What AfD's election victory in Germany's Saxony-Anhalt could mean for Jewish life - analysis

The AfD scored a historic victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, winning 43,8% of the vote – over twice as much as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which received 17,2%. However, victory does not yet mean power: The party won 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, three more seats needed to secure an absolute majority.

The face of this success is 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund. He called the election result a “mandate to govern.” Legally, however, no such mandate exists: The minister-president will be whoever can secure the necessary majority in the state parliament.

Siegmund has succeeded in giving the radical party a friendly, modern image. He smiles for the camera, films videos for social media, shares family celebrations, and poses for photos with voters. One of the symbols of his campaign has been mass rides on Simson mopeds.

But Simson was founded by a Jewish family whose property was confiscated under the Nazis. The founders’ descendants protested the AfD’s use of the brand, saying that its political appropriation was a mockery of their family’s history. Siegmund, however, continued to use the mopeds as a symbol of East German pride.

In November 2023, Siegmund attended a meeting of AfD representatives and right-wing extremists near Potsdam, where Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner presented his concept of “remigration.”

The concept applied not only to asylum seekers but also to German citizens of immigrant origin who were deemed insufficiently “assimilated.”

At the same meeting, Siegmund presented his Vision 2026 – a plan for the AfD to come to power in Saxony-Anhalt. Following the publication of an investigative report, he was removed as chair of the state parliament’s committee on social affairs, though this did not hinder his political career.

In a 2025 interview, he was asked whether he considered the Holocaust the most horrific crime in human history. Siegmund refused to give a direct answer, saying that he did not consider himself qualified to rank crimes in history. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the response a relativization of the Shoah.

At Siegmund’s events, the host would shout “Sieg,” and the audience would respond with “Mund.” In the German context, the association with the Nazi slogan is obvious. Siegmund dismissed the criticism, asking what was wrong with supporters chanting his last name.

Following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Siegmund also stopped short of directly condemning Hamas or expressing solidarity with Israel in comments reported by German public broadcaster MDR.

Instead, he said that the state parliament was not in a position to change the geopolitical situation and that the main task was to prevent “the conflicts of this world” from spilling over into Germany.

In the run-up to the election, the Union of Jewish Students in Germany ran a campaign in Saxony-Anhalt under the slogan “Demokratiefeinde ANHALTen.” In videos published by the organization, some AfD supporters express support for Hitler’s policies. Other videos from AfD events, filmed by independent bloggers, show people performing the Nazi salute or denying the Holocaust.

After October 7, this argument gained additional weight. Antisemitic incidents in Germany increased sharply, and the AfD regularly presents itself as a defender of Jews against so-called “imported antisemitism.”

Yet a state government cannot close Germany’s borders, independently determine federal migration policy, or shape Germany’s foreign policy. It does, however, have direct influence over schools and Holocaust education, cultural policy, the police, state-level domestic intelligence, and the allocation of public funds.

After the election results were announced, Schuster said he was personally appalled by the AfD’s result and singled out education policy in particular.

He said that education plays a central role in combating antisemitism, and the damage caused by an AfD government could be enormous.

The AfD wants to strengthen the state government’s influence over standardized teaching materials. The party also intends to abolish the State Center for Political Education (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung) in its current form and replace it with an institute for “civic and political education and cultural identity.” The current center focuses on political education and funds external projects, including initiatives against racism and extremism.

In its platform, the AfD argues that Germany’s approach to its historical responsibility has created a persistent “guilt complex,” weakened national pride, and hindered the formation of a stable national identity.

THE PARTY also calls for a different approach to commemorating German soldiers who served during World War II, emphasizing their courage and sacrifice for their country. Kai Langer, director of the Saxony-Anhalt Memorial Foundation, has warned that the AfD does not directly deny the Holocaust or the Wehrmacht’s war crimes but pushes them into the past as issues that have already been “settled,” while seeking to establish a more positive national historical narrative.

The AfD also wants to cut funding for school trips to memorial sites dedicated to victims of National Socialism while devoting greater attention to the maintenance of war memorials.

One of the party’s specific targets is the German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) in Magdeburg. It funds provenance research into cultural property, including works of art seized from Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.

The AfD promises to completely eliminate Saxony-Anhalt’s funding for the foundation.

The party’s platform states that provenance research places museum collections under unjustified suspicion and that research conducted without an existing, specific restitution claim artificially perpetuates a sense of German guilt.

The German Lost Art Foundation itself has warned that the AfD’s plans would primarily affect victims of Nazi persecution and extermination and call into question a research-based culture of remembrance.

It remains unclear whether the AfD will be able to implement this program. The party holds 39 of 83 seats. The CDU, SPD, Greens, and the Left Party (Die Linke) together also have 39 lawmakers. Another five seats went to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a party founded in 2024 by former Left Party politician Sahra Wagenknecht that combines left-wing economic policies with a hardline stance on migration and opposes arms deliveries to Ukraine while advocating closer ties with Russia.

BSW has ruled out a formal coalition with the AfD but is open to cooperation on specific issues. Even individual votes from its lawmakers could therefore prove decisive.

The party has also taken a sharply critical stance toward Israel. BSW has repeatedly called for a German arms embargo on Israel, while its Saxony-Anhalt election platform calls for an end to German arms deliveries to Israel, recognition of a Palestinian state, an end to the Israeli occupation, and the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

In 2024, Wagenknecht and other BSW lawmakers also introduced a motion in the Bundestag calling on the German government to revoke arms export licenses for Israel and impose an arms embargo over the war in Gaza.

Wagenknecht’s clashes over Israel predate the current war by many years.

In January 2010, Israeli president Shimon Peres addressed the Bundestag on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. After his speech, the parliament gave him a standing ovation, but Wagenknecht and two other lawmakers from the Left Party remained seated.

Wagenknecht later explained that she had stood during the commemoration of Holocaust victims but refused to join the ovation for Peres because of the Israeli government’s policies.