She has been a controversial figure throughout her career due to her hardline and populist stances, statements about East Germany, immigration and refugees, and her political movement Aufstehen.

[7] Her father, who is Iranian, came to West Berlin to study;[8][9][10][11] her mother, who worked for a state-run art distributor, is German.

She then enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Groningen, completing her studies and earning an MA in 1996 for a thesis on the young Karl Marx's interpretation of Hegel, supervised by Hans Heinz Holz and published as a book in 1997.

[12][13] From 2005 until 2012 she completed a PhD dissertation in microeconomics at TU Chemnitz, on "The Limits of Choice: Saving Decisions and Basic Needs in Developed Countries", awarded with the grade magna cum laude in the German system[14] and subsequently published by the Campus Verlag.

[13] In the 1998 German federal election, Wagenknecht ran as the PDS candidate in a district of Dortmund, garnering 3.25% of the vote.

Among her duties in the parliament were serving on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Delegation, as well as the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly.

However, party leaders such as Lothar Bisky and Gregor Gysi objected to the idea primarily because of her perceived sympathies for the former German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany).

Early in 2012, the German press reported that Wagenknecht was one of 27 Left Party Bundestag members whose writings and speeches were being collected and analyzed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

[19] In March 2019, Wagenknecht announced her withdrawal from her leadership role within Aufstehen, citing personal workload pressures and insisting that after a successful start-up phase, for which political experience was necessary, the time had come for the movement's own grass roots to assume control.

[20][21] Wagenknecht was elected co-leader of the Left's Bundestag group in 2015 alongside Dietmar Bartsch succeeding long-time leader Gregor Gysi.

Die Biografie by Christian Schneider [de] was published in 2019 and focuses on Wagenknecht as a person, including her family background and interest in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[25] Her activities from 2017 to 2019, culminating with her resignation, are covered in the 2020 documentary film Wagenknecht [de], directed by Sandra Kaudelka.

There was speculation since 2021 that her faction and other like-minded groups within Die Linke, such as the Socialist Left or the Karl Liebknecht circles, would break off to form a separate party.

[32] The ongoing speculation about the founding of a new party and the resulting breakup of Die Linke also put a strain on the election campaigns in Bavaria and Hesse.

[35][36] In fact, Wagenknecht referred to the pioneers of ordoliberalism, whose ideas are otherwise more commonly represented in the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

In an interview, she described her goals as combating inflation, encouraging small and medium enterprise and domestic technology development, and establishing stable trade with a wide range of partners.

She previously rejected accusations that she sought to establish control bodies for various industries, and cited as inspiration the ideas of economist Mariana Mazzucato, who is also considered a source for economics minister Robert Habeck, whom Wagenknecht frequently criticises.

The ambiguous headline made it unclear whether the question referred to left-wingers in general or to Wagenknecht's party, The Left, in particular.

"[45] In 2008, she also defended the decision by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to nationalize the oil production facilities of the US company ExxonMobil.

[47] In a 2024 interview, Wagenknecht argued that she and the BSW are the “legitimate heirs of both ‘domesticated capitalism’ of post-war conservatism and the social-democratic progressivism, domestic as well as foreign, of the era of Brandt, Kreisky and Palme,” and also stated that while she finds Marx’s views on capitalist crises and property relations very useful, she doesn’t believe in central planning or total nationalizations; preferring third options instead.

[50] Wagenknecht has expressed strong support for the rise of left-wing leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chávez,[51] and for SYRIZA's 2015 electoral victory in Greece.

[52] She serves as a spokesperson for the Venezuela Avanza solidarity network, and was an alternate on the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Mercosur.

[16] In 2010, she refused to join a standing ovation when former Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Laureate Shimon Peres gave a speech in the Bundestag on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

[61][62] Wagenknecht opposed sanctions against Russia over the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and, in a speech in September 2022, accused the German government of "launching an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier".

[63] On 10 February 2023, Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer started collecting signatures for their Manifest für Frieden (lit.

Wagenknecht has criticized Angela Merkel's refugee policies, arguing that her government has not provided the levels of financial and infrastructural support required to avoid increasing pressure on local authorities and the labor market, thereby exacerbating tensions in society.

[74] Partly in response to these experiences, in 2021, she published the book Die Selbstgerechten ("The Self-Righteous") in which she criticizes so-called "left-liberals" ("Linksliberale") for being neither left nor liberal but rather supporting the ruling classes, and, to some extent, their own interests.

[75] At the beginning of June 2015, Wagenknecht, together with 150 other celebrities from culture and politics, signed an open letter to the Chancellor calling for same-sex civil partnerships to be given equal treatment to opposite-sex marriage.