Die Umfragen lassen kaum einen Zweifel. Nach den Landtagswahlen in Thüringen und Sachsen am Sonntag wird sich die politische Landkarte in Ostdeutschland wohl tiefblau färben. Die rechtspopulistische AfD, die vom Verfassungsschutz in beiden Ländern als gesichert rechtsextrem eingestuft wird, liegt in Thüringen mit großem Abstand vor der CDU. In Sachsen liefern sich AfD und Union bis zuletzt ein Kopf-an-Kopf-Rennen.
Doch es gibt Orte, da herrscht keine blaue Dominanz. Teile des Siedlungsgebiets der Sorben in Sachsen zum Beispiel. „Ministerski Prezident wšěch Saksow“, steht auf dem Wahlplakat am Ortseingang der sorbischen Gemeinde Crostwitz. CDU-Ministerpräsident Michael Kretschmer, der auf einen neuerlichen Regierungsauftrag hofft, wirbt hier auf Sorbisch, ein „Ministerpräsident aller Sachsen“ zu sein. Der Ort ist eine Hochburg der Konservativen. Doch auch in Thüringen könnten markante Punkte auf der politischen Landkarte über die Grundierung der politischen Landschaft für die nächsten fünf Jahre entscheiden. In der Universitätsstadt Jena finden die extrem Rechten deutlich weniger Zustimmung als im Rest des Landes. Ministerpräsident Bodo Ramelow (Linke) hat zwar kaum Chancen, im Amt zu bleiben. Am Sonntag geht es aber nicht zuletzt um die Frage, ob die AfD im Landtag in Erfurt künftig über eine Sperrminorität verfügt.
Why is it that the AfD’s slogans don’t work everywhere? “We have everything here that you can find anywhere else, we are not an island of bliss,” says Marko Klimann, the mayor of Crostwitz. A few days before the election, it looks like a rural idyll. But the Sparkasse bus, which stops here once a week for half an hour, the three closed inns and the futile search for a grocery store when walking through the village indicate that Crostwitz is struggling with typical problems. At least it still has its own baker. “And we have a watchmaker too,” says Klimann.
The CDU man, who has been leading the community on a voluntary basis for nine years, has been used to being asked for explanations for voting behavior in the community since 2019 at the latest. In the state elections five years ago, the AfD’s share of the vote here was a good 17 percent, while it achieved more than 28 percent nationwide. The influx of right-wing populists was lower in the village with its 1,000 inhabitants than in parts of Dresden and Leipzig. The European elections at the beginning of June showed a similar picture. With just under 21 percent, the AfD achieved the third worst result in Saxony in Crostwitz. Nationwide, it achieved more than 30 percent and overtook the CDU. It was not Crostwitz’s fault: Here the Union achieved its strongest result with 48 percent. In 2019, it was even 66 percent.
There is no simple explanation
“If only it were that easy,” says Klimann when asked how the CDU keeps the AfD at bay in the Sorbian community. But there is no simple explanation. Economically, the community, which was formerly dominated by agriculture, is doing well. However, the economic power per employed person in the Bautzen district, at just under 65,000 euros in 2022, was below the average in Saxony, which in turn is below the national average. The most important employer in the town is the retirement home. Most employees commute to nearby Kamenz, to Bautzen or just under 50 kilometers to Dresden. The population in Crostwitz has shrunk by about a tenth since reunification, but has remained stable for years and has developed somewhat better than the state as a whole. The daycare center, whose capacity Klimann has just expanded, is the largest item in the municipality’s budget.
A few months ago, the German Center for Astrophysics (DZA) presented its plans in Crostwitz to drill 200 meters deep into the Lusatian granite in the area of a neighboring community and to set up an underground research laboratory there. “There was huge interest, also because there were reservations that this was just a pretext to look for a final repository for nuclear waste,” says Klimann. The DZA has dispelled these concerns, says the mayor. However, trust in the politicians, who are making more than a billion euros of structural funding available for the planned large-scale research center by 2038, seems to be barely higher in Crostwitz than the national average.
One possible explanation for the voting behavior is obvious: the image of the community is dominated by the baroque church building. The parish includes more than 30 predominantly Catholic villages in the area. With around 3,700 believers, Crostwitz is the largest Sorbian-speaking Catholic parish in Protestant Saxony. “Here you have the specificity of a Catholic diaspora that holds the village society together with its socio-cultural traditions and ties,” says Hans Vorländer, political scientist at the TU Dresden. The same applies to the predominantly Catholic district of Eichsfeld in Thuringia, where the AfD also has a comparatively difficult time. Měrćin Deleńk, the pastor of Crostwitz, who welcomes a total of 750 visitors every weekend to the three main services alone, does not accept the deep connection to the Catholic faith as a reason for the election results.
Deleńk, who like Mayor Klimann is Sorbian, does not like to talk about politics. He will only say this: “All the problems that exist, exist here too.” It was probably like that when the Sorbs settled here around 1400 years ago during the Great Migration. The priest’s assessment is confirmed in the St. Marienstern monastery in the neighboring town of Panschwitz-Kuckau, which is also part of the Crostwitz parish. In the monastery shop, migration is the first keyword that is used to justify dissatisfaction with politics. When asked about the state election, the nun at the monastery gate sighs: “You don’t know what to vote for anymore, but not voting is not an option either.”
“Every vote counts”
In Jena, just over 200 kilometers west of Crostwitz, the mood is much more energetic shortly before the state elections in Thuringia. “Every vote counts so that we can avoid a blocking minority for the AfD,” says Jan Christian Waitschies, founder of the Jena-based software company Wunschlösung and representative of the state-wide initiative “Cosmopolitan Thuringia.” If the AfD wins a third of the state parliament seats at the weekend, it could block laws in the future, regardless of whether it participates in government. This is a particular concern in Jena.
“If things go wrong in the state elections, that would hit us the hardest,” says Mayor Thomas Nitzsche. The FDP politician has been in charge of the city’s affairs since 2018. In the summer, he won a runoff election in the fight for a second term in office – against a candidate from the Greens. The AfD’s wave of success seems to regularly break at the city limits. This was also recently confirmed by the news that Björn Höcke, the AfD’s top candidate for the state elections in Thuringia, canceled a campaign appearance in Jena after more than 2,000 demonstrators protested against the event.
In the state elections five years ago, the AfD achieved its worst result nationwide, with just over 11 percent in the Jena 1 constituency. The Left triumphed with almost 38 percent of the vote, while the Greens achieved their best result in all of Thuringia with just over 16 percent. In the European elections at the beginning of June, the AfD achieved just over 14 percent in Jena, but the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance and the small progressive-liberal party Volt were able to gain significantly more.
There are no simple explanations for the conspicuous voting behavior here either, but there are plenty of possible explanations: With a gross domestic product of more than 76,000 euros per employed person, Jena was below the national average in 2022, but ranked second among all districts and independent cities in Thuringia. The number of inhabitants fell below the 100,000 mark in the years after reunification, but climbed to more than 110,000 in the following years, contrary to the nationwide trend, and thus also above the 1992 level. Almost one in five is a student. Around a third of those employed in Jena who are subject to social insurance have a university degree – that is the highest in Germany.
“Spin off, grow, spin off”
The structural change after reunification also hit Jena hard. The loss of thousands of jobs in the companies of the former Carl Zeiss combine was followed by a reversal of the trend that is closely linked to the name Lothar Späth. The former CDU Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg took over the leadership of Jenoptik, which had emerged from Carl Zeiss, in 1991, later took the company public and attracted investors to Jena. “Spin off, grow, spin off,” is how Mayor Nitzsche describes the growth engine established in Jena.
Jenoptik is still one of the few listed companies from East Germany, and company boss Stefan Träger, who has just extended his contract until 2028, is one of the few CEOs with an East German background at the helm of a group from the DAX family. He has long been concerned about the attractiveness of the location for skilled workers from abroad and has launched the “Stay Open” initiative with Jenoptik. “Perhaps we should have done this earlier,” says Träger, who returned to his hometown in 2017 after many years abroad, took over the leadership of Jenoptik and noticed that the political landscape was slipping.
Instead of looking for islands in this landscape, one should keep an eye on the trend, says sociologist Axel Salheiser, scientific director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena. He is just as unconvinced by the narrative about bright spots on the dark blue political map as he is by the story about a dichotomy between West and East. Salheiser warns: “There are developments that are catching up, and if the democratic parties in the center do not offer solutions to the problem, one should not be surprised if the AfD soon reaches the level in West Germany that it has already reached in the East.”
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