The shadow of the AfD over the anniversary of German reunification

The anniversary of German reunification is 3 October, but the signing of the Einigungsvertrag – the Unification Treaty under which the GDR was dissolved and merged with West Germany – took place on 31 August 1990. The end of a dictatorship and the entry of five new Länder into the liberal-democratic framework of the Federal Republic should be cause for celebration. Yet whilst Chancellor Friedrich Merz struck an optimistic note in an interview he recently gave to the public broadcaster ARD, morale in Berlin is at rock bottom. On Sunday, the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt goes to the polls, where the AfD is predicted to secure around 40 per cent of the vote. The desire to celebrate is therefore overshadowed by the anticipated, very strong showing of the far right in Magdeburg. It is not (only) the xenophobia or the anti-Ukrainian hostility of the German sovereigntists that is causing concern: from Viktor Orbán downwards, Europe has already experienced some very unwelcome political shifts.

What is keeping so many Germans awake at night is a question of values: the AfD is, above all, an anti-establishment party that aims to ‘make Germany great again’ – not so much at the expense of its neighbours as at the expense of its own history. Whilst in 1990 a now-collapsed USSR was unable to oppose German reunification, the United States and its European partners consented to it because Helmut Kohl had ensured that the new capital, Berlin, would remain anchored to the values and alliances already embraced by Bonn. Alliances such as the EU and NATO, which the AfD today does not denounce but openly criticises. The same applies to history: Germany was readmitted to the community of nations because it had been denazified and promised to remain so. Today, the AfD is careful not to deny what happened, but it downplays it and criticises it, showing impatience with post-war anti-Nazism. Hans-Thomas Tischschneider, the AfD’s culture spokesperson in Saxony-Anhalt and a likely candidate for Minister of Education in Magdeburg, put it plainly: in schools, pupils should study “more Bismarck and less Hitler”. And this, too, is a betrayal of that agreement of 31 August 1990.