Germany’s Far Right Just Misses Majority in Crucial State Election

Germany’s Far Right Just Misses Majority in Crucial State Election

 

The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, trounced its rivals but was left unsure if it will be able to govern in Saxony-Anhalt. The result shocked Germany.

 

Jim Tankersley Christopher F. SchuetzeAshley Southall

By Jim TankersleyChristopher F. Schuetze and Ashley Southall

Jim Tankersley reported from Berlin, and Christopher F. Schuetze and Ashley Southall from Magdeburg, Germany.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/world/europe/germany-afd-election-saxony-anhalt.html

Sept. 6, 2026

 

The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election on Sunday, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to become the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era.

 

If those results hold, the AfD, as the party is known by its German initials, could still assume power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the negotiations among rival parties that have vowed not to support an AfD government.

 

Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state, and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the election result sent shock waves through the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from ever returning to power.

 

“The AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt is less a reflection of the appeal of its political agenda than a stark demonstration of the political establishment’s failure to articulate a convincing vision for the state’s economic, political and social future,” said Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

 

The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah. Still, the party tapped into voter frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win about 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in the Parliament.

 

“We’ve made history, and we’re taking our country back,” Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s candidate to lead the state, told a cheering crowd on Sunday. “It all starts here in Saxony-Anhalt.”

 

Exit polls suggested that many of the AfD’s gains came at the expense of the center-right Christian Democrats, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz that also led the incumbent government in the state. Amid record turnout, the AfD won the support of many Germans who were casting ballots for the first time.

 

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated the AfD as a “suspected extremist” group and its Saxony-Anhalt branch as “extremist.” Some of the party’s leaders have played down the Holocaust and adopted Nazi slogans. Others have strong ties to Russia. The AfD has also said that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed to conduct mass deportations of immigrants.

 

The AfD has rejected accusations of extremism as politically motivated. And voters ignored those accusations because, many told pollsters on Sunday, they saw the AfD as providing better answers to economic, security and immigration concerns than the political mainstream.

 

Thomas Schröder, 63, cycled to his polling station in central Magdeburg to vote for Mr. Siegmund and the AfD. “He gives me hope, so he gets my vote,” Mr. Schröder, a heating technician, said of Mr. Siegmund. He added that he’d lost trust in other parties. “I experimented with almost all of them, and what did it get me?” he said.

 

The result buoyed AfD fans across the country and around the world. President Trump posted an image of an exit poll showing the AfD lead to his social media platform, Truth Social.

 

Elias Beck, 70, of Bavaria, hunkered over his phone outside the main train station in Magdeburg, the state’s capital, studying a chart that showed the AfD close to securing an absolute majority in early results. He said he hoped the party would prevail because the German government had failed to address serious problems at home like illegal migration, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars abroad.

 

“You have all the problems in Germany, but all of the money is going to Ukraine,” he said.

 

Some rival parties appeared to have galvanized supporters against the AfD, an effort that some leaders in Berlin vowed was just the start of a backlash against a potential AfD government.

 

Lars Klingbeil, the country’s vice chancellor and a center-left Social Democrat, said on television that the election was “a turning point,” adding that there were many people “across Germany, who are afraid and worried about this election result for the AfD.”

 

One of the worried was Muhammad Hassan, 27, a native of Pakistan, who said on Sunday night in Magdeburg that he has done all he can to assimilate in Germany since he arrived in 2023.

 

Mr. Hassan said he had learned German, obtained a driver’s license, finished a master’s in water engineering and secured a job as a technical draftsman drawing underground infrastructure like sewage and electrical lines. But he worried an AfD government would take it away, a year before he is eligible for permanent residency.

 

“When I see today’s situation,” he said, referring to the election, “it has totally disappointed me because what I have dreamed, I cannot see right now.”

 

Rival parties could still prevent the AfD from assuming power in Saxony-Anhalt. The Christian Democrats, who finished a distant second, could end up leading the state if they can build a coalition with four others: the center-left Social Democrats and Greens, the far-left Die Linke, and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, known by its German initials BSW.

 

But some Christian Democrat leaders in the state have said they would not work with Die Linke, calling it extremist. BSW leaders have also said they would not support the current state leader, Sven Schulze of the Christian Democrats, or the AfD. They have pushed for a nonpartisan state leader, an idea Mr. Siegmund rejected late on Sunday. Mr. Siegmund also seemed to invite some members of the Christian Democrats to defect and supply the votes for an AfD government.

 

The coming coalition wrangling could take days or weeks. Analysts said it was likely to leave the state’s next leader in fragile condition, no matter which party is in power.

 

Sunday’s result, said Sudha David-Wilp, the vice president of external relations at the German Marshall Fund, a think tank, “stands as a harbinger for the inability for mainstream parties to form stable coalitions.”

 

Tatiana Firsova contributed reporting from Berlin.

 

Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

 

Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

 

Ashley Southall writes about cannabis legalization in New York.

Far-Right Victory in German State Sends a Signal to Europe

 

News Analysis

Far-Right Victory in German State Sends a Signal to Europe

 

A vote in eastern Germany has given fresh momentum to hard-right parties hoping to win elections across Europe next year, analysts said.

 

Ulrich Siegmund, center, the lead candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany, celebrating after polls closed on Sunday.Credit...Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

By Mark Landler

Reporting from Paris

Published Sept. 6, 2026Updated Sept. 7, 2026, 1:14 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/world/europe/afd-germany-europe-far-right-saxony-anhalt.html

 

When a far-right party won a landslide victory on Sunday in a small state in eastern Germany, its reverberations could be felt from Downing Street in London to the Élysée Palace in Paris. Rarely has the result of a regional election been viewed with such portent for the fate of democracy in Europe.

This wasn’t just any European country; it was Germany, a country that has relentlessly isolated far-right political parties since the calamity of Nazism. And it wasn’t just a strange outlier, but rather the latest step in a steady, decade-long march that has brought the far right ever closer to the fulcrum of power in Europe.

With elections scheduled across Europe next year, the striking success of the party, Alternative for Germany, could be a harbinger of further far-right victories, according to analysts, as well as a template for how they can be engineered. Its populist, anti-immigrant message echoes those of nationalist leaders in Britain, France, Italy and Spain, all countries where voters harbor many of the same grievances as those in Germany.

French voters will elect a new president next spring. An election is due in Spain by August, and in Italy by the end of next year. Far-right candidates are surging in all of them, threatening incumbents blamed for systemic problems with their countries’ economies.

“Developed Europe is going through a version of sophisticated state failure,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst who specializes in Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “Governments are unable to address cost-of-living concerns. They are not able to deliver for their voters.”

Image

Screens in eastern Germany showing the AfD’s lead on Sunday.Credit...John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In Germany, rising prices and high unemployment helped win the far-right party, known by its German initials, AfD, more than twice the number of votes as Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right incumbent party.

The result laid bare a divide between Europeans who see the far right as a threat to democracy, and a growing number who see it as democracy’s savior. The former warn that the far right will dismantle checks and balances, while treating minorities as second-class citizens. The latter see it as a bulwark against an out-of-touch elite that has eroded their national identity and endangered their livelihoods.

Because the AfD appeared to fall just short of an outright majority, according to near-final results, it may not end up governing Saxony-Anhalt, the state where the election was held. Rival parties have vowed that they would not form a coalition government with the AfD, whose leaders have used Nazi slogans and minimized the Holocaust. The AfD is designated as a “suspected” extremist group by German intelligence, partly because the group portrays Germans of immigrant backgrounds as second-class citizens.

Still, the result could hobble Mr. Merz if members of his party blame him for the loss, at a time when Germany’s leadership in Europe was already faltering. Mr. Merz’s standing has deteriorated so badly that political analysts talk openly of his ouster, a once-far-fetched scenario in German politics.

“It’s a big concern in Europe,” said Mr. Rahman, who previously worked for the European Union’s civil service. “A weak Germany, with a chancellor who is coming unstuck and being forced to deal with domestic problems, is bad and will ultimately subtract from Europe’s ability to confront its challenges.”

Worries among centrists about France, where President Emmanuel Macron will step down next spring, are no less acute. Marine Le Pen, the candidate of France’s main far-right party, the National Rally, holds a commanding lead in first-round polls, and has even finished first in recent second-round matchups. That puts her closer to power than at any time in her 14 years of seeking the presidency.

Image

Supporters of Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in a former mining town in France last year.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

A far-right government in Paris, Mr. Rahman said, would destabilize the European Union in a way that no other national election has, given France’s size, nuclear arsenal and founding role in the European project. It might also bring an end to the so-called cordon sanitaire, under which mainstream parties in France, as in Germany, have refused to enter governing coalitions with the far right.

“In both countries, the antifascist front that had prevailed since the end of the Second World War seems on the verge of collapse,” said Philippe Marlière, a professor of French and European politics at University College London.

In Spain, analysts said the far-right Vox Party could elbow its way into the next coalition government, with the current Socialist-led government tarnished by corruption scandals and an immigration crisis. In Britain, the governing Labour Party ousted its unpopular prime minister, Keir Starmer, in July to try to regain traction against a fast-rising far-right party, Reform U.K.

Still, the rise of the far right is not inexorable. Reform’s success has been rudely interrupted by a series of financial scandals involving its firebrand leader, Nigel Farage. That has given the Labour government, under a new prime minister, Andy Burnham, some unexpected breathing room.

In April, the far-right leader of Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was swept out of power after 16 years, a casualty of widespread perceptions that his government was corrupt, inattentive to the economy, and had picked needless battles with the European Union. The defeat of his Fidesz party gave hope to mainstream politicians that the far right, too, is vulnerable.

Image

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox political party, at a news conference in Ceuta last month.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

The extent to which those mainstream politicians “need to worry” about the AfD’s success, said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, “is going to depend on whether, if it ends up in office, it behaves relatively normally, and whether or not it’s able to run things competently.”

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whose populist party has neofascist roots, offers a playbook to other like-minded leaders. Having modulated her tone on issues like Ukraine and the European Union, she recently celebrated her government’s becoming the longest continuously serving in the history of the Italian Republic.

Ms. Meloni is in a decent position to extend that run when she faces voters next summer. But the rising profile of a rival even further to her right, Roberto Vannacci, has led her to harden her positions on issues like immigration. Ms. Meloni heaped criticism on Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, after a sudden influx of migrants from Morocco into a Spanish territory in late July.

Mr. Farage risks being similarly outflanked in Britain. Rupert Lowe, a disaffected member of his party, defected to start an even more right-wing group that is siphoning votes from Mr. Farage. Given that competition, and the proliferating questions about Reform’s finances, Professor Bale said it was difficult to see how Mr. Farage could cobble together enough votes to form a government.

In France, Ms. Le Pen’s path to power is more plausible. Her poll numbers are more than double those of the leading centrist, Edouard Philippe, or the leading far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Image

A Reform U.K.’s party conference in Birmingham, England, on Saturday.Credit...Isabel Infantes/Reuters

The big question in France is whether Mr. Philippe or anyone else will be able to gather enough support from the center right and left to emerge as the consensus mainstream candidate. In a second round of voting, analysts said, such a candidate would stand a chance of beating Ms. Le Pen.

But if France’s center remains fractured, as it is now, that would give Mr. Mélenchon a shot at making the second round, likely facing off against Ms. Le Pen. In that scenario — one that France’s political establishment views as a nightmare — Ms. Le Pen would be the odds-on victor.

Like other far-right leaders in Europe, Ms. Le Pen has kept her distance from President Trump. But she and other populist candidates could be buffeted by him anyway, according to analysts. Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular in Europe and is fast losing popularity in the United States as well.

The lesson that Europe’s beleaguered centrists hope voters will take from America’s turmoil, Mr. Rahman said, is that “if you experiment with non-mainstream parties, you risk making mistakes.”

Mark Landler is the Paris bureau chief of The Times, covering France, as well as American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.

 

REMEMBERING Dec. 28, 2024: Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party

 

Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party

 

The world’s richest man, a key adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, ridicules critics over his backing of the German extremist party AfD, as Germany prepares for elections.

 

Christopher F. Schuetze

By Christopher F. Schuetze

Dec. 28, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/world/europe/musk-support-for-german-far-right-afd.html

 

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, shocked many in Germany last week by endorsing its far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist.

 

This week, Mr. Musk entangled himself even more in the country’s snap election, explaining in a newspaper opinion essay why he believes the far-right party is the “last spark of hope” for Germany.

 

“The traditional parties have failed in Germany,” Mr. Musk wrote in comments published online by the daily Welt on Saturday. “Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity.”

 

Mr. Musk’s opinion piece comes as Germany girds itself for an intense winter election after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November. On Friday President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany officially announced the disbandment of Parliament and set Feb. 23 as the date for new elections.

 

With four mainstream and three extremist parties on the left and right vying for seats in Parliament and government participation, polls are favoring the conservative Christian Democratic Union. However, the AfD, with its anti-immigrant platform, is polling in second place, with roughly 20 percent.

 

Mr. Musk’s commentary was printed in the Sunday edition of the Welt, a conservative daily owned by the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico in the United States. Many of the paper’s journalists protested the printing of the commentary, according to reports. Eva Marie Kogel, who had been the paper’s head of opinion, resigned from her post after the printing, she confirmed on X.

 

In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s thoughts on the AfD could be controversial, the paper printed a response by Jan Philipp Burgard, the editor in chief-designate on the same page.

 

“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally flawed,” he wrote.

 

Mr. Musk, who was heavily involved in supporting Mr. Trump in the American presidential campaign, has been known to meddle in foreign political campaigns as well. He has engaged and supported right-wing causes both in Italy and the United Kingdom in recent months.

 

The provocative potential in Germany from Mr. Musk’s support of the AfD partly reflects the party’s political stance, considered so far right as to be anti-democratic. All other political parties in Germany have precluded working with the AfD.

 

When news broke that members of the AfD took part in a meeting with an Austrian extreme-right personality, who has called for deporting migrants en masse, tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets in protest this year. This spring and summer, Björn Höcke, a state leader of the party, was twice convicted of having used banned Nazi-era slogans during campaign stops. Sections of the party, including its entire youth wing, are considered extremist by domestic intelligence.

 

In his commentary Mr. Musk dismissed any criticism that the party could be too far-right by pointing to the private life of the party’s lead candidate. “The portrayal of the AfD as far-right is clearly wrong considering that Alice Weidel, the leader of the party, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” he wrote.

 

For the AfD the endorsement is viewed as a potential boon, even if it is too soon to tell whether Mr. Musk’s initial posting on X had an effect on the party’s polling. The party has been posting portions of the text on social media.

 

Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Germany’s far-right AfD thanks Elon Musk as France warns state election win a ‘serious moment’

 

Germany’s far-right AfD thanks Elon Musk as France warns state election win a ‘serious moment’

 

Lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt welcomes further ‘strong’ cooperation with Musk as French minister says ‘we cannot forget our history’

•  

Staff and agencies

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/07/afd-thanks-elon-musk-german-state-elections-2026-win

 

The candidate who led the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party to a historic state election victory in Germany has thanked Elon Musk for his support, as one French minister warned that this was a “serious moment” for Europe.

The AfD more than doubled its support in the Saxony-Anhalt region and appears to be on the brink of becoming the first far-right party to gain power in Germany at state level since the second world war.

On Sunday night, Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate, thanked Musk on X “for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time”, adding: “I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation”.

Siegmund wrote his comments after Musk said “Well done!” in German to AfD co-founder Alice Weidel, when she posted about the projected win.

 

Earlier, US president Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the election projection without comment on his Truth Social site. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev took a screengrab of Trump’s post and praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”. AfD is pro-Kremlin, urging a stop to support for Ukraine and pushing for Ukrainians to no longer receive refugee status.

Despite its resounding victory, AfD fell just short of winning a majority. The party was seeking an absolute majority in the state legislature to govern alone and overcome the so-called firewall of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with AfD.

Final results showed AfD falling three seats short, with 39 lawmakers in an 83-member parliament.

However, it still remains unclear as to how and whether the AfD will be able to form a government, having ruled out entering a coalition and being refused any form of cooperation by the mainstream parties.

AfD won 43.8% of the vote, more than double its showing five years ago in the region of 2.1 million people west of Berlin. That was far ahead of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, which polled 17.2% – losing about half its support – and won 15 seats. The centre-left Social Democrats polled 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left party 8.6%, winning eight seats apiece.

The BSW party, which has said it wouldn’t elect either Siegmund or incumbent Sven Schulze as governor but criticises the “firewall” against AfD, took 5.3% and fives seats.

France’s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, described the win as “a serious moment in Europe”, warning that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution”.

“We must listen with humility to the anger, the concerns, the fears, and respond to them,” he added. “We cannot forget our history. That is the meaning behind the choices made by France and Germany.”

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, said: “In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany.”

The German Economic Institute has warned of the far-reaching consequences for the German economy, in Saxony-Anhalt and beyond. It said the AfD’s immigration policy would be “calamitous” for the state, which has an ageing, dwindling population and is heavily dependent on foreign workers.

Critics have also warned that an AfD-run state, due to the Kremlin-friendly stance of the party, could leak sensitive information to Russia. The AfD has dismissed such claims. It has said it would seek to reform the domestic intelligence service, calling it biased.

 

The far-right leader pushing Germans to forget the Nazi past

 

The far-right leader pushing Germans to forget the Nazi past

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider could soon wield more power than any other far-right figure in Germany’s postwar history to turn his radical ideas into reality.

 

By JAMES ANGELOS
in Querfurt, Germany

^{Illustration by David Szakaly for POLITICO}

 

September 3, 2026 4:01 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/hans-thomas-tillschneider-saxony-anhalt-election-erinnerungskultur-alternative-for-germany/

 

The man leading the charge to make Germany proud again won’t say he wants his fellow Germans to “forget” the Nazi past, but that is where his ideas invariably lead.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a 48-year-old lawmaker for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, was until recently little known beyond his largely rural constituency. But he may soon be in a position to help realize one of the greatest ambitions of the party’s most extreme faction: remaking his country’s postwar identity and steering Germans toward leaving behind the Nazi past.

That history “remains present in a peculiar way — yes, like a zombie,” Tillschneider told POLITICO in July on the sidelines of an AfD conference in the eastern city of Magdeburg. “It’s an undead entity. And that is not normal. That is not good.”

Germany’s much-vaunted Erinnerungskultur, or culture of remembrance, is central to its self-conception — and long served as an existential imperative. Though halting, West Germany’s reckoning with Nazi crimes and the Holocaust in the decades after the end of World War II served to help restore the country’s standing among democratic nations, making possible its membership in Western alliances. The country’s constitution was shaped in repudiation of Nazism, with safeguards intended to prevent its resurgence.

But for the AfD’s most extreme leaders — many now concentrated in rural areas of the former East Germany — the culture of remembrance has merely perpetuated what some, including Tillschneider, call a “guilt cult” designed to instill self-loathing in the German Volk, a term for “people” which is imbued with near-mystical significance on the far right. Without openly denying Nazi crimes, they argue the cultural and political reckoning with them has damaged the Volk’s identity, leaving Germans weak, atomized, and vulnerable to “globalist” forces such as the EU and the U.S., long viewed by the far-right as a corrosive force due to the homogenizing influence of its individualist, consumerist culture — at least until U.S. President Donald Trump’s arrival.

Tillschneider’s ideas aren’t new. The backlash against Germany’s culture of remembrance is as old as the effort to reckon with the past itself. But as the intellectual architect of the party’s blueprint for governing in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of a Sept. 6 election in the state — where the AfD is so far ahead in the polls it’s within striking distance of an outright majority in parliament — he could soon wield more tangible power than any other far-right figure in Germany’s postwar history to turn those ideas into reality. Tillschneider, currently the AfD’s spokesperson for culture and education policy in the state parliament, is a leading candidate to become the head of a future ministry that would oversee school curricula and cultural funding in the state.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider speaks at an AfD convention in Magdeburg, eastern Germany on July 11, 2026. | Jens Schlüter/AFP via Getty Images

“We want to spread the joy of being German,” Tillschneider said at a pre-election AfD “family fest” on an overcast August afternoon in Querfurt, a small medieval fortress city in his Saxony-Anhalt constituency. “It’s a celebration. Celebrate the fact that you’re German.”

This did not mean, he added, that the AfD would eliminate school lessons on Nazi crimes. Rather, it would “shift the emphasis,” he said, so the Nazi past loses its contemporary urgency.

“Of course, I’d also like to see history classes on the Third Reich,” he said, “But good history classes. Good history classes convey a sense of the otherness of the past.”

 

‘More Bismarck, less Hitler’

In some ways, Tillschneider, a bearded, bespectacled former university lecturer, seems an unlikely figure to advance the revolution in German identity the far-right has long sought.

Born in Romania during the Cold War, Tillschneider grew up in a German-speaking minority community whose roots in the region stretched back to Habsburg rule. His family moved to West Germany when he was still a child. At university, he became interested in Islamic studies, drawn — as he now explains it — to the subject because it was foreign and unfamiliar. He later studied in Syria before earning a doctorate and publishing a book on “the origins of legal hermeneutics in early Islam.”

After moving to eastern Germany in subsequent years, Tillschneider came to depict Islam as fundamentally incompatible with German society and became a prominent figure in the so-called “New Right,” a network of radical intellectuals known for recasting old, extremist ideas in more culturally palatable terms. He also became associated with an extreme faction within the AfD called Der Flügel (“the Wing”) alongside Thuringian politician Björn Höcke, who drew widespread condemnation in 2017 for calling Berlin’s prominent Holocaust memorial, located near the Brandenburg Gate, a “monument of shame” and demanding a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s memory politics. Der Flügel was dissolved in 2020, but its members, including Tillschneider, have only grown more influential in the party since then.

Tillschneider was the main author of the AfD’s program for how it will wield power in Saxony-Anhalt. At the root are myriad measures aimed at “stabilizing” German identity by redirecting cultural funding and revising school curricula, over which states have primary authority. Tillschneider has announced plans for changing history lessons so that they are oriented toward “more Bismarck, less Hitler,” — controversial phrasing that has recently been removed from the governing manifesto. The party’s program also proposes cutting funding for “anti-German art” and developing a “patriotic tourism” strategy for the state.

Party leaders say they don’t intend to eradicate memorials to Nazi crimes but will fund and restore those that “honor the sacrifices of soldiers” in both world wars. “This support should benefit all monuments equally, without petty political judgments,” the program reads. “Fallen soldiers gave their lives to defend their country. Recognizing and honoring this great sacrifice is a first sign of a patriotic turnaround.”

Tillschneider and Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, at the party’s family festival in Querfurt. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

It’s perhaps no coincidence that such a revolution in German identity would take root in the former East Germany, where the AfD is ascendant. While West Germany was attempting to undertake a confrontation with the past, imperfect as it was, the state narrative in the former East Germany was that its people had vanquished fascism, which in any case was a product of the West. Many of the AfD’s supporters in the East believe a West German narrative about the Nazi past was imposed on them after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But for Tillschneider, there’s another reason the revolution will begin in the East — because eastern Germans already know what it means to see a political regime collapse.

“As a result of the peaceful revolution, people have witnessed a change in systems and, as a result, have gained some distance, are more reflective,” he said at the AfD family festival, speaking in a breathless torrent. By contrast, he added, western Germans “have been stewing in the same soup for 80 years.”

‘Love for the homeland is not a crime’

As attendees queued for beer and free bratwurst at the AfD family festival — held on an arid field on the outskirts of Querfurt, beside an agricultural-machinery plant — Tillschneider took the stage before an “Our Country First” placard and declared that they had ample reason to celebrate: the establishment parties, he said, were nearing their demise.

“We’re celebrating the fact that the policies that are directed against us — which take away our freedom, which strip us of our autonomy, which impoverish us — will come to an end,” he yelled, his booming voice saturating the speakers. “On Sept. 6, for the first time, we have a realistic chance — and this isn’t just campaign rhetoric — a realistic chance to end this nightmare, to put an end to this horror!”

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt and its potential future premier, then took to the stage to a rock-star reception. Charismatic and very popular online, his quick smile belies the radical politics of the state branch of his party, which domestic intelligence authorities have classified as an extremist organization seeking “to abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form.” AfD politicians in the state, including Siegmund and Tillschneider, deny being extremists, portraying the label as state repression that undermines the democratic will of their supporters.

If Siegmund is the face of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, Tillschneider supplies much of the brains. Siegmund alluded to this during his speech, thanking Tillschneider for spending “hundreds of hours” on the party’s governing manifesto.

“I’ll need him over the next five years because we’re making history together,” Siegmund said of Tillschneider. “The sun rises in the east, but it will shine over all of Germany!”

People at the AfD family fest in Querfurt line up to buy party merchandise. Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO

As people waited in line for hours to get Siegmund’s autograph, Tillschneider darted frantically from tent to tent, making sure things were running smoothly. “Don’t sell them for less than €10!” he shouted to a group of volunteers as he handed them a box of tote bags emblazoned with Siegmund’s face.

One of those volunteers, Gesine Sauer, a 48-year-old social worker from the area, said she agreed with Tillschneider’s ideas about making Germans proud of their history.

“People always focus on just a very small part of German history — and that has nothing to do with anyone trying to deny it, or trying to dismiss it — but German history is so much more than that,” she said. “And time and again, from all sides, we’re being forced to grapple with this question of guilt. That’s wrong, and it’s not a positive development. Instead, we should reflect on what we were once capable of achieving,” she added, going on to list German historical accomplishments in medicine and industry.

Others put it more simply. “I’d say that was all 90 years ago, and at some point we should just let the past be the past,” said one woman in her 60s wearing a bracelet in the colors of the German flag.

“With us, if you say you love your homeland, you’re stamped as a Nazi,” said one man, a 51-year-old railroad track worker, as he waited in the long line for beer wearing a shirt that read “Love for the homeland is not a crime.”

Most attendees, however, cited other reasons for voting for the AfD: economic and industrial decline; refugees receiving state support while Germans struggled to pay their bills; the government’s refusal to accept cheap Russian natural gas while sending billions in federal aid to Ukraine.

For Tillschneider and his fellow far-right ideologues, these more tangible issues are all connected to the crisis of German identity: the country’s reluctance to pursue its own interests, they argue, stems from an “anti-German” strain of thinking within the country.

“That’s why we have policies that are self-destructive in every area — because we have a cracked identity,” Tillschneider said from underneath a tent at the festival.

Tillschneider listens to Siegmund, the AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt and its potential future premier. | James Angelos/POLITICO

He rattled off ideas for repairing the German soul: a “pride month” celebrating German cultural heritage and a festival of German music — not “Baroque music or European music,” he clarified, but “German music.”

He denied the goal was to make Germans forget the Nazi past. Yet he went on to describe a process that seemed to amount to just that.

The goal, he said, was for this history to “no longer be so urgent, no longer so intrusive, no longer so present.”

He added: “Just because something is no longer present doesn’t mean it will be forgotten.”

Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.

How Merkel and Merz lost eastern Germany to the AfD

 

How Merkel and Merz lost eastern Germany to the AfD

 

This Sunday, the far right is well placed to take power in a German state for the first time since 1945.

By ANNE MCELVOY
in Naumburg, Germany

^{Illustration by Barbara Gibson for POLITICO}

September 3, 2026 4:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/ulrich-siegmund-saxony-anhalt-election-germany-helmut-kohl-angela-merkel-friedrich-merz/

 

Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, took to the stage in the central marketplace of the town of Naumburg and declared there was a new “awakening” in eastern Germany. 

Ahead of a vital election in the region of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday — in which Siegmund is within striking distance of becoming the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945 — that appeal to an eastern identity struck a chord. 

A young man beside me was hollering “Ostdeutschland!” although he was too young to have lived in the communist German Democratic Republic. “It was purer there,” he explained. “More German. Not America-Germany like the West.”

Elements of Siegmund’s new awakening sounded reminiscent of the old East, and his speech would certainly have played well in the Kremlin. He condemned the foolishness of supporting “corrupt” Ukraine and addressed the need to return to oil and gas supplies from Russia.

East Germany formally dissolved in 1990, but it did not disappear. Its struggles for identity within the sprawling German federal system, with power concentrated in Berlin, have fueled the ascent of the far right. 

If the AfD does secure an outright victory this weekend, it will raise profound questions about how chancellors such as Helmut Kohl, Angela Merkel and Friedrich Merz failed to manage the post-unification transition and prevent large parts of the east from veering off on a political trajectory toward the far right. 

Sausages and strongarms

In a generally upbeat line for sausages and beer in Naumburg, there were also some less cheery sorts in neo-Nazi T-shirts and regalia. One of the crowd told me the government in Berlin “sends our tax money to the Jews in Israel and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy instead of spending it here.”

It is important to stress that the eastern political identity is not monochrome nostalgia for the GDR. Indeed, the AfD is repurposing the slogan of the 1989 demonstrations against communism — “Wir sind das Volk” – “We are the people” — for its own ends. 

That taps into memories of marching for freedom in the last days of the socialist state. 

“And now we will show the world again,” said Dirk Huzenlaub, a metalworker in his blue overalls, whom I spoke to on another campaign pit stop in the nearby town of Lützen 

He has done well as a self- employed worker, supplying many local companies. But he adds that the “people at the top don’t want us to do well — they keep us down on purpose.” A welter of internet conspiracy theories followed, including the notion that Merz and his predecessor Merkel “betrayed us — we risk our country collapsing the way the old East Germany collapsed.”

AfD supporters gather to listen to the party’s candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt election, Ulrich Siegmund, on August 24, 2026 in Naumburg. | Gallup/Getty Images

Beyond the conviviality of the sausage line, the mood can sour fast — as I discovered when I sought to speak with Siegmund in Lützen, only to be told “mainstream” press were not welcome. I was roughly jostled aside, my arm twisted by a musclebound heavy flanking Siegmund, who sported an earpiece and a lavishly tattooed neck.

“Move or I will take you to the police,” he barked. We had a short, unproductive debate about the constitutionally guaranteed right to report freely in public places.  

Another hard arm twist and shove ensued, ending with me stumbling over a curb and being dragged to a police car. No one seemed much bothered by this.

 

“This woman is being un-co-operative,” the minder snarled.  At the next stop in Naumburg, another attentive policeman enjoined me to stay away from “Security Zone 1” — anywhere near the stage. 

Then came the more chilling warning. 

“It’s for your own safety,” he added. “Best remember, in that zone, the AfD are the masters.” 

Merkel and the migration backlash

The last two chancellors — Merz and Merkel — have provoked a strong backlash in eastern Germany. 

For Merkel, the outcome could have been more positive. She hailed from the East herself and was an active participant in the Wende, or “turn”, away from communism. She inherited Kohl’s pledge to produce “flourishing landscapes” in the “new federal states.” Forlorn towns and cities were restored, the air pollution from brown-coal energy supplies ended, and potholed roads are now smooth enough to roar along in Mercedes and BMWs.

But the East responded far more negatively to Merkel’s decision to allow a mass influx of asylum seekers from Syria and North Africa in 2015 and 2016. She signaled her empathy for that in a conversation with me in 2018, saying she understood the heartache of easterners seeing their communities empty out demographically and traditional jobs disappear. 

“Of course, these disturbing personal experiences affect people and leave a deep mark — we need to understand this,” she said. 

 

But Merkel’s responses did not go far enough for people worried about the speed of social change. And from 2015, the AfD began to soar. 

The Covid era deepened divisions too: a social media campaign demanded the introduction of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine ahead of better options. That demonstrated a complex blend of attitudes which feature strongly in AfD lore to this day: Distrust of Western capitalism and an acceptance of Russia.

The veteran sociologist Detlef Pollack diagnoses a “victim mythology” western politicians find hard to combat without sounding aloof. Fully three-quarters of voters who lean towards the AfD think the unified Germany has robbed them of their just deserts, in comparison with two-fifths of the public in the old GDR. 

An AfD supporter carries a tote bag featuring Siegmund that reads “Our year!” | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Frustration came to mark the dealings of Merkel and her successor Merz in talking about the mood in the old east.

“There is no point trying to convince you  [about the justification for accepting over 1 million refugees],” she said at a rally I attended in her final election campaign in 2017 in the industrial town of Bitterfeld as a hostile mob booed and blew horns to stop her being heard. Backstage she shook her head, clearly furious.

The more she was lionized as a Gloriana of international liberal democracy for her robust dealings with U.S. President Donald Trump, the more alienated she became from socially conservative easterners. The AfD also learned from the MAGA movement how to unite multiple strands of thought into campaign messages, interwoven with slugs of fake or exaggerated stories.

 

The arrival of Merz, a western politician not armed with a vast array of communication skills, together with struggles of the wider German economy — like the symbolic hit of massive projected job losses at the VW plant in Wolfsburg close to the old border — have taken a further shine off the lure of the Federal Republic’s prosperity model.

Falling behind

An assessment from the Halle Institute for Economic Research noted that, after the 1990s, the “initial catch-up momentum came to a halt. Since then, the East German economy has mostly grown even more slowly than the West German one.” 

It blamed the “lack of productivity of East German companies,” as well as a protracted brain drain and a low rate of business formation. A German defense official, granted permission to speak confidentially to POLITICO, added: “Overwhelmingly, the new defense industries which will drive prosperity and security are based in the old Federal Republic. That gives the east less interest in arming against Russia — it’s a double hit we need to address.” 

Merkel has demanded more “courage” to “fight for democracy,” channeling her own brand of 1989 nostalgia. These messages embolden the AfD’s opponents, including churchgoers now rallying as they did against the regime in 1989. Problematically, though, her appeals can also come across as “Bevormundung,” with eastern Germans feeling like they are being treated with haughty condescension.

People, including supporters of Antifa, protesting near an AfD rally in Naumburg on August 24, 2026. | Gallup/Getty Images

Merz warns that a far-right government in Saxony-Anhalt would mean “foreign investors steering clear of the state in future” and that the state “will face considerable problems.”

Whether that scare tactic proves persuasive remains to be seen.

(For his part, Siegmund has shed the miserabilist mantras of other AfD luminaries. “My God, the women are great-looking in this town,” I hear him announce to giggling selfie-seekers in Lützen. “Better not tell my wife.”)

Merz also does not exude much personal interest in the East, other than seeing it as a problem to be kept at bay. Very few of his Cabinet hail from that part of Germany — though the party cites the rise of a new generation of eastern Germans to the next tier of ministerial posts. That may need to accelerate soon to combat the rising mood of alienation.

Arriving on a whistlestop visit on Monday to support Sven Schulze as his party’s candidate for minister-president, the chancellor condemned “people who trade on anger.” He did venture out among voters — something many leading politicians avoid.  

Saxony-Anhalt is a small state in population — with just over 2 million inhabitants. But it is also the cradle of the Lutheran tradition of challenging the mighty — a theme that the more historically minded rally-goers raised with me. 

As Siegmund puts it: “Even if we don’t get there [to an overall majority], we are not going away.” That too was a stubborn cry from the streets in late 1989. And in 2026, it spurred huge roars of approval through the marketplace in Naumburg, drowning out the counter-protests.

Siegmund is within striking distance of becoming the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945. | Hannibal Hanschke/EFE via EPA

On Sunday, the AfD will be put to the test.

So too will a German political establishment that won unification, only to lose much of its grip on people power.

Anne McElvoy is a former correspondent in East Germany and author of The Saddled Cow, East Germany’s Life and Legacy.