In 2005 she became Parliamentary Party Manager ("Chief Whip") for Die Linke in the Bundestag (national parliament),[1] a position from which she resigned in 2013 after losing her seat.

[6] As a result of the 2007 merger between the PDS and the (much smaller, but briefly influential) WASG movement, Dagmar Enkelmann became a member of the party now branded simply as Die Linke ("The Left").

[1] At a time when her youngest child was still a young baby, Enkelmann came to national politics through active participation in the Round table movement.

[7] In July 2008 Dagmar Enkelmann captured the headlines, triggering a "media moment" when a television interviewer asked her, "Are you satisfied with how democracy works in Germany today?"

[12] Unlike von der Marwitz, Enkelmann had rejected the idea of simultaneously having her name placed on her party list as insurance against not securing direct election in the Barnim constituency,[13][14] and accordingly in 2013 she left the Bundestag for a second time.

[2] On 26 February 2010 Dagmar Enkelmann was one of a large number of PDS Bundestag members to be expelled from the chamber during a debate on prolonging German military involvement in Afghanistan.

This arose from members standing up in the chamber and holding up to the cameras placards which showed names of victims of the Kunduz air attack.

The proposal of Bundestag president Norbert Lammert that the excluded members should be permitted to participate in the vote at the end of the debate was nevertheless followed.

[15] It became known in January 2012 that Dagmar Englemann was one of 27 Bundestag members from Die Linke (party) placed under surveillance by the security authorities.

She has also, since November 2008, been an alternate for Jan Korte in the third board of parliamentary trustees of the "Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung", a federal agency mandated with helping Germany come to terms with the East German dictatorship.