The
Ex-Salesman Bringing the Far Right to the Cusp of Power in Germany
Ulrich
Siegmund, 35, once sold air fresheners. Now his far-right party is the favorite
to win a state election in eastern Germany on Sunday.
Ulrich
Siegmund, center, is the lead candidate for the far-right party Alternative for
Germany in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. The party is projected
to finish first.Credit...Annegret Hilse/Reuters
By Christopher F.
Schuetze
Reporting
from Tangermünde and Magdeburg, Germany
Sept. 6,
2026, 12:01 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/world/europe/afd-germany-election-ulrich-siegmund.html
During
the coronavirus pandemic, a little-known German state lawmaker with an upbeat
patter and a telegenic smile started railing on TikTok against pandemic
regulations. Complaining about masks, vaccinations and other government
requirements that he deemed “crazy,” the lawmaker attracted millions of viewers
with his videos by using an affable tone to deliver an anti-establishment
message.
Now, that
lawmaker, Ulrich Siegmund, has harnessed his online popularity to come closer
to power than any other far-right politician in Germany since the Nazi era
ended in 1945.
Mr.
Siegmund, 35, a former air freshener salesman, is the lead candidate for the
Alternative for Germany party in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in eastern Germany
where the party is projected to finish first in a statewide election on Sunday.
If the
party, known by its German initials, AfD, wins an outright majority, Mr.
Siegmund will become the first far-right politician to govern a German state
since the re-establishment of the country’s democracy nearly eight decades ago.
That would be a convulsive moment for Germany’s postwar political system, which
was designed in the aftermath of World War II to prevent politicians deemed
extremist from ever taking office.
To the
political establishment in Berlin, Mr. Siegmund’s party is an outcast. The
domestic intelligence agency has labeled it as “suspected extremist,” an
accusation it rejects as politically motivated. The party has said that Islam
is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed mass deportations of
immigrants. Several of its leaders are close to Russia, and some have made dog
whistle comments about the Nazi era, including by minimizing the Holocaust and
repeating Nazi slogans.
Mr.
Siegmund himself has said, in a podcast interview with Politico, that he could not “presume
to judge” if the Holocaust was humanity’s worst-ever crime, “because I can’t
possibly come to terms with the entirety of human history.” He also declined to
condemn supporters who chanted his surname, Siegmund, in the style of the Nazi
salute, “Sieg Heil.”
Still,
Mr. Siegmund has won over voters in Saxony-Anhalt, experts say, through his
ability to present the party’s hard-line policies in a more approachable and
optimistic tone than many of his AfD colleagues, without
distancing himself from extremists. In addition to deporting
immigrants, the
party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning
gay pride flags in schools and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for
large families and free child care.
“I can
provide motivation, create a sense of optimism and get things moving forward
again,” Mr. Siegmund said in
an interview with The New York Times this year. (He declined more recent
interview requests.)
That
affability has made him more acceptable to voters beyond his hard-right base,
said Prof. Steffen Mau, a prominent sociologist at Humboldt University of
Berlin.
A
supporter of Mr. Siegmund wearing a T-shirt with the magazine cover that called
him Germany’s “most dangerous man.”Credit...Matthias Schrader/Associated Press
Many
mainstream politicians, who have said Mr. Siegmund and the AfD are dangerous,
also call his proposals unrealistic. “Whenever the topic turns to substance,
when people actually ask how you intend to move our country forward
economically, you’re nowhere to be found,” Sven Schulze, the incumbent governor
of Saxony-Anhalt, said to Mr. Siegmund during a televised debate last month.
An August
cover story in Germany’s premier newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, called him “the
most dangerous man in Germany,” partly because his sunny disposition makes his
party’s hard-line goals more palatable to some voters. Mr. Siegmund’s followers
took it as a badge of honor and, during campaign stops, asked him to sign
copies of the edition.
Mr.
Siegmund is “so approachable and charming,” said Wolfram Adler, 67, a retired
train driver who attended one of those rallies.
From Air
Fresheners to Politics
Born in
1990, weeks after the reunification of East and West Germany, Mr. Siegmund was
raised in the picturesque medieval town of Tangermünde, in eastern Germany.
Growing
up in the east, he came of age amid increasing resentment about how
reunification played out for his home region. The east’s economy, employment
rates and population ebbed after 1990, leading many East Germans to feel
excluded in the new Germany. It was a sense of grievance on which the AfD would
later capitalize, particularly in Saxony-Anhalt where the unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent is well above
the national average.
In his
20s, Mr. Siegmund worked as an account manager at a health care provider before
starting his own business in Berlin selling room deodorizers.
He joined
the Christian Democratic Union, a mainstream conservative party that currently
leads the national coalition government.
But he
soon grew tired of the party’s rigid leadership structures, he has said in past
interviews with the news media, and joined the AfD in 2014. He was drawn to the
AfD, he said, because the party stood against what he perceived as
the highhanded policies of the national government in Berlin.
The AfD
was founded in opposition to Germany’s adoption
of the euro. After it shifted
to an anti-immigrant message, Mr. Siegmund ran on the party’s slate for the
statehouse in 2016. He won a seat as the party netted 24 percent of the state
vote, profiting from growing concerns about Germany’s decision to welcome
roughly a million refugees during the European migrant crisis. He also served
on his local council alongside his father and brother.
He rose
to national fame in 2021 with his personable videos about pandemic
restrictions, helping to project both the party and himself as the voice of
voters who felt disenfranchised by mainstream parties.
Now, Mr.
Siegmund has more than 850,000 followers on TikTok, an astronomical number for
any German politician, giving him a platform that helped to amplify his stump
speeches on the campaign trail this summer.
Image
AfD
supporters listening to Mr. Siegmund at a rally ahead of the election in
Saxony-Anhalt. He uses TikTok to amplify his stump speeches, often filming
scenes from events on his phone.Credit...Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
When
speaking to sizable crowds, he has often filmed the scene on his phone, turning
the camera toward the crowds to show viewers how big they were.
“When you
see all of Siegmund’s campaign appearances, it becomes perfectly clear: They’re
not primarily intended for the live audience, they’re primarily for the
internet,” said Paula Diehl, a professor who studies populist leaders at Kiel
University.
His
preppy shirts and his trademark tuft of graying hair have made him instantly
recognizable in Tangermünde, his hometown of 10,000 residents. During the Times
interview this year, passers-by repeatedly greeted him, wished him luck or
smiled.
Throughout
the conversation, he combined a measured, even tolerant tone with a hard-line,
exclusionary message.
He said
that he did not blame immigrants for coming to Germany — before, seconds later,
vowing to make their lives in his state “very uncomfortable.”
Combining
Nostalgia With Optimism
The
backgrounds of his campaign team also highlight his contradictions. The
production company behind Mr. Siegmund’s genial campaign videos is led by a
far-right activist with the Identitarians, a movement that German intelligence
has accused of extremism. Mr. Siegmund’s spokesman was
once part of a banned extremist group inspired by the Hitler Youth.
Mr.
Siegmund did not reply to requests for comment about these links. In interviews
with other outlets, he dismissed their relevance.
Mr.
Siegmund, said Professor Diehl, “pretends to engage in an inclusive discourse
and then immediately shatters it.”
Part of
his strategy has been to tap into nostalgia for East Germany among some
residents, even though he was born after it collapsed. Though many remember
Communism as a dictatorship, some recall it as a time of full employment and
stability.
One
campaign event featured a comedian who sang the East German national anthem —
an act so contentious, because it appeared to validate an authoritarian regime,
that even some AfD politicians distanced themselves from it.
Image
Mr.
Siegmund riding his Simson, a motorcycle that has long been associated with
life in East Germany. Part of his campaign strategy has been to tap into the
nostalgia among some residents for the time before
reunification.Credit...Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
At some
events, Mr. Siegmund rode through the countryside on a Simson, an anemic
two-stroke East German motorcycle that has long been associated with life
during Communism. His machine was painted baby blue to match the AfD’s colors.
At other
times, he has sought to look forward instead of back. Tapping into widespread
disenchantment with high unemployment and living costs, he has painted a
picture of a better, if ill-defined, future under AfD leadership.
“Things
are going downhill everywhere, and that’s a bad and demotivating place to
start,” he said in the Times interview. “I want things to start moving uphill,”
he said.
Critics
say he is simply selling false hope, pointing to his past life as a salesman.
“I
discovered my strength in sales early on,” Mr. Siegmund told a business
magazine in 2014. “I love to sell.”
Christopher F.
Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering
politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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