“The east will show everyone else how it’s done,” the Alternative for Germany politician shouted into the crowd. “We’ll show the west Germans how to have a peaceful revolution.”
These were the words of René Aust, a rising star in the AfD, at a rally last month in the east German town of Suhl. They were met with a roar from the crowd and deafening chants of “east, east, east Germany” that rose as a wall of sound from the market square.
The AfD increasingly portrays itself as the voice of the east. And it now has the results to prove it. It won Sunday’s election in the eastern state of Thuringia with 32.8 per cent — the first time a far-right party had won a state poll in Germany’s postwar history.
It performed well in neighbouring Saxony too, scoring 30.6 per cent, just behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union. They are results that western branches of the AfD can only dream of — so far.
The shockwaves will be felt far beyond Saxony and Thuringia. Thirty-four years after reunification, social and political divisions between east and west Germany seem to be as deep as ever. Indeed, there are signs they are getting deeper.
Nothing has exemplified this as much as Ukraine. Polls show that east Germans are much more sceptical of German weapons supplies to Kyiv and western sanctions against Russia than westerners, and more supportive of peace talks. An exit poll by ZDF found 54 per cent of Thuringians wanted a cut in western military support for Ukraine.
A majority also oppose plans by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to station US medium-range missiles in Germany from 2026. That is combined with a strong strain of anti-Americanism inherited from the days of the communist German Democratic Republic.
“In GDR times it was the Soviets who dictated everything — now it’s the Americans,” said Heinz Wolff, a pensioner from the Thuringian town of Jena on the sidelines of a campaign appearance there last week by Scholz.
It was not just the AfD that capitalised on this anti-war sentiment. Another beneficiary was the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a hard-left party formed only seven months ago and which, from a standing start, won 11.8 per cent in Saxony and 15.8 per cent in Thuringia.
Asked about east Germans’ tendency to support fringe parties, some of which seem determined to overturn the democratic system, west Germans tend to shrug their shoulders in frustration.
They point to the €1.6tn of transfers that have flowed into east Germany since reunification, the massive investments in infrastructure and the thousands of jobs created in high-tech industries such as semiconductors, especially in and around the Saxon capital of Dresden.
A study last month by the German Economic Institute in Cologne described the east as Germany’s “high achiever”, saying it was fast approaching the west in terms of employment and wage trends.
But “people in east Germany are barely aware of these catch-up processes,” wrote the author, Matthias Diermeier.
He said the reason for “east German pessimism” was its poor demographic outlook. A lot of areas, apart from those surrounding the capital Berlin, had a shrinking population — a trend that “will only get worse in coming years”, Diermeier added.
Indeed, statistics show that since the Turn, the term Germans use for the fall of communism and reunification, 3.7mn easterners have moved to west Germany, most of them young and well-educated. Of the 50 German districts with the oldest population, 42 are in the east.
Meanwhile, east Germans continue to have lower median wages and far fewer assets than western counterparts. According to the Bundesbank, east German households have on average €43,400 in the form of savings, investments and real estate, net of debt — less than half the national average.
Experts say it is not just the east’s economic problems that influence voting behaviour, but the memory of past injustices. Ulrich Sondermann-Becker, an analyst with regional broadcaster MDR, calls them the “Turning wounds”, the wounds from the turn.
Many in the east still associate that period with high unemployment, mass closures of industrial companies and the “devaluation of people’s life experiences” in the GDR “which has continued into the present”.
“People feel they were just overrun, with unbelievable arrogance,” he said.
Katja Wolf, the BSW’s lead candidate in Thuringia, told the Financial Times last month: “One ideology just got replaced by another and this victors’ mentality spread across the country, leading to a lot of upheaval and injustice.”
It is also a reason why people in the east are so opposed to uncontrolled immigration, she said. “They say no one helped us after the Turn, when unemployment was so high, and now you in Berlin are trying to save the whole world,” Wolf said.
Bodo Ramelow, prime minister of Thuringia, who hails from the hard-left Linke party, said unification had succeeded in economic terms but “the emotional German unification was trampled underfoot”.
“The way we treat each other is just terrible,” he told reporters last month. “[Westerners] say, you’re so ungrateful, you just want our money, you take everything from us, and then to cap it all you keep electing stupid parties,” he said.
Political scientists warn against generalising about the east. In parts, traditional parties remain strong: the centre-right CDU finished narrowly ahead of the AfD in Saxony. The CDU is also strong in Saxony-Anhalt, and the SPD still dominates in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
“There is no such thing as THE east, just as there is no such thing as THE state of Saxony, or even THE city of Leipzig,” said Hendrik Träger, a political scientist at Leipzig university.
What is most striking to many observers, however, is how popular the AfD is in the east despite its radical reputation. Its regional branches in Saxony and Thuringia have been labelled “right-wing extremist” by German domestic intelligence and its leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been fined in recent months for using banned Nazi slogans in his speeches.
“Most AfD voters don’t seem to care about Höcke’s defeats in court,” said Träger. “It’s classic populism — the party just tries to discredit the institution involved, be it the courts or domestic intelligence.” A strategy, he added, that seems to work with voters.
Some AfD officials worry the party as a whole could be banned in Germany. Stefan Möller, its co-leader in Thuringia, says that will not be the end of the story. “The AfD is immortal,” he told the FT. “In the east at least.”
Video: Why the far right is surging in Europe | FT Film
