Niki Kampf watched his daughter walk across the sand at a Berlin playground and wondered if he and his wife should send their 1½-year-old daughter to the West as the Alternative for Germany became the first right-wing party to win a state election in Germany since World War II.
Ms. Kempf, 29, and her wife discussed a backup plan after Sunday’s election results came in. They worry that if parties such as the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, gain more power in the former communist and less prosperous eastern states, gay couples and their children will not be safe in the future.
Even though they live in the liberal city of Berlin, Kampf fears the power of the far-right could spread. She is particularly worried because the paperwork to formally adopt her daughter is still pending – and could take another year or more.
“I don’t think I would be able to adopt him if they got into power,” Ms. Kempf told The Associated Press on Monday. “I don’t want to raise him in a hostile environment.”
The couple have discussed the possibility of moving west to Cologne — “people there are really open-minded” — but Kempf is reluctant to move her daughter away from her 91-year-old great-grandmother and other family who live in Thuringia and neighboring Saxony.
The AfD won a state election in Thuringia on Sunday under the leadership of one of its most hard-line right-wing leaders, Bjoern Höcke. In Saxony, the party finished just slightly behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union, which leads the national opposition.
Internal strife, deep dissatisfaction with a national government notorious for inflation and a weak economy, anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism about German military aid to Ukraine are among the factors that have boosted support for populist parties. A new party founded by a prominent leftist was the other big winner on Sunday – and will likely be needed to form state governments as no one is willing to govern with the AfD.
The AfD is strongest in the eastern region, and the domestic intelligence agency has placed the party’s branches in both Saxony and Thuringia under official surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. Höcke has been convicted of deliberately using Nazi slogans at political events, but is appealing.
Höcke became infuriated on Sunday when an ARD interviewer mentioned the intelligence agency’s assessment and replied: “Please stop stigmatizing me. We are the No. 1 party in Thuringia. You don’t want to classify a third of Thuringian voters as right-wing extremists.”
Voters went to the polls on the 85th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland at the start of World War II. Some far-left protesters demonstrated against the AfD in Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig.
Lukas Meister said his sons, ages 6 and 3, are too young to understand the election. But when the 3-year-old son was playing with sand toys on Monday, the 38-year-old father thought his oldest son would have to learn about it one day.
“We don’t talk about politics much yet. He’s more interested in ‘Paw Patrol,'” Meister said. “It’s hard to explain. How is it that people are so proud to vote for a party that is so bad for everybody?”
Older Germans who lived through the horrors of the Nazi regime are terrified. Many believe their country has developed immunity to nationalism and claims of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of its past through education and laws designed to prevent persecution.
But Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and a Holocaust survivor, cautioned against calling the AfD’s successes an exception.
“No one should speak of ‘protests’ or look for other excuses anymore,” Knobloch said in a statement. “Many voters made their decision consciously; many wanted to blame fringe extremists.”
Knoblauch was 6 when she saw the burning of Munich’s synagogues and watched helplessly as two Nazi officers took away a dear friend of her father’s on Nov. 9, 1938, or Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — when the Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.
Gudrun Pfeiffer and Ursula Klute, two retirees from the northwestern city of Osnabrück who visited Berlin this week, said Sunday’s vote brought back horrific memories of their childhood during and after World War II.
“I know what all this can lead to,” Pfeiffer, 83, said Monday, her voice choking, as she recalled how her family was separated during the final months of the war and its aftermath. She was trapped in Berlin for more than a year.
“The town was destroyed, we were all starving. I was very sick — my sister thought I was going to die,” Pfeiffer said.
Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, described the AfD’s popularity among young voters as “very worrying”. According to the Tagesschau election analysis of public broadcaster ARD, 38% of 18-24 year olds in Thuringia gave their vote to the far-right party – compared to 33% overall.
“These first voting experiences are very formative, and you can assume they will influence future voting decisions of this generation,” Faas said.
Klute, 78, also said he was distressed by the AfD’s success among the younger population.
“People always forget the lessons learned from history,” he said.