A political movement aimed at galvanising grassroots support for leftwing issues has been launched in Berlin promising to be a voice for dissatisfied voters that would take a tougher approach to migration.

The movement, named Aufstehen (Get Up), is the creation of Sahra Wagenknecht, a leading member of the far-left Die Linke party, and her husband, Oskar Lafontaine, a former German finance minister and co-founder of Die Linke.

Whether Aufstehen, which has drawn comparisons with similar movements in France and the UK, will garner the sort of support enjoyed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) or Jeremy Corbyn’s Momentum, remains to be seen. However Wagenknecht said since the movement had already attracted 100,000 members it had had a positive beginning.

“We don’t want to keep observing, we want to change something,” she said, rejecting criticism that the movement could not be described as grassroots because it was being steered by people already enmeshed with Germany’s political elite.

Wagenknecht, a controversial star of the left who grew up in the communist east as a committed Marxist, and has been compared with Rosa Luxemburg and Frida Kahlo, said her aim was to reach leftwing voters who had turned their backs on classical parties.

Aufstehen is being seen as the left’s response to the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, to which Die Linke has lost an estimated 400,000 voters.

Germany was undergoing a “tangible crisis of democracy”, Wagenknecht said, sitting next to her main supporters, the former Green party leader Ludger Volmer and the Social Democrat mayor of Flensburg, Simone Lange. “Many people don’t feel represented any more and are turning their backs on politics. This is more than just a feeling,” she added, quoting from a study by the Institute for Economic Research which found that 40% of people had less take-home pay now than 20 years ago.

“In such a country democracy is no longer functioning,” she said. “Anger that has been piling up has helped form a breeding ground for hate and violence. If we don’t take counter measures this country will not be recognisable within five to 10 years.”

Recent events in the eastern city of Chemnitz, in which 6,000 far-right protesters demonstrated in the streets after a Dresden man was stabbed, allegedly by two immigrants, indicated how urgent it was for politics to find a new direction, she said. “The climate is more raw than ever, the social divides are deeper. Had we needed another impulse then the events in Chemnitz show us that we urgently need a new political revolt.”

Among the movement’s more than 80 initiators alongside politicians, were writers, playwrights, artists, pop stars and professors.

The main critics of the movement have been leaders of the parties whose supporters Wagenknecht had hoped to unite. Leaders of the Greens, Linke, and SPD, have accused Wagenknecht of being infuriatingly vague in setting out the intentions of Aufstehen. They also argue that Aufstehen could lead to the political left becoming even more divided. The SPD, suffering a downward spiral in support for years, fears Aufstehen could morph into a new leftwing party which could destroy it altogether.

But Wagenknecht insisted her goal was the opposite. “If everyone fights for this agenda then a leftwing majority in Germany will become realistic once more,” she said.

Within Die Linke, which was founded in 2007 and has about 10% support, criticism of Wagenknecht has also been rife over her calls for limits on immigration. In June Wagenknecht told the Linke party conference she was in favour of asylum but against open borders; she also wanted tighter controls for economic migrants trying to enter Germany’s labour market. The comments drew ire from many in her party, and criticism that she was latching on to the ideology of the AfD.

The founding of Aufstehen has fuelled speculation that Wagenknecht and Lafontaine are attempting to stage a power grab from the Die Linke leaders Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger, with whom they are at loggerheads about the direction of the party.

Wagenknecht accused her critics of hatefulness, saying it was wrong to label everyone who tried to talk about tackling immigration as a racist.

A representative poll of German voters this summer showed that about a third of voters could envisage voting for Aufstehen if it turned into a legitimate political party.