Katja Kipping

On 2 June 2012, delegates at the third national party conference elected her as one of the party's two chairpersons with 67% of the vote. Since then, she has led the party along with Bernd Riexinger. On 10 May 2014, she and Riexinger were re-elected as co-chairs in a national party conference.

In the Bundestag, she is The Left's spokesperson for social affairs, and a strong opponent of the Hartz-IV program. For years, she has championed the idea of a national basic income guarantee. From November 2009 to September 2012, she chaired the Bundestag's Committee on Labour and Social Affairs.

The two parties merged to form The Left on 16 June 2007, and Kipping was elected deputy chairperson of the new party. In 2009, she was re-elected to the Bundestag on The Left's list. In January 2012, Der Spiegel reported that Kipping was one of 27 members of The Left's parliamentary group who were under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz).

In December 2007, Kipping joined members of the Bundestag and Saxon Landtag for a demonstration in support of Rote Hilfe e.V. (Red Aid), a far-left prisoner support group. Kipping left Rote Hilfe in March 2009.

From December 2004 until April 2008, Kipping was spokesperson for the Basic Income Network. She left that role to work on Prager Frühling (Prague Spring), a left-wing magazine, of which she is the editor. In May 2009, together with Caren Lay and Julia Bonk, she co-founded the Emancipatory Left, a caucus within The Left that espouses libertarian socialism.

In July 2003 she became deputy chairperson of PDS, focusing on the party's "social agenda" and "contact with social movements". She was a principal proponent of a united left party comprising the east-oriented PDS and the west-oriented Labour and Social Justice (WASG). In 2005, Kipping was elected to the Bundestag on the joint PDS–WASG electoral list.

At the start of her studies at the Dresden University of Technology, Kipping was heavily involved with the so-called Protestbüro (bureau of protest). In 1998, she became a member of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the forerunner of today's Left party. She was elected to the city council of Dresden, capital of Saxony, serving from 1999 to 2003. She was elected to the Landtag of Saxony for PDS in the 1999 state election and served until the 2004 election. During this time, she was the party's spokesperson for traffic and energy policy.

Katja Kipping (born 18 January 1978) is a German socialist politician of The Left and member of the Bundestag representing Saxony. She has been co-chairperson of The Left since 2012, alongside Bernd Riexinger.

Kipping was born on 18 January 1978 in Dresden, then part of East Germany (GDR). After completing her Abitur in 1996 at Annen-Gymnasium, Kipping spent a voluntary social year in Gatchina, Russia. Following this, she completed a degree in Slavic studies with a minor in American studies and public law at the Dresden University of Technology, from which she obtained her Master of Arts degree in 2003.