How Eastern Germany Became a Stronghold of the Far Right

Nearly 40 years after German reunification, divisions between the country’s east and west remain central to understanding the far right’s strength in the former communist states. Voters in eastern Germany’s Upper Saxony could give the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a victory on Sunday. If the party wins an absolute majority of seats, it would become the first radical-right formation to govern a German region since 1945.

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industries of the future

Elisabeth Kaiser, the federal government’s commissioner for eastern Germany, says the political identity of the former communist regions remains distinct. The east’s economic recovery has produced visible gains since reunification. Investment has increased, unemployment has fallen well below its 1990s peak, and eastern states record proportionally more patents than western states. Kaiser says her home region of Thuringia contains many “industries of the future.”

But Kaiser also acknowledges that successive governments have failed to overcome major wealth disparities, particularly those linked to inheritance. For some people, the economic stagnation and forced privatizations that followed reunification left lasting trauma. “Change” therefore remains associated with negative experiences. The mass exodus from the east during the 1990s and 2000s also left many who stayed feeling “disadvantaged and invisible,” she says.

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Change

The AfD’s revanchist message finds an audience in that setting, especially its call to close the borders. Although the proportion of residents with immigrant backgrounds is much lower in the east than in the west, contact with foreigners is less common. In the former East Germany, workers from other socialist countries were largely kept physically separate from East Germans, unlike the guest workers who helped drive West Germany’s postwar economic miracle.

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disadvantaged and invisible

Kaiser says East Germany “was not an immigration society” and had strong racism despite its official rhetoric of friendship among peoples. Immigration remains viewed with suspicion, even though it plays an important role in the economy and public services. One in five doctors in Upper Saxony, she says, is an immigrant or has an immigrant background. Kaiser has also warned against idealizing the communist past.

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was not an immigration society