn, while he himself received the first name of the mother's brother who fell in the war. Katharina Lafontaine lived with her two sons, her mother and a sister in her parents' home in Dillingen-Leases, until the place in December 1