On Sunday, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first far-right party to win a German state election since 1945. The results in two east German Länder sent shockwaves of fear and despair across Europe. Rightly so. In Thuringia, the smaller of the two states, the AfD topped the polls. In Saxony, it ran a close second to the center‑right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Although these were state elections in AfD strongholds, the outcome was particularly troubling for Germany’s ruling coalition parties, especially with federal elections just a year away.
The backdrop to these state elections could hardly have been less propitious for the governing parties, especially the Social Democrats (SPD) led by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor. In August, the AfD moved to capitalise on the fatal stabbing of three people in the west German city of Solingen, for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility. The alleged perpetrator of the attack is a Syrian asylum seeker. Mr Scholz found himself caught between some in his own party, who cautioned against kneejerk responses, and his main opponent, the CDU’s Friedrich Merz, who called for an end to accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. Mr Scholz found that he couldn’t outbid the right on immigration and asylum, leading some to wonder if his hardline pronouncements had only validated the positions of extremists.
Such a hardliner is Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD in Thuringia, who uses incendiary rhetoric about “multicultural experiments”. A former history teacher, Mr Höcke has marched with neo-Nazis and has twice been convicted this year of using banned Nazi slogans. Mr Höcke can legally be referred to as fascist. Der Spiegel this year declared him as the “real boss” of the AfD. However, he will not become state premier because the AfD is a pariah that no other party will work with.
The most likely outcome is that a leftwing populist party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), emerges as a powerbroker. Ms Wagenknecht, an east German ex-communist who broke from the Left party, won a double-digit, third-place result in both states. She says Germany should be much less open to immigration and is sceptical of Berlin’s support for Ukraine. However, running a state leaves little time for foreign policy, so it is likely that her party could end up supporting the CDU in government in both Saxony and Thuringia. This scenario is not as surprising as it may seem. Bodo Ramelow, the outgoing head of the state in Thuringia, became the only Left politician elected to high office after the CDU abstained.
Perhaps Sunday’s elections and the upcoming one in Brandenburg only underline the fraught role eastern Germany plays in the country’s political conversation. Contrary to conventional thinking, the eastern half of Europe’s largest economy is no longer “catching up” with its western neighbour. Every year since 2017, more people have migrated from the west to the east. Unemployment is higher, but only by a fraction. Immigration levels are lower. It’s been more than three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. But the five eastern German states still vote very differently from their western counterparts thanks, say experts, to an assertion of a distinct east German identity. To engage with that will require a more creative response from the country’s mainstream parties than they have offered so far.
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