The German far-right is euphoric. The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) boasts a new face that could bring it its first regional presidency, after years of growth at the polls since its founding in 2013 without this translating into access to power due to the cordon sanitaire applied by other parties. Ulrich Siegmund, candidate in the elections of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, to be held on September 6, could garner up to 43% of the vote, according to the latest poll by the Pollytix institute.
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The AfD would thus fall just short of the absolute majority that would allow it to bypass the Brandmauer (firewall, as the cordon sanitaire is called in Germany) and govern without the need for allies. But the ultras do not give up, as the arithmetic holds another twist. Siegmund savors the possibility that the minimum required threshold of 5% will reduce the number of parties with parliamentary representation. If so, the distribution of seats could give them control of the Magdeburg chamber, the capital of this sparsely populated state of 2.1 million inhabitants, with that percentage.
Dark credentials
Candidate Siegmund attended a 2023 identitarian meeting in Potsdam where a ‘remigration’ plan was discussed
In the party tent set up in Olvenstedter Scheid, a peripheral commercial area of Magdeburg, enthusiastic supporters line up to take photos, chat briefly, and get an autograph from Ulrich Siegmund. At 35, this former commercial technician, regional deputy since 2016, is running a grassroots campaign with small meetings, always good-humored and affable, flanked by burly bodyguards.
“Hello, good morning!” he says in Spanish with a broad smile upon learning the reporter’s nationality. But no questions and answers. “This is a meeting with the citizens, I am here for them,” he continues in German, to close the matter. In the line to greet him, German flags abound and there are families with very blond children. His campaign is like this: he hardly ever holds rallies in the strict sense, and almost never gives long speeches. On Instagram he has half a million followers and on TikTok 750,000, almost as many as the chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
Two middle-aged women come out of the tent excited and agree to talk. “I like him, I just met him personally, I hope he becomes president of Saxony-Anhalt,” says one. “I’m going to vote blue [the AfD color], for peace, for freedom, and for our people; it’s the best for Germany,” says the other. “We don’t want more immigrants,” they conclude.
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A former and brief member of the Christian Democratic CDU, Merz’s party, before joining the AfD, the Saxony-Anhalt candidate smiles a lot but presents dark credentials. In November 2023 he participated in a meeting of neo-Nazis and extremists in Potsdam where the Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner outlined a remigration plan, an ultra term meaning forcing the foreign-origin population, including those with German nationality, to leave the country.
In public, Siegmund now advocates deportation of “only illegals and criminals,” along with a drastic cut in migrants’ rights and rejection of Islam, in line with the party’s general stance. In schools, he wants classes that reinforce a nationalist view of German history, and more Russian language in classrooms, another sign of part of the AfD’s affinity for Russia, inherited from the GDR era. According to the weekly Der Spiegel, several of his collaborators were part of the German Youth Loyal to the Fatherland, a neo-Nazi group banned in 2009.
Electoral propaganda
The AfD party exults with the cover of ‘Der Spiegel’ that labeled Siegmund as “the most dangerous man in Germany”
Der Spiegel took that report to its cover with a photo of Siegmund and the headline “The most dangerous man in Germany,” a phrase the AfD now uses as electoral propaganda. T-shirts with the phrase are printed and supporters ask Siegmund to sign photocopies of the cover. The candidate also posed exultantly with several copies.
Next to the Olvenstedter Scheid tent, there are also some motorcyclists dressed in leather. Siegmund often attends historic motorcycle gatherings where he rides a Simson Schwalbe KR 51/1, the motorcycle of the extinct communist GDR, of which current Saxony-Anhalt was part. He was born in Havelberg in 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but he exploits as his own the fiber of eastern pride and German pride in general. So far, the combination of classic far-right ideology and eastern pride is giving him good returns.
