“The Complete Collapse of the CDU”: Austrian Press on Saxony-Anhalt Election

“What began in Saxony-Anhalt will not end in Saxony-Anhalt,” Gerold Riedmann writes in Austria’s Der Standard after the AfD’s decisive victory in the German state election. The result, he argues, has pushed Germany’s far right closer than ever to taking part in governing the country.

Riedmann calls the election an “impressive result, without precedent in elections at the level of a German state.” A surprisingly high turnout gave the AfD twice its previous result and punished the CDU on an unprecedented scale. Der Standard presents the vote as a “complete collapse” for the Christian Democrats, whose weakness helped drive the conservative electorate further to the right.

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What began in Saxony-Anhalt will not end in Saxony-Anhalt.

The commentator says the result cannot be treated as a phenomenon confined to Saxony-Anhalt. The CDU’s failure, he argues, radiates from Berlin and directly from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office. It is difficult, he writes, to imagine a clearer signal against continuing the existing policy.

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Impressive result, without precedent in elections at the level of a German state.

Riedmann portrays the AfD electorate as a coalition of protest voters, workers and pro-Russian circles, not only in eastern Germany. He says the party’s candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, softened his far-right stance to appeal to them. The article highlights Siegmund’s use of the Simson moped, produced in the former East Germany, as part of an effort to claim local identity and play on nostalgia for freedom.

At the same time, Der Standard accuses the winner of “total trivialization” of the Nazi past and says his campaign team is closely linked to the far-right Identitarian movement. Riedmann sees parallels with the early history of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. The paper also attributes the AfD’s success partly to Germany’s poor economic situation, while arguing that the party’s proposals, including leaving the euro area and Schengen zone, could instead isolate the German economy. “Putin likes that,” the commentator adds.

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Putin likes that.