In just over two weeks' time, Saxony-Anhalt – home to historic timber-framed houses, the dramatic Harz mountains and the birthplace of Martin Luther – will hold what could prove one of the most significant state elections in Germany's postwar history. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The vote, on 6 September, could see a far-right party whose local branch is officially classified by the country's domestic intelligence service as "confirmed rightwing extremist" appoint a state premier and govern a state alone, for the first time.
That could have big consequences for both Germany and Europe. With more state elections a fortnight later in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, it could also end the consensus that, since the second world war, has kept the far right at bay in Germany.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has led most German national polls since April last year. It is comfortably ahead in eastern Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and is even second in famously liberal Berlin.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the party – which dabbles in Nazi imagery, differentiates between "biological" and "passport" Germans, and whose rhetoric and policies are often way more extreme than many other EU far-right parties – is polling at up to 42%.
Under Germany's proportional representation threshold, which excludes parties that capture less than 5% of the vote, a score in the low-to-mid 40s could quite conceivably secure AfD an absolute majority in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament.
As the Centre for Strategic and International Studies points out, that would have an immediate domestic impact. Germany's 16 states exercise constitutional authority over education, policing, public broadcasting and regional civil administration.
AfD's proposed state-level measures include revising the school history curriculum to emphasise Germany's "achievements" over its wartime crimes, defunding anti-racism initiatives, removing pride flags and rewriting the mandates of public TV and radio.
An AfD government could exploit state-level public recruitment criteria and make political appointments favouring ideologically aligned candidates, and, more broadly, create an intimidating environment where state employees prefer silence to conflict.
At the federal level, winning a state government would also give the AfD seats in the Bundesrat upper house representing the states. That would not allow it to block legislation unilaterally, but it could table new policy initiatives and disrupt consensus.
On the EU stage, while the party is somewhat sidelined within parliament – it heads the uber-nationalist ESN group, including France's Reconquest and Italy's National Future – its increased influence in Germany would weaken European unity.
An increasingly fragmented German political landscape would undermine Berlin's role as an engine of European integration, affecting decision-making in key areas such as environment policy (AfD rejects the need for climate action).
In other vital areas – such as policy towards Ukraine – a more influential AfD's hostility to further military aid for Kyiv and eagerness to normalise relations with Moscow would directly benefit Russia's efforts to sap western unity.
More broadly, an AfD victory would be a potent signal that even the EU's biggest economy is vulnerable to the far right, boosting nativist parties in countries with crunch national elections in the next 18 months, such as France, Italy, Spain and Poland.
But there's another dimension to a possible AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt that deserves a closer look. For decades, Germany's political parties have operated a so-called "Brandmauer", or firewall, to prevent the normalisation of far-right extremism.
In essence, the firewall should rule out any form of coalition or structural cooperation with the AfD. In 2018, the centre-right CDU of Chancellor Friedrich Merz even codified the Brandmauer into a formal "incompatibility resolution".
The objective, of course, was to prevent support for the AfD increasing, its influence expanding, and, ultimately, the far-right party winning power. It hasn't worked – and analysts now suggest there may be three distinct flaws with the firewall strategy.
First, as The Economist argued, by making the AfD a political pariah, the Brandmauer has in effect insulated the party from the compromises and failures of government. With no need to deliver actual results, it can promise voters whatever it likes (and it does).
That, of course, has made it even more appealing. Unlike many other European far-right parties that have experienced the accountability that accompanies regional or national power, the AfD has not been obliged to moderate its language or its ideas.
Second, as the German academic Alexander Görlach observed, the firewall has "hollowed-out" the centre: to build majorities excluding the far right, the CDU has had to enter "Grand Coalitions" with its historic adversary, the SPD.