Ulrich Siegmund, the air-freshener salesman who delivered AfD’s first electoral victory in Germany

“I discovered my talent for sales when I was very young. I love selling.” Ulrich Siegmund said that in interviews with the German press just a few years ago. The former seller of air fresheners, and almost anything else that could be sold, has now delivered the AfD’s first victory in a German state election.

In Saxony-Anhalt, Germany’s poorest state, Siegmund secured an overwhelming result. The AfD interprets it as the first rung on a ladder that could eventually take the party into the Bundestag and make Alice Weidel the next chancellor.

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I discovered my talent for sales when I was very young. I love selling.

Siegmund is 35 and fits the profile of a successful salesman. He smiles constantly, keeps a cordial tone and avoids raising his voice or using profanity. His rhetoric is usually upbeat and optimistic, even when he promises to eliminate the state’s 8 percent unemployment rate, a promise that has caught attention because such claims are unusual in Germany.

The winner of the first regional election victory for the right since the end of World War II says compulsory schooling would end under him and that illegal immigrants would be repatriated en masse. With the same boyish expression, he avoids condemning Nazism as the worst disaster in German history. He also says public broadcasting should be reduced to the bare minimum, with two channels expressly barred from broadcasting political opinions.

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clear diplomatic course

A former local councillor and lawmaker, Siegmund was born after the Berlin Wall had ceased to divide Germany. He has drawn support from people nostalgic for order, hostile to the euro and Brussels, and receptive to Vladimir Putin’s image as a strongman. He calls for a “clear diplomatic course” toward Russia and says support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy should end in a war he considers pointless and damaging to German finances. “Every minute, 20,000 euros goes to Ukraine,” he complains.

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Every minute, 20,000 euros goes to Ukraine

Siegmund developed his political presence on social media during the pandemic. An enthusiastic TikTok user with more than 800,000 followers, he used the lockdown months to attack mandatory vaccination, masks and coronavirus restrictions. He joined the Christian Democratic Union at 19, left five years later and entered the AfD in 2014, saying it suited him better.

Der Spiegel described him as “Germany’s most dangerous man.” Yet in his hometown and at the ballot box, he is known as a likable figure, far removed from violent expressions, even though the article’s final sentence is truncated.

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Germany’s most dangerous man