The German identity metamorphosis

The historic victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt is a political earthquake for a country trapped in existential angst. German exceptionalism is more earthly than ever. The country's economy has had six consecutive years of meager growth. The traditionally powerful industry is frightened and is demanding more protection against China and United States tariffs. The shocks of energy prices and the announced crisis in the automotive sector –now aggravated by the announcement of mass layoffs at Volkswagen– fuel a feeling of an end of an era that makes the European Union tremble.

It is in this context that the electoral strength of the AfD must be considered the symptom, and not the cause, of the defeat that has collapsed an increasingly weak political center. It is, above all, the result of the failure of fearful Grand Coalitions, incapable of reforming an obsolete model. The unrest and the strength of the punishment of regions that have felt abandoned have taken hold. Now it has been Saxony-Anhalt, the state with the oldest population in the country and the lowest per capita income in Germany. But its economic reality is not far from that of other regions where the AfD also triumphs.

It is a European warning sign. Low growth remains entrenched in a large part of the EU, especially in Bulgaria, in the east and south of Hungary, in most of eastern Germany, in central Greece, in southern Italy, and in industrial regions in decline, such as northeastern France. The electoral results in many of these places help to map the geography of a discontent that accentuates the economic and social weaknesses of the EU. And it is a pattern that could be further reinforced with the polls scheduled for 2027 in France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Slovakia, and Spain; and while waiting to see what happens in the Swedish legislative elections next weekend.

Berlin has long since ceased to be the hegemonic power in a EU with a strengthened and influential extreme right. The Franco-German axis represents the heart of the EU of the past under the weight of the new radical majorities, which is not only redefining policies and alliances but also the very identity of the Union as a supranational power. Germany remains the essential partner of the EU, but its existential doubts –from the health of its democratic system to the viability of its economic model– weigh on all of Europe.

European political leaders “should prepare for the possibility of a new kind of Germany: one that is no longer boring, nor stable... nor rich,” write Janka Oertel and Jana Puglierin, analysts at the European Council on Foreign Relations. But that is not enough. German crises end up being European crises. And in the collapse of the CDU, one can also read the costs of governmental decisions and a geopolitical agenda that do not always coincide with the daily concerns of the electorate.

With social and economic fears running high, Friedrich Merz remains clinging to the German orthodoxy of the last two decades, pushing to cut the future community budget while announcing a multi-million investment plan in armaments and declaring his ambition to build the most powerful army in Europe. Next year, German military spending will be as high as that of France and Great Britain combined, and Merz expects to increase it even further by 2030.

The editorial of the weekly Der Spiegel has declared that Merz is not the right leader for Germany. The chancellor's popularity is at an all-time low. His party, the CDU, has spent the summer internally divided over the government's intention to reform pensions. Even among his supporters, it is beginning to be questioned whether he is still capable of continuing to hold the office.

While the AfD has obtained in Saxony-Anhalt the best result for a far-right party in Germany since 1945 –celebrated on social media by both the White House and the Kremlin–, the CDU has suffered “the most serious electoral defeat in decades,” in the words of Merz. The transfer of votes from one to the other is easy to deduce.

The identity metamorphosis shaking Germany has been unable to find the correct answers: from the failure of the political firewall that had isolated the far right –until making it so resistant that, inevitably, it has reached the doors of power– to the historical defeat that the normalization of the xenophobic and discriminatory discourse that distinguishes between “biological” Germans and “passport” Germans represents for the memory of post-Nazi Germany.