Lothar Bisky: German politician (1941-2013)

He was the chairman of the Left Party.PDS, a socialist political party with its base in the east of Germany. In June 2007 he became of the leaders of The Left, formed by a merger of Left Party.PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative.

Bisky was born in Zollbrueck, Pomerania. As a child he was very poor, so when he was 18 he moved from northern West Germany to GDR. He was allowed to join the Socialist Unity Party in 1963, but did not became a leader of the party until just after the fall of communism and the old hardliners were thrown out of the party.

He was rector of the University of Film and Television (Potsdam-Babelsberg) from 1986 to 1990. In 1991 he became a member of the board of directors of regional television channel ORB (now part of RBB.)

In 1990 he was a member of the Volkskammer and since 1990 he has been a member of the state parliament in Brandenburg.

He was chairman of the PDS from 1993 until his resignation in 2000. He was re-elected chairman in 2003. Bisky was seen to be on the moderate, social democratic wing of the party and he was a long-time close ally of the party's most prominent figure, Gregor Gysi.

The party returned strongly to the Bundestag in the 2005 election. Bisky, one of 54 Left MPs, was going to become one of the six vice presidents of the Bundestag. When the new Bundestag met on October 18, however, he failed three times to be elected. Some MPs explained this with allegations (denied by Bisky) that he was an informant of the Stasi. Later, he failed a fourth time, and gave up his bid to be elected.

Lothar Bisky was married and the father of three sons. The oldest son, Jens Bisky, is a journalist and writer and the middle, Norbert Bisky, is a painter. The youngest died in 2008 in Edinburgh.

Bisky died in Leipzig, Saxony, on 13 August 2013.