Germany's New Far-Right State Governments Signal an EU Turning Point

A Province Where the Postwar Order Cracks

The results came in on September 6th, but the implications stretch far beyond Saxony-Anhalt. For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party has taken control of a German state government. The Alternative for Germany — AfD — won the provincial election and now holds the levers of policy in a territory of roughly 2.2 million people. It is not a symbolic victory. The party’s 258-page manifesto reads like a blueprint for something Germany has spent eight decades pretending would never happen again.

What makes this moment distinct from previous AfD gains — the party’s entry into the Bundestag, its performances in eastern state legislatures — is that it is now in office. Governing changes the calculus.

The Word No One in Mainstream German Politics Wants to Hear

At the center of the AfD’s immigration platform is a term that has been virtually untouchable in German political discourse: Remigration — the mass deportation of foreigners, including those with legal residency. The manifesto calls for accelerating the removal of people without legal status, expanding pre-deportation detention facilities, and reversing the residence permits of immigrants deemed criminals or security threats. Ukrainian refugees, many of whom fled an active war, would face repatriation efforts.

Johannes Kies, a deputy director at the EFBI research institute in Braunschweig, told CNN that immigration policy sits at the furthest edge of what state governments can actually do. German federal law and EU regulations constrain provincial action sharply. “I expect significant legal uncertainty and confusion,” Kies said.

That uncertainty is precisely the point. Even if most deportation orders fall in court, the policy signals a willingness to test federal boundaries — a strategy of pushing until something breaks or shifts.

Schools as Engines of National Identity

The education platform is where the ideological shift becomes most visible. The AfD proposes a wholesale restructuring of Saxony-Anhalt’s school curriculum, declaring an end to what it calls political indoctrination. Pride flags would be banned in schools. Lessons would foreground what the party terms “German national pride” and “German identity” — anchored firmly in the narrative of the German Empire established by Bismarck in 1871, which the manifesto describes as a source of ongoing inspiration in science, culture, and economics.

Nazi history gets shorter shrift. Hans Thomas Tilschnaider, the party’s regional cultural spokesman, summarized the approach on public radio as “Bismarck more, Hitler less.”

Perhaps most consequential is the proposal to create separate “special classes” for all refugee and asylum-seeking children, taught apart from German students. The rationale, as stated in the manifesto, is that children from entirely foreign cultural backgrounds create burdens in regular classrooms — and that these special classes should prepare children to return home. Teachers, preferably recruited from among refugees themselves, would staff them.

The policy carries an unmistakable message: these children do not belong here. It also echoes a pattern seen across Europe — from Sweden’s treatment of unaccompanied minors to France’s debates over Islamic separatism — where integration policy is being replaced by containment.

The Culture War, Institutionalized

The manifesto’s cultural section demands that state-funded institutions adopt what it calls a “new patriotic culture policy.” Funding would flow toward art that reinforces German identity and be withdrawn from art deemed “anti-German.” When asked to define the latter, Tilschnaider pointed to a performance he had attended in which a German classical composer’s work was reimagined through a “feminist deconstructionist” lens.

The attack on the Bauhaus movement — the influential 1919–1933 architecture and design school — reveals the depth of the historical revisionism. The manifesto criticizes Bauhaus for consistently obscuring its German nationalist roots. Critics note that the Nazi regime itself attacked Bauhaus for exactly this reason before banning it outright. Wolfram Buschimmer, Germany’s federal culture minister, told the AP that the AfD is “using the same rhetoric that the Nazis used 100 years ago” to assault the movement, and called on democrats across the spectrum to resist.

Feminism as a Target

The party’s social policy platform attacks what it terms “decadent leftist, radical feminist, and individualistic trends” for undermining the traditional family and, according to the manifesto, “negating and even criminalizing biological facts.” Associations and organizations advancing these ideas would lose all public funding and tax advantages. Public broadcasters would be directed to feature family life more prominently, aligning with what the party calls society’s “normative normality.”

This is not a new AfD talking point, but it is new as governing policy — and it raises a practical question that the manifesto does not address: what happens when federal anti-discrimination laws and constitutional protections conflict with state-level defunding directives?

What This Means for Europe

Saxony-Anhalt is a small state. But its capture by the AfD matters disproportionately. It is the first concrete instance of a far-right party moving from protest to governance in postwar Germany. The tests will come quickly.

On immigration, the federal government in Berlin will face immediate pressure to either block Saxony-Anhalt’s policies in court or accommodate them — and either choice fractures the political center. The CDU, which currently leads the state government in a coalition arrangement, must decide whether to contain the AfD or be consumed by it.

On defense and foreign policy, the implications extend beyond Germany’s borders. An AfD-led state government is unlikely to champion the same internationalist posture as the current federal coalition. While foreign and defense policy remain federal competencies, the AfD’s governing presence legitimizes a political current that has consistently questioned NATO commitments, pushed for faster Russian gas normalization, and opposed further Ukrainian aid. The signal to Paris and Brussels is that Germany’s conservative establishment can no longer assume domestic stability as a given.

France, already navigating its own far-right challenges, will watch closely. A Germany where the far right governs at the provincial level weakens the Franco-German engine that has underpinned EU cohesion on migration and defense. European partners who relied on Berlin as a bulwark against nationalistrollback now face a more fragmented picture.

The Legal Quagmire Ahead

The most immediate reality for the new Saxony-Anhalt government is that it will be sued. Every major policy — deportation orders, school segregation, cultural defunding, family policy mandates — will face challenges in administrative courts and likely reach the Federal Constitutional Court. German federal law supersedes state legislation. EU directives on asylum and non-discrimination bind Germany regardless of which party holds office.

But legal defeats are not the same as political defeats. The strategy appears designed to create prolonged uncertainty, drain institutional capacity, and normalize positions that would be unthinkable today. Precedent matters more than verdicts in these battles.

What Happens Next

The next test will come at the federal level. If the AfD consolidates its provincial gains and builds administrative experience, the 2025 federal election landscape shifts irreversibly. If the party stumbles — bogged down in legal battles, exposed incompetence, or public backlash against segregation and deportation rhetoric — it may contain itself as a regional force.

For the EU, the lesson is blunt: the postwar consensus on immigration and cultural policy is no longer immune to electoral reversal. The question is no longer whether the AfD can win votes — it already has. The question is whether Germany’s institutions can govern through the pressure it now exerts from within.