Sonneberg is a small German town like any other. Its 23,000 residents meander through a pleasant center without being particularly pretty, and boasts of being home to the German Toy Museum, which lures some tourists to the former eastern municipality at the foot of the Thuringian Forest. But neither one nor the other made the headlines in the Berlin press. They ran some predictably benign elections in the eponymous district of which they are the capital, ultimately rocking national politics and bringing to the fore the famous German sanitary belt on the far right.
On June 11, Robert Stuhlmann, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate, received 47% of the vote, more than 10 points ahead of his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) rival Jürgen Köpper. The results caused some surprises and a lot of concern. Should Sonneberg have the dubious honor of being the first far-right district (56,500 inhabitants) in the whole country? This puts the city, with its elegant, almost 100-year-old town hall, at the center of the political earthquake that has fueled the dizzying growth of the AfD in recent weeks.
The formation has improved to second place in the polls, level with or better than Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, depending on which polling house is polled. Never since its inception in 2012 had it found so much support, between 17% and 19%. This is on a national level, because what really worries the rest of the parties is what is happening in the eastern states, the states that were once part of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). The election research institute Forsa has observed what East Germany – without the capital Berlin – would vote for if there were elections now: that the AfD would clearly win them with 32% of the votes.
“So much effort to promote tourism and now we’re becoming known as the city of the far right,” laments a city official. In the center of the city, near the well-visited Teddy Bear Museum, one word above all can be heard: “dissatisfaction”. It’s the first thing Anja May, 54, a social worker, mentions when asked why her neighbors voted en masse for the AfD. “Money is tight and they see it not being used for what it should be used for: education, kindergartens, elderly care. “People are fed up with the Greens and everything they do wrong in Berlin,” she says, and is surprised because it’s the second time in a few days that a journalist has approached her on the street.
At political gatherings and analysis rooms in newspapers, nothing else is talked about. What is happening in East Germany? Whose fault is it? Is there anything that can be done in the eastern federal states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg before the state elections next year? It is precisely in these three regions that the AfD is strongest, emphasizes Franco delle Donne, PhD in political communication at Freie Universität Berlin and co-author of the book Epidemia ultra. “In addition, local elections, i.e. election campaigns, and the AfD speech are circulating this year.”
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A family walks through downtown Sonneberg on June 15.Elena Sevillano
The far-right party, which is under surveillance by German intelligence agencies over suspicion of threatening constitutional values, has entered a third phase. In the heat of the euro crisis, he started out as a eurosceptic; It morphed into anti-immigration after the 2015 refugee crisis, and with the pandemic trying to exploit protests against the restrictions. He didn’t succeed in doing that, but since then he’s understood how “to appear as a party option that capitalizes on dissatisfaction,” says Delle Donne. Several things came together when the AfD was elected: he lists disappointment with the government, fear of the negative effects of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, and disillusionment with the other parties. There is also a special feature in the east: surveys on satisfaction with democracy return significantly lower values than in the rest of the country.
“The disappointment with politics in general is huge and people don’t want to vote for the usual parties,” says Norbert Leipold-Beck, 72, in front of the town hall. A retired couple, CDU voters, take turns declaring that their neighbors, right or wrong, are fed up. “But if the AfD came to power, people would realize what they voted for and regret it, I’m sure. “I understand the frustration, but the AfD is too dangerous, too dangerous,” he repeated. They prefer not to give their names.
Not even a young woman, the only one who admits to EL PAÍS that she voted for the extreme right. He is 25 years old and assures that there is “nothing for German citizens”: “You work and work and the month comes and you have no more money, and more and more foreigners come.” I have nothing against them, but we do Land gives them everything for free. You see them with new phones, new shoes, very smart, they go out to eat here and there.”
“Our Country. Our Rules”
She is sitting in a shopping cart with her two-year-old son in front of a kebab restaurant, waiting for a meal order to be delivered. AfD election posters hang on the street, on which a smiling armchair man promises: “Our country. Our rules”. Almost all the restaurants in the center are run by residents of foreign origin. “I have nothing against them, they work and earn what they have,” she says, pointing to the boy of Turkish origin, who calls her to the bag with the food. As an example of the misuse of public funds, he cites an example that is close to his heart: His son’s kindergarten costs him 250 euros a month. He believes that the AfD “will take more care of German citizens”. .
One of the many restaurants and hotels in Sonneberg run by neighbors of foreign origin.Elena Sevillano
The social worker Gabi Köhler-Terz, 55, defends that it is an xenophobic party, but the majority of her voters are not. “Everything is much more expensive in Germany. People no longer know how to pay for their heating bills. Gas goes through the roof. And the far right is making big promises. This city is open and tolerant, it doesn’t have any extreme right-wing ideas, I don’t think so. “You’re voting in protest,” he says at the headquarters of the association “Together,” which works, among other things, for the accommodation of familyless migrant young people in Germany. And they, he says, have never felt fear or been attacked in any way: “In other places there is more racism, although it’s true that it’s ten times more expensive to rent an apartment here if you don’t have a German surname. “.”
The protest vote explains the support for the AfD in the East, a trend that “has accelerated,” explains Peter Matuschek, head of the political and social research department at the opinion research institute Forsa. But this is by no means new. In the last federal election in September 2021, the party with the most votes in Thuringia and Saxony was already the AfD. Although there are still some economic differences (average salary, pension, unemployment…) between the two former states, the key lies more in different political cultures, lower support for NATO and the EU, and a certain rejection of the post-materialism of the world West, Matuschek lists. The data also shows that there is more xenophobia in the East, although the rate of immigration is lower.
The cordon sanitaire was activated in Sonneberg. All parties have agreed to support the CDU candidate in the second ballot of the district elections on June 25 – forced as neither candidate got more than 50% of the vote. The veto of the far right remains unshakable in Germany, where the leader of the Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, again this week made a strong statement that his party will not agree with the AfD in either the European Parliament, the Bundestag or the regional parliaments.
The stakes are high for the city and the rest of the region. The mayor of Sonneberg, the non-party Heiko Voigt, believes that the citizens voted more at the federal level than at the district level and points to the lessons that must be learned from what happened: “The result of the first vote makes it clear to me that the politicians have done this.” to take the fears of the population very seriously.”
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