How the east became Germany’s far-right stronghold

BERLIN, Sept 6 — More than three decades after Germany’s 1990 reunification, lasting east-west divisions may be thrown into stark relief at today’s election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The anti-immigration and Moscow-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to win big and even hopes to take power at the state level, which would be a first for a far-right party in German post-war history.

As much of the east has become an AfD stronghold, the government’s commissioner for eastern Germany, lawmaker Elisabeth Kaiser, herself from Thuringia state in the east, spoke to AFP about the historic and cultural factors shaping the region’s distinct politics.

Disparities 

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, spelling the end of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), many state-owned enterprises were shuttered, sparking large-scale unemployment and population flight, especially by young women.

“That was a difficult experience for many East Germans, one that has persisted across generations, becoming part of a collective east German memory,” Kaiser said.

“It involved this sense of devaluation, this experience of loss and the realisation that everything can change overnight.”

Decades on, wages and savings remain lower on average, most big business is still based in the west, and eastern Germans — one fifth of the population — are under-represented in politics.

Billions spent on infrastructure and to stimulate the economy have born some fruit — Kaiser said the region is now home to many of the “industries of the future”.

She also praised many eastern regions as ideal for young families, with lower living costs and rents, natural beauty, good childcare and excellent universities.

Nevertheless, she said there remain “big disparities in wealth” and, among many, a feeling of being “disadvantaged and not seen”.

Migration 

The AfD’s hostility to migration resonates in much of the east, even though it has fewer foreign-born residents than the west.

While West Germany’s post-war economic recovery was fuelled by “guest workers”, the East invited contract workers from socialist “brother states” such as Vietnam and Mozambique.

They “were very much physically separated from East Germans” and on time-limited contracts, Kaiser said, meaning that East Germany “was not an immigrant society”.

While state propaganda praised the GDR as internationalist, she said there was also “racism, xenophobia and right-wing extremism which unfortunately erupted in the 1990s” — an era known as the “baseball bat years” for its attacks on foreigners.

More recently, she said, resentment has spread especially about Syrian and Afghan asylum-seekers and the notion of “all the extra things they were getting for free”.

‘Ostalgie’ 

Kaiser also addressed warnings that East Germany is being romanticised, a nostalgic trend known as “Ostalgie”.

“In times of crisis people remember positive things from their past,” she said, adding that populists were using “emotionally charged elements from the GDR era”.

One icon is the Simson-brand scooter, often ridden by the AfD’s lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund. “Back then it was a symbol of freedom because it enabled you to move around,” Kaiser said.

While older voters may remember feeling more secure in the GDR, Kaiser said it is often forgotten that “that was because everything was so controlled and surveilled”.

She also pointed out that many in the east take pride in the peaceful revolution of 1989 and see it as proof that collectively they are “capable of toppling a system”.

Russia ties 

The AfD advocates closer ties to Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine and “hybrid attacks” Berlin has blamed on Moscow.

Kaiser said the socialisation of many East Germans had fostered a “strong anti-Americanism” and a lingering scepticism of the transatlantic alliance which has not eased during the current US administration.

Many in the east are keen on renewed diplomacy with Russia — a path which Kaiser says the Kremlin shows no willingness to follow.

The Soviets’ tight grip over eastern Europe had left behind “an element of fear of the Russians”, Kaiser said, “a feeling that you shouldn’t provoke them”.

‘Seismograph’ 

Some in the west have suggested the richer part of Germany should stop “subsidising” the east. Kaiser says she finds such ideas “disastrous” and that they “annoy me as an east German”.

She said cutting transfer funds would “only strengthen the victim role that the AfD always likes to adopt”.

Amid current geopolitical ruptures and economic stagnation, Kaiser said many in the east are especially fearful of change, given their turbulent history.

She pointed out that in parts of the west, the AfD and their far-left competitors are also on the rise, and said Germany as a whole should view the east as a political “seismograph”. — AFP