The recent elections in eastern Germany, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win a parliamentary election at the state level in postwar Germany, raised significant concern internationally about what’s happening in Germany. Should we be concerned? 

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey talks with Marcus Böick, assistant professor of history at the University of Cambridge, on the difficulties that have attended the process of unification in Germany since 1989 and their consequences for German politics. Böick addresses the reasons behind the AfD’s success and how those in eastern Germany have experienced the process, their dissatisfaction with traditional parties and their migration policies, and their sense of being ignored by the country’s political elites. Böick delves into AfD’s radicalization and the charisma of Björn Höcke as a factor in AfD’s victory, and the prospects for the election in Brandenburg this weekend, which could further complicate Germany’s political landscape at both the state and national levels.

John Torpey 

A couple of weeks ago, alarm bells went off around the West when a far right party, the Alternative for Germany, otherwise known by its German edition initials of the AfD, for the first time in the post war period, won a state level parliamentary election in Germany. The outcome raised considerable concern among Germany watchers around the world. To be sure, the strength of right wing populist parties has been the big news in many countries in recent years, including the UK, France, Italy, Poland Hungary, and, of course, even the United States. But Germany is the largest country west of Russia, and has been thought to be a reliably democratic partner for decades. What’s happening in Germany? Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and we’re fortunate to have with us today. Markus Boeick, an assistant professor of modern German history at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the histories of the GDR and post socialism in Central Europe. More broadly, he’s the author of Die Treuhand: Idee-Praxis-Erfahrung, which basically describes how Western managers attempted to transform post socialist East Germany from a planned into a market economy after German unification in the early 90s. And the book has had four editions since it first came out in 2018. His most recent book published in 2022 with C. Lorke is called Zwischen Aufschwung und Anpassung: Eine kleine Geschichte des “Aufbau Ost” and addresses the history of Germany since reunification. Thanks for joining us today, Marcus Böick.

Marcus Böick 

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

John Torpey 

Great to have you. So I want to start by discussing these elections in Thuringia and Saxony, because of course, there’s another one coming up this weekend in Brachantborg, the state of Brandenburg. So these are states territories that are in the territory of the former East Germany, the former GDR. And as I’ve already said, the election results rang alarm bells in western capitals and publics, because it was the first time in the post war period that a far right party had won a parliamentary election in Germany. Please tell us you know what you think is going on and how to explain this.

Marcus Böick 

Yeah, well, thank you, John. It’s a pleasure to be, as I said, and but it’s, of course, it’s a grim background to me being here on the podcast. So these election results in Eastern Germany very recently gained a lot of international attention. But to be fair, or to be honest, most people working on Eastern Germany and his trajectory after reunification were not that surprised by this development. Right that for many years we were talking about frictions between East and West Germany, rising levels of dissatisfaction, disappointment in the East. But I think for after the turn of the century, these things seem to wither away slowly. So many people expected reunification to be completed, maybe after one or two generations. We will talk about this later on, I guess. But after, I think, especially after 2014 2015 after this turn in migration politics, the alternative with the Deutschland AFD party, also changed. So the Party was founded in 2020, 2030, 2013, and it was a anti Europe party, like against the European Union, run by West German professors. But then it turned into an anti-migration party, and especially in the east, the party radicalized itself, and this is connected with the name of Bjorn herke, who is the leader of the AfD and Thuringia. And he’s more or less a clear cut neo Nazi and former history teacher who’s migrated from the west to the east in the 1990s I think. And so this party was able to fill the gap. So to say, because like the traditional main parties in Germany, like the conservatives, the Social Democrats, and also especially the greens or the Liberals, are pretty weak in the East traditionally, so they could never really gain a foothold in the east of the of the country after 1990 and after 30. Years of post socialism in Eastern Germany, there is a lot of especially in the rural parts of the East. So the East is like a very it’s a complicated it’s a more complicated picture if you zoom in. So the bigger towns, the university towns like Vienna or Leipzig or Dresden are pretty well off if you go there, that they’re very liberal, open minded, diverse towns, sprawling towns, refurbished after 1919. Very nice to visit. But if you move out into the countryside, there’s a huge feeling of they forgot like the political elites forgot us. We are dominated by the West. We are like decisions are made without consulting us, and especially this migration issues. This migration issue in 2015 when Angela Merkel and the federal government decided to open the German borders to stabilize the European Union, really sparked the rise of the AfD in the east, and you could really observe in the last up to 589, years, how the party was gaining more and more traction in the east, and despite they lack a clear leadership, right? So, so there is no charismatic leader to the east the to the AfD party. So the party, the Federal party, leaders, are pretty weak. Bionke, as I said, is like a more or less like a neo Nazi person. So there is no attractive leader like in many populist parties in Western Europe or Eastern Europe and but despite this lack of a clear leadership, the party was really fighting the election campaigns on this, like populist stance of you have been forgotten so the people like the ruling class in Berlin or in airport or in Dresden doesn’t really care about you, and I think this is celebrated even after the takeover of the so called Traffic Light coalition, like a left, left liberal government in Berlin. And this even, like fueled this disaffection in parts of the rural of rural eastern Germany, and led to this results. And as I said, these results are, of course, staggering in a way. So the if they became the strongest party in to 33% I guess. And it came in second in Saxony, with around 30% and given the German tradition, the strongest party usually is forming the government and and is kind of nominating the Prime Minister, the Minister president, President Minister of the state. Of course, the major parties, the Democratic Parties, don’t want to let this happen. I think this is not a problem in Saxony, because the Conservatives came in first with a very like not with a strong not with a strong margin, but they were the strongest party. But then it is a huge problem, because, like the right wing, populist gained the majority of the vote. So basically, the Democratic Party needs to form an anti-populist government. And some scholars even call it like a Weimar government, right? Because this is what happened in the late years of the Weimar Republic, when the Democratic parties of the middle, like the Social Democrats, the Conservatives and the liberals, needed to form an anti totalitarian party. So the situation is, in political terms, is pretty grim. So we are facing a deadlock, especially in Thuringia. I think the picture in Saxony is a bit broader, but not very good as well. I think it will be. So it will be very difficult to handle this situation. It’s pretty new in Germany after 1945 but on the other hand side, we shouldn’t be outright so it’s not a complete catastrophe, right? So we need to remind ourselves, 70% of the electorate didn’t vote for the AfD. The picture gets even more complicated if you look into another party we haven’t mentioned yet, which is the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which is a quite a new party emerging at the start of the year, like a split up, like a party that’s split up from the Left Party, and it’s a left wing populist party, basically combining anti migration sentiment, like right wing anti migration policies, with left wing demands towards an extended social state, and also demanding peace negotiations with Russia, ending the war in Ukraine, and you can see the picture is quite messy in the east, and there’s a lot of talks going on on in Germany, but also internationally. How did we come here? But as I said at the beginning, for people that like me, that were working on East Germany, and that grew up there as well, it’s not like a complete surprise, but I think for many people, it is a surprise because they for a long time, they saw German reunification as a success story, right? Like they lived together happily ever after and after all these dark periods of the 20th century, the world was the Holocaust, the Cold War confrontation between East and West, 1919 seems to be like a happy end to the German drama of the 20th century. And now after 35 years, we see it’s way more complicated.

John Torpey 

Well, maybe we should get into that now, since you know we you hinted that we would go in this direction, you know, this whole question of German unification, the, you know, happiness or otherwise, with which it was undertaken, and to you know, the extent that it’s been complete. I don’t want to say completed, but you know, realized, you know, there was this expectation. I think it was a commentator, sociologist, who said around 1990 that, you know, would take a generation for these two populations to kind of get reacquainted with each other. I mean, just the fact that they were German didn’t necessarily, and maybe at one time, you know, shared a state, a country that wasn’t necessarily going to be enough to result in a kind of happy, you know, unification process. And you know, as you say, now, it seems to me, a lot of people are questioning that. And indeed, it seems to me that it has seemed to me, I guess, for a long time, that this is a process that has resulted, really, in the creation of a kind of separate, you know, region of the country that, I mean the question, I guess, in ways, how much can you compare it to the Americans in places like the American south or the Italian south? Are these sort of permanently disadvantaged regions that have, you know, certainly sort of different kinds of politics than the rest of the country has. And, you know, Steffen Mau has recently come out with a book that has been getting a lot of attention. The book is called Unequally United, or Reunited, I guess. And that seems to point to one of the important differences between East and West and Germany that’s underlying some of these issues. But you know a lot more about this than I do. You tell us, I know.

Marcus Böick 

Thanks, John. It’s a great question, and I think maybe we start from the beginning, as I’m a historian. I think if you look back in to 1989-1990, unification, reunification, was a huge surprise. Not many people expected something like the downfall of the Soviet Union and the end the demise of the GDR and reunification, even like in summer of 1989 right? So people were quite overwhelmed, and things happened very quickly. We call it like the peaceful revolution after October and November 1989 and you know the pictures of the opening of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Communist Party leadership, and also like the first elections and the huge euphoria for unification internally, of course, many East Germans hope for a better future very quickly, and they were promised like blossoming landscapes by the former Federal Chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl. But also, there was a huge support internationally from the US government, George Bush, and also Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. There were some kind of skeptics in France, in the UK and in Poland, but to sum it up, there was a huge euphoria, and people believed things will change very quickly, and there’s not a huge problem with unification, because the language is the same, the culture is the same, and it’s just like 35 years and it’s not like in the careers, right? There was always a connection between East and West Germany. You could travel, you could send letters, you could visit each other with restrictions, of course, but I think there was a strong connections. East Germans watched Western television, read Western books and so on. So there was a strong sense of okay, there might be some minor divisions, but mainly they’re all Germans. And I think this was like the expectation in 1990 but even like in 1991 you could see this. This picture starts to starts to beat. It’s disrupted by the impact of reunification, right? Like the currency union, privatization in the east, unemployment is rising. People get very unhappy, right? Easterners have been promised like a new economic miracle, second German witch wonder economic like a wonderland in the east by the new government. But this doesn’t didn’t happen, right? So they saw Westerners coming over, taking over the leadership positions in the East. They became the new Heads of Government. And they were the new like a lot of Westerners, went to the east to introduce the new Western rules, right? So the deal, mainly in 1990 was the Easterners are allowed to join the western model, right? And they need to adapt to the western model. So it’s basically moving into the house of your rich cousin, but you get your room, but you’re not allowed to talk about the rules with him, right? Because, like, the house is owned by a rich Western cousin, and I think this is a problem we are struggling with until today. So the East Germans didn’t really feel like they’re part of the whole process, right? There was no new constitution. There was no, I think, in major terms there when no one tried to, kind of try to look at what could we learn also from the east. But the direction seems quite clear. East Germany needs to adapt to the western standards set by the West Germans. And I think just in brackets, this is also what happened later on with European integration towards Eastern Europe, right, like the Germans, adapted a similar model for the Eastern enlargement of the European Union, so that, like Poland and Hungary and Czech, they needed to adapt to certain Western rules, which is but which is another topic. So pretty quickly, after euphoria of 1990 these things became more and more messy, and then Easterners were grumbling around. Unemployment was on the rise. Privatization had a huge impact on the social landscape of the East. A lot of people left Eastern Germany towards the west. And there was a huge, like, internal debate in the 90s about these like East West divides. There were like also debates about how to come to terms with the history of the GDR and its secret service. There were talks about how to deal with right wing extremism showing up in Eastern Germany as well. There were, like, some kind of violent clashes in the early 1990s for example, in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, like against foreigners. So a lot of talks, a lot of conflicts, already in the early 1990s but then these things seem to slowly go away in the late 1990s so like the shaker period of early transformation, as we call it, was basically over. And then things need to seem to basically ease down for a moment. And even after the turn of the century, Angela Merkel became chancellor, and she’s from, she’s from Eastern Germany, right? So it looked like the relation between East and West would normalize, and like all these like conflicts and disruptions would slowly wither away. But this didn’t happen. And to come back, what you mentioned a quote, there’s another quote by Ralf Dahrendorf, this British German intellectual. And then he I really like this quote, because everybody was expecting, like most people in the public and in the political area, the political field, they were expecting a very quick reunification, and without any long term problems and issues. But Ralf Dahrendorf already, Ralf Dahrendorf already stated in 1919, the Germans might be able to manage political unification in six months. So this is kind of true. So political unification was negotiated within six months with the contract, the external and internal reunification contracts. And then he went on and said economic unification, reunification might last six years. And also this is kind of true, because, like the privatization, which was heavily criticized with a lot of issues, was finished after even five years in the east by privatizing most of the state owned companies. And then his last sentence was that cultural, social reunification might take 60 years or three generations. And many people didn’t believe this would be true. But in the end now, after like roughly 30 years, 35 years after unification, this inner unification, this growing together you mentioned, seems to be further away than ever. And Steffen Mau’s contribution, which I really liked, was like, okay, he tries to describe how this emerging like fractions between East and West were stabilized. But I think his major argument is maybe we need to live with this. Maybe we need to accept this and not try to like, kind of homogenize or like try trying to achieve, like a national culture. And what should this national culture be? Because it’s not just about East Germans and West Germans. It’s also about, like a huge migrant population in Germany, right? As you know, like 20% of the German population has a migrant migration background in 2023 right? So the picture gets even more messy. So this is basically maybe one of the main. Issues that people in 1990 didn’t really expect, these east west divines. And now we are here, 35 years later, and it seems like we haven’t really come a long way.

John Torpey 

Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I guess the question is, if it’s takes longer to reunify culturally than it did to, you know, endure this the existence of the German states that were that are now growing together, whether that’s not a quasi permanent sort of divide. I mean, again, thinking about the South and in the United States relative to the rest of the country, it’s hard to, you know, yes, it’s part of one country at one level, but this culturally, you know, continues to be very different, because it has a very different, you know, history and over a long period of time. So you mentioned the issue of migration, background, immigration, and I, you know, I’m interested in hearing you say more about how this what kind of role this plays in in these, you know, German inner German difficulties. I mean, Western Germany. You know, hardly you know, absorbed tons and tons of immigrants without difficulty. But it was a relatively smooth process, at least in the early years in particular, while there was this sort of economic miracle going on, that immigrant labor from the from Yugoslavia, from Turkey, from Italy and elsewhere, you know, in many ways, made happen. But now you know, the immigration background is a different one, by and large, and particularly, you know, in 2015 it’s come from Syria and from the Middle East, and is culturally and religiously, somewhat more, you know, different than those earlier, largely European, you know, immigrants in the early days. I mean, Turks were obviously not culturally and religiously, you know, so similar, but nonetheless, there was some greater similarity. And now you know that’s not the case. And I mean, how do you see the different parts of Germany dealing with these immigration forms?

Marcus Böick 

I think, I think it’s a very interesting topic, how all these east west conflicts in Germany are related to migration. And of course, maybe one thing, one issue of migration, we should think of before we get into these different, like cultures of migration, is the migration, the inner German migration between East and West. Because if you, if you realize that, like, almost, like, 3 million East Germans left the East after 1919, towards the west. And usually, usually the very highly educated young people leaving for university don’t come back to the rural east. Right? This is, like a huge issue of, like, aging population, brain drain. Lot of young people left the east, the rural East, especially. And this is posing a massive problem at the ground level, right? Because, like, there is no these people usually are the main kind of, the main pillars of civil society. And I think this is one, maybe one thing at the beginning, right? So there’s a migration, an inner German migration between east and west at the heart of the problem. But I think you’re right. Migration has been pretty normalized in the western part of Germany since the 1950s and 1960s with labor migration, the Turkish, German Turkish community is the biggest community in Germany. And I lived for many years in the rural area in the west of Germany. I think these it’s quite I think it’s a quite settled migration society, especially in the bigger towns of the west of Germany, and like the geographic west of Germany in the east, there’s not much migration going on, right? So you don’t have high levels of migrants in smaller German towns, East German towns like I think the numbers are one 2% so it’s not like a very diverse society in this terms. But even if these migrants are not present on the ground level, I think this even fuels the problem that the people are feel threatened by migration, right? And so a couple of weeks ago, I with my best friend, we did a hike in Saxony-Anhalt, like the south where Nietzsche is from, and Bach and all these guys. And they’re like, pretty hills, it’s amazing for hiking, and they’re even some wine yards. And so we hiked through the countryside, and we saw all these, like fans, like this, new family homes with nice cars. Everything is very, very nice, really, like picture picture book, Germany, very picturesque, very well off. But if you zoom in, you will realize that many like of these, like emerging East German middle class, this is definitely most of the time. It’s their first family home. So they, they try to build new wealth and property after 1990 and it’s not like, like several like in the West, right? Like proper, like, if you, if you look at property, at wealth, the West is way stronger than the east, right? So, because I can in West Germany, people usually inherit huge sums of money. There’s nothing like this happening in the east. So the wealth established in the East after the 1990s is, so to say, way thinner. And I think this is why the AfD is so successful, playing on the fears and the threats of now Berlin is sending in migrants, and they will take away your nice, new little home, your cars, and they will threaten you, there will be crime, there will be poverty, right? And I think this is, this is really like this, like emerging middle class in the east is basically one of the main like, especially in the rural east, is basically one of the main kind of, the main audience for the AfD, right? And it’s not like about poverty. It’s about like a kind of a middle class. If you threatened to, to be, kind of to be, to be challenged by migrants that are coming in effectively, then they’re not coming in, right this and so, because there, there’s also, like a low and like another high number of social contacts and interactions. I think this even enhances the problem even more. And even like in my hometown, I still remember there was, there were not, there was a there were maybe two Asian families running two Asian restaurants and a shop, or Vietnamese families, German, East German Vietnamese, and there was a German Turkish family running a kebab store. And basically these families were accepted because they were like, providing the main infrastructure for the town, right, like food and and also you see a lot of migration in terms of elderly care doctors from Eastern Europe. So it’s changing also on the ground level, but I think in general terms, the East doesn’t also like going back to the GDR, like to Eastern Germany before 1919 so there was not a lot of exposure to international people of color, people from other groups. And this is, of course, where you can see the roots of racism and violence, especially that we saw in the early 1990s but also, if you remember this right wing terrorist group that emerged in the 1990s that killed like over more than 11 people assassinated them, like the so called Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, like national social, National Socialist terrorist group and so, yeah, it’s a complicated situation. So migration is, I think, at the heart of this rise of the AfD. And there’s some specific things to Eastern Germany. But as you already mentioned, in general, this is a pattern we see all over the western world, right? We see it in France, we see it in Poland. We see it in the UK, also in the US, right? So there seems to be something that migration is triggering a lot of fears and and threats, perception of threats, especially in the rural parts of the countries, but also especially in the lower middle classes.

John Torpey 

Interesting. I mean, it’s fascinating, and I think exactly on the money, but we’re running out of time, and so that I have one last question to ask you, and that is, what should we expect on this weekend in Brandenburg?

Marcus Böick 

Yeah, it’s a very good question. I think we won’t see it’s very because I’m an historian, I always need to be careful with like giving, giving a huge outlook into the future. Usually, this is not really something we are very good at. But just for little talk here, I checked a recent polling in Brandenburg, and I think it looks like the AfD will be in first, and the Social Democrats will are traditionally strong in Brandenburg, so they have been the strongest party since 1990 and the Prime Ministers has always been a Social Democrat. And this could pose a major issue for the federal government, which is headed by the Social Democrats. Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a Social Democrat. So if the Social Democrats lose their first, their pole position in Brandenburg to the AfD, we might see major consequences on the federal level as well. Because, like the federal government, the government coalition is already struggling a lot with internal debates and fighting. So I don’t want to be painted too dark picture, but the Brand Book election might be even the most consequential of all of them, right? Because, like, this is where, because, like the parties of the ruling government in Berlin, they already wrote off Saxony and Thuringia, right? Because all the parties in the federal government, like the Social Democrats, the greens, the liberals, haven’t been very strong in these two states, but now in Brandenburg, the Social Democrats are really under pressure, and they have really something to lose there. So, we will see how it turns out, but it looks like this election will end up almost like on the lines of the other elections, like the AfD will be in strong and also the BSW, like the left wing party, is expected to win 50% of the share of the votes. So it will be another blow to the Democratic Parties, and I don’t know how the German party system will be able to manage this pressure, because for the first time since 1945 we are facing a probable majority of anti system populist parties that can basically blockade the whole process of coalition building and decision making. So I don’t want to end on two brim tones here, so because maybe this will go away in a couple of years, but at the moment, Germany is really, I would say, in the middle of this, like, huge trend of populist parties challenging the so called established parties, and something we can see in France and also in other countries. So the picture is quite it’s not desperate, but it’s, it’s very messy and complicated, I would say. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to be, I wouldn’t try to be a politician in these states myself, to be honest, because it’s a lot of things to figure out, right,

John Torpey 

Interesting. I mean, as you say, and I guess, as I’ve said, you know, this is a pretty widespread phenomenon. So it’s not obviously just Germany, but everybody worries about Germany because of its historical past, and that’s just that’s just hard to escape. So thanks so much. That’s it for today’s episode. I want to thank Marcus Böick for sharing his insights about recent developments in German politics and the history of the post unification period. Look for International Horizons on the New Books Network, and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I want to thank Claire Centofanti for her technical assistance, as well as to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.