The AfD and neo-Nazis: the link that is shaking up the vote in Saxony-Anhalt

Berlin. A police operation spanning five German federal states, with the focus of the investigations in Saxony-Anhalt, in central-eastern Germany. It is alleged that the Artgemeinschaft, a long-standing neo-Nazi and neo-pagan organisation banned three years ago – and which is deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian – is being run clandestinely in that region. According to reports from various German media outlets, the investigations are said to have stemmed from a pagan midsummer solstice festival held in June in Gardelegen-Ipse, on a property belonging to AfD politician Simon Lansmann, the far-right candidate in the upcoming state elections on 6 September. Der Spiegel and SZ report that one of the targets of yesterday’s searches was Lansmann’s property. Also implicated alongside him is AfD politician Sebastian Koch, who is also a candidate in the forthcoming elections. Koch is number 8 on the party’s electoral list, whilst Lansmann is number 19. The AfD is currently tipped to be the leading party in the Saxony-Anhalt elections, with over 40 per cent of the vote, and could aim to form a single-party government.

According to Correctiv, several members of a possible revived Artgemeinschaft are also said to have attended the solstice party in question, with ceremonies involving animal horns and songs from the Hitler Youth. The Saxony-Anhalt State Criminal Police Office (LKA) is therefore investigating the suspicion of an active re-establishment of the banned organisation. There are 15 suspects currently at large, all German nationals; their names are not yet known, but according to reports in the SZ and Taz, the two AfD candidates are said to be among those under investigation

The "Artgemeinschaft – Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft wesensgemäßer Lebensgestaltung" was founded in 1951 by the former Nazi Wilhelm Kusserow, on a neo-pagan Germanic basis. In the 1990s and up until 2009, the association was led by the neo-Nazi Jürgen Rieger of the NpD faction; in the 2000s, leadership passed to others, including, in Saxony-Anhalt itself, Jens Bauer (a staunch supporter of Ralf Wohlleben, the arms supplier to the bloody neo-Nazi terrorist cell, the NSU).

In August–September 2023, the group was finally banned by decree of the German Ministry of the Interior, following a nationwide operation involving hundreds of police officers. The Artgemeinschaft was recognised as an enemy of the constitutional order due to its racist and anti-Semitic ideology, which was linked to National Socialism and was also used to indoctrinate minors. In April 2026, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig confirmed the ban definitively. Re-establishing the organisation is now prohibited throughout Germany. However, the personal and informal networks of the far right often resist this kind of nominal dissolution, re-forming under new names or operating informally, thereby evading bureaucratic control.

With neo-pagan celebrations and a militant magazine called Nordische Zeitung, the Artgemeinschaft has always been among the most radical organisations on the German far right and aimed to fuse the völkisch tradition with neo-Nazism. The group interprets the concept of ‘Art’ as referring exclusively to the Nordic-Germanic ‘race’ and ‘species’, based on racial and sectarian principles of blood purity and non-intermingling. The group’s symbol has long been, and continues to be, the Irminsul, the World Tree.

Equally significant in the organisation’s symbolism is the so-called “Adler fängt Fisch”, that is, the eagle snatching the fish from the Christian Ichthys symbol. The symbol was officially registered by the Artgemeinschaft in 2003 and is now banned along with the group, but it remains emblematic of the organisation’s deep anti-Christian roots and those of related movements. Christianity has historically been rejected by much of the neo-Nazi movement on anti-Semitic grounds and as a foreign element within Germanic or Norse pagan culture. In the "Adler fängt Fisch", the eagle attacks the fish, which tradition holds to be a secret sign of Christians persecuted in antiquity: the symbol of the persecuted thus becomes the persecutor’s trophy. The anti-Christian dimension of German neo-Nazism is often an overlooked element, yet it remains central and essential to understanding a crucial ideological feature of the far right in Germany.