Tracking the Far Right in East Germany: Lessons for the United States

Despite the Berlin Wall being down for over 30 years, the divide between East and West Germany remains. In June 2024, the Alternative für Deutschland or “Alternative for Germany,” better known by its German initials AfD, a far-right German party founded in 2012, had its best showing yet, placing second nationwide in the European parliamentary elections and finishing first in all five formerly Soviet-controlled eastern states (länder).

The day after the election, my Airbnb host—I’m a digital nomad living near Munich in West Germany—showed me the map below and joked, “Rebuild the wall, two meters higher this time.” Aside from multicultural Berlin, many East Germans had chosen the AfD.

Months later, at the beginning of September, AfD came in first place in statewide elections in Thuringia, receiving 32.8 percent of the vote, and finished a close second in Saxony, with 30.6 percent of the vote.

But why does the AfD resonate so widely in the East? And what lessons can the United States draw from Germany’s experience?

Reunification Was a Shock for the East

On October 3, 1990, less than a year after the Berlin Wall came down, East Germany’s government was dissolved and incorporated into the West. Germany had been reunited. While this was a moment of hope, reunification was challenging for East Germans.

As Erik Lehmann, an economics professor at the University of Augsburg, explains, East Germany struggled to transition from a planned (or command) economy, where a central government dictates the levels of production and prices, to a market economy. Many highly educated workers moved to West Germany for a better life, noncompetitive companies were liquidated, and entire industries disappeared, with about half of all East German manufacturing jobs lost by 1991 and unemployment ballooning to 24 percent.

Further compounding the issue, the Treuhandanstalt, an agency created to privatize East German state-owned enterprises, sold assets quickly and often below market prices to Western investors. Economic upheaval aside, West Germans also made over two million claims for the restitution of real estate that had been nationalized under socialist policies. The question of justice is tricky, and it’s only fair to return what was taken, but the prospect of losing one’s home to distant claimants who had not held title to the land since World War II was a tough pill to swallow.

To many East Germans, reunification felt more like a takeover than a partnership, with Western institutions and elites marginalizing the voices and interests of East Germans.

Divisions and Inequities Remain

Today, the divide between East and West Germany remains evident. The architecture in the East is full of harsh cement façades, dominated by uniform apartment blocks with rectangular layouts, providing cost-effective but unimaginative housing. At night, the contrast is visible from a plane, with the East illuminated by yellow sodium lights, while the West uses white halide lights.

To many East Germans, reunification felt more like a takeover than a partnership.

Of course, this divide goes beyond urban design. East Germans experience lower incomes, higher unemployment, and shorter life expectancy than their Western counterparts. Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States is self-evident in a long list of socioeconomic statistics, Germany’s phantom border is clear as well.

Since arriving in West Germany, I have heard many people speak of East Germans similarly to how US conservatives repeat the myth of the Black welfare queen. Easterners are presented as lazy, uneducated, less skilled, and living off the generosity of West German subsidies.

West Germany does indeed subsidize the East, principally through the “solidarity” tax. Since reunification through 2021, West Germans have paid between 5.5 and 7.5 percent of their income and corporate taxes annually to the East—using the proceeds to fund infrastructure, economic development, and other initiatives aimed at addressing social disparities.

But the notion that Easterners are lazy is false. As the German government reports, Easterners work more hours per week than their Western compatriots.

And it should be noted that there is a valid rationale for West Germans to pay this tax. Although often unacknowledged by West German residents, reunification benefited West Germany in many ways—such as expanding market share, as East German citizens switched their consumer choices to Western companies, and providing a steady influx of skilled East German labor.

For East Germans, however, much of the hopeful promise of reunification didn’t materialize.

Familiar Problems

The Alternative für Deutschland’s message resonates, in short, because it taps into a sense of betrayal for a promise that was not kept. In her 2023 speech to the German Bundestag—the country’s chief legislative body—AfD co-chair Alice Weidel discussed issues such as affordable housing, inflation, rising energy costs, stagnant wages, mounting public debt, healthcare access, the cost of globalization to domestic labor, increasing energy costs, and more. People often look for a simple answer to these troubles, and the AfD’s chosen scapegoats are immigrants.

In 2015, as Middle Easterners fled from war, ethnic conflict, and economic hardship, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel declared, “Wir schaffen das.” (“We can do it.”) While many EU countries closed their doors, Germany had an open-door policy for asylum seekers. Since then, Germany has become the third-largest refugee-hosting country in the world, with 2.5 million asylum seekers residing there—a million more asylum seekers than the United States since 2021 in a country just above one-fourth its size. As of 2022, the German Federal Statistics Office reports that nearly one in four German residents were either migrants or the children of migrants.

Initially, there was public support for Merkel’s immigration policy. Rocío Guenther, a German Chancellor Fellow studying how Darmstadt, a small city near Frankfurt, was handling the influx, shared that Germans greeted newcomers at train stations with “Welcome to Germany” signs in English and Arabic. They brought chocolate, flowers, and even teddy bears for the children. The country was similarly welcoming to Ukrainians at the start of the war.

However, while Germany welcomed migrants and refugees, AfD leaders were hammering their anti-refugee rhetoric, saying things like refugees that arrive by boat are not “good migrants,” highlighting increases in knife attacks, and claiming that Middle Eastern migrants were primarily single men without families who don’t share German values. During that same time, the number of hate crimes in Germany doubled.

It’s not just East Germans or AfD voters who are frustrated with how immigration is being handled. Many West Germans I spoke with expressed issues with the visa process, pointing out how immigrants get state support for housing, food, and so on but are not allowed to work until their visa is handled. Asylum seekers are barred from working for six months upon arrival. And Guenther shared that she felt many Germans were experiencing compassion fatigue.

Questionable Solutions

Setting aside growing discontent with immigration, the Alternative für Deutschland’s solutions to economic woes are antithetical to their stated goals. The country faces a considerably more severe demographic cliff than the United States. Low birth rates and an aging baby boomer population will strain public pension funds as the worker-to-retiree ratio falls and companies scramble for skilled labor.

In other words, Germany needs more migrants.

Lehmann explained that one of the greatest problems facing East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall was outmigration, especially a shortage of skilled labor: “What’s missing is really high-class engineers, but they will not go to East Germany.” Joerg Engelmann, the manager of an East German chemical engineering company, echoed Lehmann’s observation with a personal anecdote, saying that the racial slurs immigrant engineers experienced after arriving drove some of them away.

Furthermore, the AfD advocates for a “German Brexit” and a return from the euro to a national currency. Never mind that Great Britain’s own Office of Budget Responsibility reported that they’re on track for a 4 percent decline in GDP due to Brexit.

Faulty Responses to the Far Right

To date, Alternative für Deutschland remains out of government. No German party wants to form a governing coalition with them. Some elected officials have even suggested banning the party altogether, citing that they have been officially designated as right-wing extremists in two German states.

One strategy used to curb the influence of the AfD is to adopt, in some form, their most popular positions. Chancellor Olaf Scholz—head of the country’s Social Democratic Party, which leads the nation’s governing coalition—supported a European Union asylum pact passed by Parliament earlier this year to distribute responsibility for supporting refugees more evenly across Europe. He also oversaw changes to how Germany handles refugees, such as faster processing of asylum applications, improving monitoring of the funds distributed to refugees, looser work restrictions, and committing an additional 1.2 billion euros to support refugee services.

Whatever Germany’s immigration challenges, the country handles refugee policy with considerably more intentionality than the United States.

But will these measures succeed? As researcher Martin Schröder points out, “AfD sympathizers have worries about immigration, particularly refugees, and are mainly concerned that they will somehow culturally undermine Germany.” Addressing the concern that refugees may undermine local culture is no easy task, especially if it isn’t rational in the first place.

But perhaps if more migrants settled in East Germany, that might curb AfD’s support. Why? Because opposition to immigration is often highest where it is least present.

While one in eight German residents are born outside of Germany, in eastern Germany, fewer than one in 20 are. Contact theory, first proposed by Gordon Allport in 1954, suggests that direct interaction between different groups can reduce prejudice and decrease social tension. Modern studies suggest that contact does reduce prejudice, regardless of rigor, measurement tool, experimental design, or out group.

Lessons for the United States?

Whatever Germany’s immigration challenges, the country handles refugee policy with considerably more intentionality than the United States. By providing public support and tying that support to where one lives, the government ensures that no one city becomes overwhelmed by an influx of newcomers. The government also provides language and integration courses, helping people not only acclimate to the local culture but also support others in similar situations. Moreover, Germany’s comprehensive welfare system ensures that immigrants have access to healthcare, education, and job placement services, which are critical for their successful integration into society.

In 2021, Berlin held a public referendum to move 226,000 housing units from private “mega landlords” into the city’s social housing stock. It passed, though implementation has been slow.

It’s true that many AfD voters are motivated by racist and xenophobic tendencies, but that’s not the entire story. Gen Z is well known for being the most open and accepting generation ever. Yet, the AfD’s largest gains in the 2024 elections were made among 16- to 24-year-old voters, who increased their share over the previous election by 11 percentage points. Lehmann shared that his young daughter likely voted for AfD, but when pressed about the policies she had voted for, it became clear that she was mainly casting a protest vote against Germany’s mainstream political parties.

The AfD’s anti-immigrant rhetoric also finds purchase in East Germany, perhaps, because of the persistent economic divide between the East and the West. As of 2021, the Federal Commissioner for Germany’s eastern states reported that the East had, on average, 82.8 percent of the per capita gross domestic product of formerly West German states. That’s up quite a bit from a mere 32.5 percent pre-unification, but still means that East Germans are considerably poorer than West Germans.

A comparison could be made to the United States. In 2020, Joe Biden won counties constituting 70 percent of US gross domestic product. In other words, the base of support for the far right comes most prominently from less prosperous areas of the country. Economic disparity and perceived neglect by the government create fertile ground for anti-immigrant movements.

The economic development efforts in East Germany have pursued a familiar neoliberal path, and after over 30 years, the gap still isn’t closed.

There is another way—centered on community. In 2021, Berlin held a public referendum to move 226,000 housing units from private “mega landlords” into the city’s social housing stock. It passed, though implementation has been slow. Nevertheless, activists are optimistic that they’re closer to their goal of more affordable housing. (In the United States, a similar movement for social housing is also ascendant.)

Current efforts in Berlin recall old traditions. The Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany, founded in 1516 by Jakob Fugger, a wealthy merchant, has operated for centuries. Created to provide affordable housing to Augsburg’s needy Catholic citizens, it continues to provide subsidized housing for the city’s residents today.

Efforts like Berlin’s referendum demonstrate that public support can be built for bold, collective, and constructive solutions to social challenges, rather than succumbing to fears stoked by the far right. Perhaps, too, there might be a modern-day Jakob Fugger or two willing to discard the profit motive and pursue a higher purpose with their wealth.