The Alternative für Deutschland took nearly 44 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt this month, making it the first far-right party to win a German state election since the Second World War. The result gives the AfD 39 seats in the state parliament, three short of an outright majority but enough to put it in a commanding position to form a government.
The victory has immediate consequences for the roughly 7.9 per cent of Saxony-Anhalt's residents who hold foreign nationality, a figure well below the 14.9 per cent national average, according to government statistics from Destatis. It also has consequences for German citizens of migrant background, who now face a party in power that has pledged to reshape daily life around an exclusionary vision of the state.
What the AfD programme actually proposes
The party's manifesto for Saxony-Anhalt goes well beyond the anti-immigration rhetoric that defined its early years. It proposes a state-level deportation operation, the removal of war refugee status for Ukrainians, and a requirement that small businesses adopt artificial intelligence specifically to reduce the need for skilled migrant workers from what the party calls "culturally alien" backgrounds.
Children of refugees would be placed in separate school classes, a measure the party says would demonstrate that their stay in Germany is temporary and would prevent what it describes as "various stresses" on other children. Disabled children would also be removed from mainstream classrooms. Schools would be required to fly the German national flag daily and would be banned from displaying rainbow flags. The state government would, the manifesto says, "exhaust all legal avenues" to limit Islamic expression.
These proposals amount to a comprehensive programme for the segregation of public life. That they come from a party that just won 44 per cent of the vote in a German state is without precedent in post-war Germany.
A party that hardens rather than moderates
The trajectory matters. In France, Marine Le Pen spent years softening the Front National's image before rebranding it as Rassemblement National. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni moved from the fringe to the prime ministership by moderating her language as she approached office. The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt has done the opposite, hardening its platform as its vote share has grown.
Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old who leads the AfD in the state, has swapped the party's earlier slogan of "enough is enough" for something more aspirational: "Alles ist möglich", meaning "everything is possible". The messaging has shifted toward optimism, but the substance has not.
Gregoire Roos, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, notes that around 36 per cent of voters in a July survey said they trusted the AfD to solve the state's problems. He characterises this as a shift from a "passive protest vote" to an "active support vote": voters are no longer simply expressing dissatisfaction but endorsing the party's programme.
The daily reality on the ground
Alaa Yakoub Agha, a 55-year-old Syrian who became a German citizen after arriving in 2015, voted for the first time on election day. Her sense of civic participation lasted only hours. During a walk that afternoon, a man shouted at her to "go back to your own country".
"I looked at him with sadness and walked on," she said. "It hurts me that some people still view us as strangers, despite our years of integration and our contributions to society."
Agha and her husband have experienced verbal abuse, been spat at, and had stones thrown at them over the past decade. "Lately," she says, "I have the feeling that those looks are returning." She now worries about leaving the house in the evening and fears for her daughter's safety.
Agha works as a consultant for schools. She is alarmed by the AfD's proposals for segregated education. "If children are increasingly separated from one another while still at school, there is a risk that society itself will become more fragmented later on," she says. "Such a development would jeopardise the foundation of a healthy, integrated society."
Stay or leave
Mamad Mohamad, a 45-year-old Yazidi Kurd who arrived in Germany as a 15-year-old asylum seeker in 1996 and is now a local candidate for the Greens, says the election result has forced thousands of migrants in the state to reconsider their family's safety. Some are already thinking of leaving.
"When a far-right party leads a state government, potentially making racism a part of everyday life even at the hands of the state, many people reach their limit," he says. "This is more than many can bear."
Yet Mohamad urges people to stay. "We must not let ourselves be driven away. Saxony-Anhalt is our home, too." He argues that the federal government in Berlin must intervene if the state cannot guarantee minority rights. "If this protection can no longer be adequately guaranteed at the state level, the federal government must step in. The people of Saxony-Anhalt must not be left to fend for themselves."
The firewall and the coalition arithmetic
Opposition parties in Saxony-Anhalt could still keep the AfD out of government through the so-called firewall: an informal agreement among mainstream parties to refuse coalition deals with the far right. A coalition of centre-right, centre-left and left-wing parties is mathematically possible and would command a majority. Whether it can hold together across that ideological span is another question.
Even if the firewall holds, the AfD's 44 per cent represents a structural shift. The party has demonstrated that it can win not by softening its programme but by pressing harder on it, and that voters will follow.
Berlin votes next
The next test comes on 20 September, when Berlin holds its own state election. The capital's demographics are different: 22.5 per cent of residents hold foreign nationality, compared with Saxony-Anhalt's 7.9 per cent. Yet polling averages compiled by the statistics website Dawum put the AfD at 18 per cent in Berlin, within reach of the CDU and the Left party. Even in one of Europe's most liberal cities, the party is gaining ground.
People mentioned
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Alaa Yakoub Agha
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Mamad Mohamad
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Gregoire Roos
Organisations
Alternative für Deutschland · Alliance90/Greens · Chatham House
