Görlitz: How a German city became a seismograph for far-right surge

Local Germany

14-03-2025

On a square in Görlitz, a city close to the Polish border, signs in support of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) were among those waved by the participants in a recent regular Monday night demo.
Around 100 people joined the rally, whose organisers inveighed against political elites in Berlin, the imposition of Covid-era lockdowns and support for Ukraine against Russia.
In a well-practised ritual, a police line separated the small rally from counter-protesters who played music, and displayed an LGBTQ flag and a sign reading: "Refugees welcome".
Participating in the counter-demonstration was Görlitz native Liane Rabin, 51, who said people in the city felt "left behind" in the era of turbulent change after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"We were suddenly pushed into a new form of society. The West Germans came here, they shut down the businesses, ruined them," she said.
The counter-protesters are becoming a minority in Görlitz, a picturesque city that has served as the backdrop for Hollywood movies but has now become an AfD bastion.
The party scored over 20 percent in national elections on February 23rd, achieving a near clean sweep of the constituencies of the former communist east.
In the wider Görlitz district, the AfD's national co-leader and local candidate Tino Chrupalla won 48.9 percent of the vote -- a major boost for the former eurosceptic fringe that has set its sights on one day taking the highest office in Europe's top economy.
'Fundamental change'
Waiting at a bus stop, out-of-work single father Falk Richter, 49, told AFP he thought immigration had driven the success of the AfD.
"Politicians say that the foreigners should come here: there are so many jobs here, work is available," he said.
He voiced admiration for Donald Trump and said the US president was right to put "America first".
"I'm looking for work. Why don't Germans get jobs first?"
The AfD's strong result has once more cast a spotlight on a region that lags in terms of jobs and wealth, more than 30 years after reunification with the west.
Co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party Tino Chrupalla addresses supporters during an AfD election campaign event for Saxony's regional elections in Weisswasser, Saxony. Photo: Michaela Stache / AFP
The strength of the far right in the east was "not a new phenomenon that we have suddenly noticed", said Görlitz's mayor Octavian Ursu, who is from the centre-right CDU party.
"It has been the case for a long time, for years, that the AfD has achieved higher results."
While the CDU and its CSU sister party topped the polls nationally under Germany's likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz, it was a distant second in Görlitz behind the AfD.
The margin of the far right's victory "makes it clear that people trust others more than us", said the CDU's local candidate Florian Öst.
Voters in the east "do not feel represented" by the government in Berlin and want a "fundamental change" to address their real-life concerns, Öst said.
'Positive alternatives'
That included not just fears over immigration but the issues of "social justice... infrastructure and, above all, economic strength", the conservative said.
Rail worker Frank Ruzicka said locals voted for the AfD out of frustration with the mainstream parties.
"They think the CDU has achieved nothing, the Social Democrats (SPD) have achieved nothing. Let's vote for the AfD," the 63-year-old said.
Although Ruzicka voted for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD, he voiced concerns over shrinking public services, rising living costs and meagre pensions.
"Things are getting worse instead of better."
The head of the AfD's Görlitz district office, Hajo Exner, said that "voters no longer have belief. It's all just promises."
"If the other parties don't really change course," then the AfD could win over 50 percent in the 2029 elections, Exner predicted.
"The question for me is, of course, whether the country even has that much time left," he said.
Ursu argued that the far right's improved national result "has a lot to do with the mood in the west", where the AfD also improved its score.
The eastern regions, having endured massive upheaval in recent decades, were more "a kind of seismograph" for the political mood in Germany, the mayor said.
"If you do not act quickly now and try to convince people that there are positive alternatives, you will not be able to change the results."